Author Talks: Tony Blair on leadership essentials

In this edition of Author Talks, McKinsey Global Publishing’s Raju Narisetti chats with Tony Blair, founder and executive chair of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI) and former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, about his book, On Leadership: Lessons for the 21st Century (Crown/Penguin Random House, September 2024). In 2016, Blair established TBI, a not-for-profit that supports leaders and governments on strategy, policy, and delivery, with a focus on leveraging technology across all three areas. Blair’s new book is intended as a guide for aspiring leaders—and as a way to deliver better outcomes. He shares practical ideas on cultivating optimism, embracing adaptability, and leading in the 21st century.

A condensed and edited version of the conversation follows, and you can watch the full video at the end of this page.

Raju Narisetti: What makes 2024 an opportune time for a new book on leadership?

Tony Blair: Well, it’s a book that I’ve been planning for a long time. I’ve been working with leaders for the past 15 years. I served ten years as the UK’s Prime Minister, and then my institute [Tony Blair Institute for Global Change] now works in over 40 countries around the world. So there’s a lot of accumulated knowledge. Also, we’re at a particular inflection point in global politics. The world is going to be very different. It’s going to feel very different.

Therefore, trying to encapsulate leadership lessons for political leaders seems quite important. There are lots of books written about how to be a better CEO or a better football coach. But fewer leaders, as far as I know, who’ve been in senior positions in government have written books that are simply about the challenges of governing.

Raju Narisetti: What do you know now that you wish you had known during your prime ministership, especially in the first five years?

Tony Blair: The whole book is written to shorten the learning curve. I say, “Government is, and politics is, probably the one profession of any sort anywhere in the world in which it’s possible to rise to a position of enormous importance and power with literally no qualifications.”

When I began as Prime Minister, it was the first job I had in government [for a ruling party]. So, there was no apprenticeship. There was no working your way up. In that sense, it’s a profession unlike any other— but like others, in that there are lessons that you can distill.

I will tell leaders, prime ministers, and presidents I work with: “You will think your system is unique, but it isn’t.” Bureaucracies are the same everywhere; they have the same characteristics. The challenges of governing are the same everywhere.

I wrote the book I wish I owned when I first came into office. If someone had handed me that as I came to 10 Downing Street [Prime Minister’s Office], the first term would have been more productive. By the time I entered the second term, I was already applying some of these lessons because of my experiences in the first.

No one ever wants to admit this about politics, but a lot of it is learning on the job. If you say that to the country, people become terrified because they think, “What? You’re learning on the job? What do you mean?”

But that’s the reality. So, the book is written from that perspective. The lessons are simple and direct. Some examples include how you organize your office, prioritize, choose the best people, determine the right approach to policy, and handle the criticism from the media today, especially with social media. These are very basic elements. But for leaders, these elements are the difference between success and failure.

Raju Narisetti: What are the most critical steps to shorten the capability and popularity gap?

Tony Blair: It’s perfectly possible that some politicians may buck the trend, but [usually] after a period, people get tired of the same leadership, and they want change. When you are doing the job, if you’re learning and if you’re curious, then you should become more capable.

Clarity of direction is the most important quality for a leader in any organization to have. Britain is a good example of this. When I finished my tenure as Prime Minister, we’d essentially had three prime ministers in roughly three decades: Margaret Thatcher, John Major, and myself.

There was a certain continuity of policy, particularly related to the private sector. We were doing things that we felt the previous [Conservative Party] government hadn’t gotten right. Yet we didn’t think everything they’d done was wrong.

We had a very clear direction; whether people liked it or not is another matter. One really important thing that makes the difference in building your capability is a clear idea of where you’re going.

It’s like being the driver of the bus. When you’re driving it and heading to your destination, the passengers sitting in the rear may complain and say, “Well, I don’t think this is quite right.” But they’ll sit on the bus, and you’ll take them along with you. If you stop the bus and start having a conversation about where you’re going, you’ll never get [going again]. Therefore, the first step is that clarity of direction. Everything else you then shape around that.

