👑 What happens when you hold a job for 70 years and 214 days.
Career lessons from the late Queen, including best practices for succession planning.
As the world mourns the end of a historic reign, a lot of eyes are focused on the trail that the late monarch leaves. Having been on the throne for 5 years when the first satellite was launched into orbit in 1957, her work period was undoubtedly legendary.
Throughout the decades, the late Queen Elizabeth II made countless important decisions that impacted not only her ‘queendom’ but also the economy in large. There is absolutely an endless amount of lessons we can take from her prolonged journey.
The succession strategy
Research states that 57 percent of leaders find decisions harder than expected. The lack of succession planning has left companies vulnerable to unprepared leaders with sudden power.
CEO of management consultancy Mindequity, Nuala Walsh, has identified royal lessons to help elongate businesses’ life span:
Get Granular. In a world where customers crave continuity and competitors crave strife, corporates can learn much from the choreography of official royal processes, which shows a seamless project management at its finest.
Seek Counsel. Transitions may be easier when advisers or private secretaries lavish counsel on the newly appointed. Businesses that provide independent support can protect new leaders from reputation land mines.
Manage Vulnerability. Emotional leakages don't always bode well. During uncertainty, audiences crave confidence—like how King Charles III delivered a heart-felt yet controlled first national address, despite his personal grief.
Control Your Brand. On his first day at the job, the new King was inclusive and decisive, announcing changes to working commitment, appointing his own Prince of Wales successor, and acknowledging his team's value.
Lean more lessons from the Royal which could ease your succession process here.
Best of both worlds
Her extensive work experience made Queen Elizabeth II the perfect candidate for most leadership positions. Six experts have come together to share their most valuable takeaways from the Queen’s ruling years:
Live Your Purpose
Unlike most of us, the Queen has understood her purpose in life since the abdication of her uncle, Edward VIII, in 1936. She may have made mistakes and compromised, but these have not deflected her from devotion to her purpose.
— Anna Eliatamby, workplace wellbeing expert.
Collaborate
Being the Queen might look like it’s a one-woman job, but in reality, it’s a team effort. She collaborates with those around her, makes decisions with her team and shares responsibilities among the rest of her family.
— Terry Blackburn, entrepreneur and author.
Value Mental Well-Being
By keeping busy and continuing to learn, the Queen’s neurotransmitters kept ticking over. She managed to balance work, like sifting through a large red box full of paperwork, with life, by making time for her dogs and visiting her horses.
— Mark Simmonds, founder of creativity training agency and author.
Find out more of what the experts had to say on the Queen’s reign here.
Paving the intergenerational way
Not only have we never seen a reign this long in our generation, there might only be a handful of us who have the privilege of knowing someone who has lived for as long as the late Queen did.
As a person, she carried a lot of values that we, too, can implement for a healthier life and career:
Recharge your willpower. Elizabeth II's self-control appears limitless because she takes time to replenish it. Teatime is that crucial interval for the Queen.
Sweeten the self-talk. Purposeful repressors aka people who consciously dial down negative mind chatter, benefit from a kind of psychological armor.
As Elizabeth II observed at one point, “The trouble with gloom is that it feeds upon itself."
Brush aside vanity. Since the beginning, the Queen has mastered the art of self-distancing—reading personal stories in the tabloids while remaining detached.
Read 7 other life lessons the Queen has left us with, in the full article here.
Did you find the Queen’s story fascinating? Do you agree with the values she upheld, and continued to leave behind as her legacy?
Share this week’s Monday Mavens edition to your royal-obsessed friends, or to those around you who just might need the tips.
We’ll see you again next week!