The 21 Indispensible Qualities of A Leader | Security

17. Security: Competence never compensates for insecurity

Margaret Thatcher’s “strong resolve and high competence” was summarized in two pages with Maxwell’s strong belief that “Thatcher stood for conviction in leadership”. In Maxwell’s view, insecure leaders: don’t provide security for others, take more from people than they give,

continually limit their best people and continually limit the organization. In closing this chapter, Maxwell quoted French novelist Honore de Balzac “Nothing is a greater impediment to being on good terms with others than being ill at ease with yourself.”

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Webster’s definition the quality or state of being secure

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My thoughts

Maxwell claimed that “it takes a strong, secure person to succeed as a world leader” and gushed about Margaret Thatcher being “elected to three consecutive terms as prime minister” as a result of her “conviction in leadership.” How is a world leader judged as having succeeded? By having “strong resolve and high competence”? Might “strong resolve” not be seen in another light as being uncompromising and stubborn? Thatcher might have been too recent a person for Maxwell to have cited as a model of security. In fact, shockingly dipolar attitudes greeted Thatcher’s death. Despite having left public office for close to twenty years and being plagued by dementia, there were bitter people who cheered upon her death. Has Thatcher truly succeeded as a world leader, or had her conviction and security in her own views divided her country so deeply that twenty years later, people were actually happy that she died? Perhaps more time needs to pass before history makes a more appropriate judgment about Thatcher.