Week 42 and a leader who equally loves the loo!

Week 42 and I'm just finishing Tony Blair's masterful autobiography.
irrespective of your political position - these are the memoirs of a global leader who for 10 years held one of the highest offices of leadership, bringing huge influence, and impacting generations to come through the decisions he made as a leader. These memoirs are filled with leadership insights and learning's.
I've blogged on some of the early learning's already, here are some of the latter learning's:

Tony led with ordered thoughts.
Time after time in the book he mentions pausing before speaking, withdrawing to a side room and gathering his thoughts; stepping away from the media/public to gather his thoughts. the mental togetherness he practices is highly commendable.

To succeed you have to be more than clever. You have to be able to connect and you have to be able to articulate that connection in plain language. The plainness of the language then leads people to look past the brainpower involved.

A leader has to both manage complex situations and to judge them.

In the fickleness of our times, moods always trumps the policy every time!
In this matter, the public aren't always logical, but that's their prerogative.

In my reading I discovered perhaps why I like Blair so much. Here's what he writes about global travel:
"The one problem is that travel does play havoc with the digestive system. You need to eat healthily and with discipline. I am very typically British. I like to have time and comfort in the loo. The bathroom is an important room and I couldn't live in a culture that doesn't respect it."

Yep .....he and I are very alike!!!

More learning's:

Basically, most people are psychological itinerants in search of someone who wants to hear about them, who is interested in what they have to say, and who will regard what they say as both sage and stimulating.

Leaders live with the worry of what comes next - of the next call, the next slip of paper, the next confrontation, the next frisson of fear.

Blair changed the face of prime ministers. While he took office as the leader of a country, our time and generation made him into a global leader. This is unique to our time and era - leaders are much more global than 20 years ago. That global might be in different countries, or that global might be in different cultures, ethnicity's, contexts. Communications, a flat world and the 6 degree reality.

I highly recommend Blair's autobiography.