I call it “the four P’s”:

1. Prioritization. In trying to do everything, you do nothing.
2. Policy. In the end, getting the right answer is really important.
3. Personnel. Get good people around you. You’re more likely to succeed.
4. Performance management. Implementation is often missing from politics. That means putting an idea into practice and tracking it so that you actually do what you said you would.

Raju Narisetti: Share more about how you pioneered the ‘Delivery Unit.’

Tony Blair: One of the things about political leadership is that when you’re trying to gain power, you must be the great persuader. Yet when you get into power, a lot of it is about being the great chief executive.

This is very similar to running a business. In politics, you’re not allowed to [make that analogy] because people say, “What do you mean? It’s not a business. You’re governing the country,” as if governance doesn’t involve executive capability and delivery.

Of course, in the end, [what matters is] what you achieve. In the opposition party, it’s all about the saying. In government, it’s about the doing, and the doing is much harder. The important thing is to realize you will have to prioritize.

As a leader, everything matters. Everything that’s happening in government matters. But there will be some things that are so important to you that, in a sense, they define your leadership. So the Delivery Unit concept, which was very much borrowed from the private sector, was to take a few core priorities and say, “We’re going to have a unit at the center of government whose job it is to make sure that these five priorities—which should be clear, specific, measurable, and, obviously, deliverable—are actually delivered.”

We managed to make a lot of progress by doing that because, at the core, problems in government often involve four or five different departments. So, it’s best to pull everyone together.

Having that tracking mechanism was so important because in any position of leadership, but particularly in government, there is an element that leaders sometimes describe as a “conspiracy of distraction.” There are events, crises, and scandals. Somewhere in government, someone is always doing something stupid that will blow up in your face. Since the leader can be temporarily distracted, having a system that is distinct from anything else and continually focused on making sure those core objectives and priorities are delivered gives the leader ease of mind.

Raju Narisetti: What is the best way for a new leader or new governing team to bridge private sector expertise with government services delivery?

Tony Blair: People often put politics first and policy second. It should be the other way around: policy should come first, then shape the politics around it.

Now this really matters during the current technology revolution. If I were back in government today, it would be the central mission of my government to understand, master, and harness this technology revolution, mitigate its risks, and above all, access its opportunities. That’s because government is all about the process.

We should be able to utilize artificial intelligence, especially as it develops over time and becomes much, much better. As that happens, we get more and more data and these large language models that will allow us to do things like reform our planning system or automate our payment system—doing a whole series of things that will ameliorate the central problem for developed countries today.

We’re spending more, we’re taxing more, and the outcomes are poor. If we were starting from scratch, we would never create the National Health Service [in its current form] today in the UK. Now, all of this technology gives us a chance. It is the big real-world thing happening out there.

The politician’s job is to construct the political narrative that allows you to put that policy— harnessing the technology revolution—at the center of government. It’s not to say, “Well, you know, most people are a bit frightened of technology. I’m not sure it really works. OK, I’m going to leave that to one side.” If it’s a real-world event that’s happening, if it is the 21st-century equivalent to the Industrial Revolution, you need to understand it. Then you need to bring a completely different skill set into government. You need to bring in the people who actually understand it and not expect the bureaucracy to do something it will never be capable of doing.

Raju Narisetti: How would you advise leaders to avoid the pitfall of thinking they’re the smartest people in the room?

Tony Blair: You need to be confident in your own judgment. I say this to any leader in any walk of life: the one thing I’ve learned, not just in politics but in life, is that if hubris is walking around, nemesis is a very short distance behind.

It’s very difficult to balance confidence and self-belief—because you need that to be a leader—with humility and curiosity. For example, it’s important that your team is not frightened of challenging you.

Once you come to a decision, you need people who are prepared to say, “I don’t think that’s right. That’s not going to work.” If you look at any of the great leaders, they were people who had the confidence to want people in the room smarter than them, not people who [tried to] impress with their own smartness.

