Queen Elizabeth's Annus Horribilis: How She Led Through 1992

In November 1992, marking 40 years on the throne, the Queen stood up at the Guildhall and said that 1992 was not a year on which she would look back with undiluted pleasure. In the words of one of her more sympathetic correspondents, she said, it had turned out to be an annus horribilis.

Windsor Castle had burned four days earlier. Three of her four children had seen their marriages collapse in public. The press had turned on the family with a savagery not seen in her lifetime.

And her response was a Latin joke in a speech.

Queen Elizabeth's annus horribilis, and the crisis that followed it in 1997, are the best case study in leadership resilience you will find anywhere. Not because she was unbreakable, but because of what she did after each blow. This article is about that.

The early test

Resilience was tested early. In 1953, months after the coronation, Princess Margaret fell in love with Group Captain Peter Townsend, a divorced man. The Queen was 27, torn between her sister's happiness and her position as Head of the Church of England. There was no good answer. She took the decision the institution required and carried the personal cost privately for the rest of her life.

Her former governess, Marion Crawford, sold her memoirs to an American magazine against the Queen's advice. The Queen was hurt, said nothing publicly, and in time forgave her.

The pattern was set early: absorb, do not retaliate, carry on.

Physical danger

On 13 June 1981, during Trooping the Colour, a 17-year-old fired six blank shots at the Queen as she rode down the Mall. Her horse shied. She steadied it, and continued the ceremony.

Four months later in Dunedin, New Zealand, a teenager with a .22 rifle fired at her from the fifth floor of a building as she stepped out of her car. The shot missed. The visit continued.

On 9 July 1982 she woke in Buckingham Palace to find a stranger sitting on her bed. She pressed the alarm. Nobody came. So she talked to him, calmly, for several minutes, and fetched him a cigarette while help was summoned.

None of these events changed her public behaviour by a visible degree. That is not the absence of fear. It is the presence of discipline.

1997

Five years after the annus horribilis, Diana, Princess of Wales, died in Paris.

The Queen stayed at Balmoral with her grandsons. The country, in an extraordinary outpouring of grief, wanted her in London. The headlines asked where she was. The flag over Buckingham Palace, which by protocol only flew when she was in residence, became a national grievance. Prime Minister Tony Blair advised her to return.

Reluctantly, but decisively, she did. She walked among the flowers outside the Palace, speaking to mourners. She ordered the flag flown at half mast, breaking protocol. And she gave a live broadcast in which she acknowledged the extraordinary and moving reaction to Diana's death, and said that she for one believed there were lessons to be drawn from Diana's life and from the reaction to it.

She did not explain why Balmoral had been right. She did not defend the delay. She changed the behaviour, visibly and fast, and moved on.

She had learned this once before. In 1966 she waited eight days to visit Aberfan after the disaster that killed 116 children, and called the delay her biggest regret. In 1997 she did not repeat it.

Why it worked

Three mechanisms, and every leader can use all of them.

She absorbed criticism without retaliating. Not one public rebuttal, not one leaked defence, in 70 years. Retaliation extends a crisis. Silence shortens it.

She corrected visibly and did not litigate the past. In 1997 there was no statement about why staying at Balmoral had been reasonable. There was a walk among the flowers and a broadcast. Leaders who explain their original decision keep the argument alive. Leaders who change their behaviour end it.

She had somewhere the crisis could not reach. Faith, family, Balmoral, the horses. When the institution was under attack she had an identity that was not the institution. That is what let her come back each time.

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What you do on Monday

When you get it wrong, correct visibly and quickly. Skip the paragraph explaining why it seemed right at the time. Nobody is reading that part. They are watching what you do next.

Decide now what you will not do under fire. The Queen never retaliated. Pick your rule before you need it, because you will not think clearly when you do.

Name your annus horribilis. Every leader has had one. Write down what you actually did in it, and what you would do differently. That is your resilience plan, and it is better than any framework.

From the book

This is Chapter 5 of The Job Well Done: The Queen's Way to Successful Leadership. The full chapter covers the Margaret and Townsend affair, the assassination attempts, the 1982 intruder, the 1997 crisis in detail, and Nelson Mandela, the man the Queen named without hesitation as the most remarkable person she had ever met.

Read all nine principles on the Queen Elizabeth leadership pillar page, or get the book.