Anton Guinea
Entrepreneur, Speaker, bestselling author, and founder of The Guinea Group of Companies. For over 15 years, Anton has helped leaders move their teams to become psychologically safe, physically safe and overall better versions of themselves.
10 years ago, I wrote a best-selling book on Millionaires and Billionaires, and that book revealed the secret to their success! I am currently doing a re-write of that book – here is what we published about Tony Blair…
Tony Blair is an example of how to reach great heights in politics. He served as British Prime Minister for 10 years, the only Labour Prime Minister to serve consecutive terms. He took his party to this position by making changes from the inside. Under his leadership, the Labour Party adopted its “New Labour” bent, appealing more to the centre and thereby amassing enough support to bring himself and his party to victory. He began his rapid rise among political ranks shortly after completing his education. He did not stop until he reached the highest office he could hold.
Under his leadership, the Labour Party adopted its “New Labour” bent, appealing more to the centre and thereby amassing enough support to bring himself and his party to victory. He began his rapid rise among political ranks shortly after completing his education. He did not stop until he reached the highest office he could hold.
“First…..Keep Learning”
When he did start his political career, early failures did not faze him. He did not let some initially unsuccessful campaigns stop him for a minute. It was natural enough, in the highly polarised world of politics, that he would be both admired and vilified. It is a remarkable characteristic that he could be thick-skinned enough to handle criticism and support with aplomb. He drew both very early on, from inside and outside his own party.
“First…keep learning. Always be alive to the possibilities of the next experience, of thinking, doing and being.”
Tony Blair has always placed a great emphasis on the importance of learning. He famously told an audience that the top three issues of his administration would be “education, education, and education”. Here, however, Blair is talking about more than formal schooling. He is discussing the way in which all of life is an educational experience, as long as people are open to it. One must continue to actively question and take lessons from every possible opportunity.
“Be prepared to fail as well as succeed, and realise it is failure not success that defines character.”
We are used to hearing that failure is a good learning experience, that we can take lessons from failure. This is such common advice that it is ignored as a bromide. It is easy to hear this and nod in agreement. But it is perhaps far less common to take this advice to heart. In order to succeed, we must be prepared to fail sometimes. No one who has made it big has ever gone through life without failure. In fact, the bigger the success and the more visible the person, the more visible the failures. The only way to sustain motivation and self-esteem at such a level, when mistakes have big consequences and open a person up to public criticism, is to realise that those errors are not the ultimate verdict on a person’s character or career. They are simply vivid examples of lessons to be learned.
“No one who has made it big has ever gone through life without failure.”
Tony Blair gets to a point that we have heard, in one type of phrasing or another, from every story that we have examined. “Above all… have a purpose in life. Life is not about living but about striving. When you get up, get motivated. Live with a perpetual sense of urgency.” Here we get back to the crux of the matter. Call it purpose, passion, vision, or anything else, there is no success without it. It provides both a clear goal and the motivation to work for it. The other point is about “a perpetual sense of urgency”. This idea translates into the motivation to put in the hard work to promote one’s purpose, to strive to reach goals, every single day.
“… achievers take action, and other people talk about it.”
Blair also points out that the difference between highly successful people and others is that the achievers take action, and other people talk about it. Or, in the context of leadership, “Be a doer not a commentator. Seek responsibility rather than shirk it. People often ask me about leadership. I say: leadership is about wanting the responsibility to be on your shoulders, not ignoring its weight but knowing someone has to carry it and reaching out for that person to be you. Leaders are heat-seekers, not heat-deflectors.” The point here is that if people want to accomplish big things, they must bear large responsibility. Instead of fearing the consequences of this, welcome it. While such responsibilities will mean that mistakes will carry big consequences, it is also empowering. Accepting responsibility puts one in control. And being in the driver’s seat, while it is more difficult and sometimes dangerous, is the only way to ensure that a person will reach the destination that they are aiming for.
This last points to, yet again, the essential need for constant effort and hard work. We don’t need to be born with any mysterious, secret talents in order to succeed. We must just put what talents we do have to work and make every effort to develop, implement, and improve them. It is persistence in these efforts that will lead to success.
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