It could be a difficult thing to get right. Yet it’s such an important thing to get right, and it also allows you to adjust. You may start with a plan, and it’s really important to have one, but rigidity is bad. You’ve got to have the flexibility to adapt your plan if the circumstances change or if your understanding of the situation changes. Every mistake I made in politics was when I failed to do that.

Raju Narisetti: Is it difficult to get longer-tenured leaders to consider change?

Tony Blair: Yes, and the challenge of democracy in this context, by the way, is very clear. I’m speaking as someone who, of course, is in favor of democracy. The problem with democracy at the moment is that people think short term. They think in electoral cycles.

Most change that’s really valuable is structural, and structural change takes time. The advantage of [autocracy]—if there is one, and provided the leader is clever—is that you get that long-term structural change. The disadvantage, of course, is that when the benign [autocrat] becomes blind, there’s nothing you can do about it.

The problem with undemocratic systems is that the leaders are not open to challenge, or people are afraid to challenge them. They are so deferential to them that any nonsense will pass the test as policy.

You need longevity to achieve real change, but you’ve got to be careful that it doesn’t become [a matter of] “What worked ten years ago is going to work now.”

[Another pitfall is to] stop being curious. Since I left the office, I’ve learned so much, it’s almost frightening. It is enormously important as a leader to have the capacity to constantly evaluate and reevaluate. Curiosity is important because the world is constantly changing—we’re at a moment of enormous change. It’s important that you’re always prepared—not to be uncertain in what you’re doing but not to be so certain that the way you’ve always done it is the way it has to be done.

Raju Narisetti: Is delivering what people want considered effective government? Does it really matter whether it’s an electoral democracy or not?

Tony Blair: No, the best way to think about the effectiveness of the government is to give people what they need to lead more fulfilling, better, and more prosperous lives, more healthy lives. You’ve got to hope that what they need and what they want roughly coincide, at least to a significant degree.

But you’re right about the argument about democracy. As I say in the book, the challenge of democracy today is efficacy. It’s getting things done. The reason that people turn to populous leaders today is because people think, “Look, I’ve had enough of you all, you conventional politicians. The system is not working for me.” So someone comes and promises to blow the system up and to do things completely differently [and people think], “Why not? I’ll give it a go.”

I would sometimes visit countries when I was Prime Minister that were not democratic; yet, the leader would always have a conversation that assumed that, ultimately, the height of achievement constitutionally for a country was a democracy.

That was an accepted thought then. But today, the thought is challenged. Many people say, “Well, I’m looking at your democracies and the way they function, and you seem to be in a constant state of disarray.” So, does this really work? Today, you will have to prove the case for democracy rather than simply assume it. That has been a big change.

Raju Narisetti: You write, ‘The time to trust a politician most is when they’re telling you what you least want to be told.’ But in politics, aren’t there downsides to straight talk?

Tony Blair: Yes, but it’s important to say this to people because it is one of the paradoxes of politics. If politicians are doing something that’s unpopular, knowing it’s unpopular, unless they’re idiots, they’re doing it because they actually believe in it.

So, that’s why I say to people: the time to trust politicians the most is when they’re doing something you least like. At least, you should ask why they are doing it. Maybe it’s because they genuinely believe it to be right. I say in the book that for any leader who’s ever handled large-scale reform or restructuring of a company, there’s a rhythm to it: You first propose it, and everyone tells you it’s a bad idea. Then when you’re doing it, it’s hell. And after you’ve done it, you wish you had done more of it.

Yes, of course, trust in politics is very important. But you’ve got to be very clear about what you mean by that because, superficially, if you look at polling, I often find people trust politicians the most when they’re telling them what they want to hear. So, if you’re giving them a lot of money, they trust you. When you’re telling them that public finances are terrible and cuts are needed, they totally distrust you.

