NO NONSENSE WINSTON

How do you get to be more ‘no nonsense’? Some people are brilliant at it. They’re firm and they’re kind and somehow tell you you’re being a wolly without making you feel like one.

I’m not brilliant at ‘no nonsense’. I tumble out of those personality tests as a ‘diplomat’. I like peace and helping people like each other, even when it’s hopeless. I hate to say it I really do, but I’m far more Chamberlain than Churchill.

Speaking of Churchill, we went to Blenheim Palace on Saturday. Winston’s home was resplendent in the Autumn sun.

I was fascinated by pictures of the great man. One of them featured him orating at some grand occasion, surrounded by people on the dais. There he is, hand on pocket watch, mid-speech at a podium. With his other hand he’s gesturing, as though making an important point, and his face is full of fire and determination. I have no idea what he was saying.

I did have an idea how it was going down though. The seated faces said it all. One man was enraptured, smiling up in a thrall of admiration at the wartime leader. Another looked cross. He had narrow eyes hooded by his eyebrows and his face was downturned, as though he’d swallowed a wasp. Yet another had her face in hand, her head too heavy perhaps for her neck. She looked weary. Churchill was unrelenting. I get the feeling he almost thrived on that kind of split opinion, and bouldered on anyway.

This is the No Nonsense thing I’m talking about. You can’t please everyone. He knew that. Sometimes you’re right and everyone else is totally wrong and listening to their impassioned pleas would be fatal. Not only can you not please everyone, he intonates, but neither should you try!

It’s high-stakes I suppose. You have to be prepared to be wrong even if you’re sure you’re not, and that is a tricky feat of cognitive dissonance. Somehow you have to stay humble and kind, even when you’re firm with people.

I could start by saying no. Another phrase I wish I’d learned how to wield years ago is ‘None of your business,’ which (although considered rude by a lot of people) could have saved me an unthinkable amount of trouble.

Churchill was sharp of eye too, as well as of tongue. I read The Gathering Storm a long time ago, and even though it comes across as a massive ‘I told you so’ it’s impossible to deny that Churchill saw it coming, and did in fact, tell them so. That’s important because the appeasers couldn’t see what he could. To be less Chamberlain, I think I’d have to learn to see beyond what I see, to listen and to watch much more closely.

Well. I don’t have to win a war. I just have to start a new job and get on with people. And as ever, that requires a deft balance of wisdom and wit, humility and courage to tell people what’s what without crushing them or myself in the process.