But in the end, doing the difficult thing may be the right thing. In politics, if you want trust, you must go deeper. In that way, you get to something that’s more akin to respect than trust in the way that people look at barometers of trust. It’s a bit like with business as well. People often distrust businesses because they think when people are interested in making a profit, they’re not really trying to do good. They just want to make a profit. But on the other hand, the lesson of history is that a competitive private sector—which is in pursuit of a proper motive—probably ends up with the most efficient service. Would we have any of the great gadgets we have today if we [had a noncompetitive] system? No, absolutely not.

You often find people say they don’t trust business, but they do trust the actual business they work for because they know the leadership. You’ve got to be very careful about the concept of trust because there are definitions of it that could be quite misleading when you’re trying to understand what people really feel.

Raju Narisetti: As a leader, how do you build the resilience muscle? From a self-care perspective, are there steps you can take to help you adapt to world happenings?

Tony Blair: What happens to anyone who gets into the eye of the media in a big way is that they become dehumanized at a certain level. They’re treated as an object and not as a person. Since you are a person, you feel it when things are said about you that are hurtful, disrespectful, or horrible. Social media today is a tsunami of insults and abuse. As a leader, you’ve got to protect yourself against that mentally, [whether you’re running] a government or a business. You do have to care about yourself.

That’s why I say in the book that it’s important to have a part of your life that’s not just about politics. It’s important that you have time for friendship and family. You develop resilience, if it’s not there naturally; otherwise, it’s very tough.

I found the best way of doing it [for a leader] was to realize how immensely blessed you were and are to be in a position of leadership. It’s voluntary; yes, you get severe criticism, but you chose it.

It’s very important that you obtain that spiritual evenness—what I used to call a bit of zen— because otherwise, you’ve got no protection in your own mind.

Raju Narisetti: Why are you such a profound optimist now, given that many wonder if the future will be better for their children than the past?

Tony Blair: I think I’m naturally optimistic. The other thing is to not look at this through purely Western eyes. Look at India today: if you were to ask the people of India, “Are you more optimistic now than you were 25 years ago,” I think they’d say yes.

China has lifted more people out of poverty than anywhere else in human history. I constantly travel to countries in Asia, in Latin America, where people have many problems. Yet they feel they have a future. In many African countries, there are higher levels of optimism than in Western Europe. In part, it is a Western problem.

We do need to recover a sense of the possible, and we need to think of ourselves optimistically. Leaders must be optimistic. No one wants to get on a plane with a depressed pilot. You want leaders to show, “We can do this. It will be all right.” Technology does genuinely offer us the chance to solve things we’ve never been able to solve before. So, there are changing geopolitics, a changing world, and lots of problems.

Humanity has always had problems. But we’ve [rarely] come across a problem that we haven’t been able to solve. We can solve these problems, too. In any event, the one thing I’m sure of is that this is a life lesson. If you think of yourself as a victim, you never get anywhere. You need your agency, and we’ve got to recover that agency in the West right now. We [need to] think of ourselves as able to do things and [do them] with our best days ahead of us, not behind us.

Raju Narisetti: What has been the response to the book, and how have you felt about it?

Tony Blair: Well, I wrote it in very short chapters. I deliberately made it easy to read. When it was first published in the UK, we came in second on the Sunday Times bestseller list, behind Gillian Anderson’s female erotica [Want: Sexual Fantasies, Bloomsbury, 2024]. I told publishers that even I would prefer to read a book on female erotica than I would one on governing.

I tried to write my book in a simple way. The reaction has been interesting because a lot of people have said, “Well, this has more than just politics in it.” Generally, it’s about leadership. People in politics obviously write mainly nice things to you, but because it’s written by someone who’s done the job, it also aligns so much with the people doing it now. They say this is exactly what it’s like. It’s written to be something people can go back to over time.

Raju Narisetti: Prime Minister, thank you so much. I really appreciate you making the time for us.

Tony Blair: I do thank you very much indeed. All the best to you and everyone at McKinsey, too.

Watch the full interview