The Power of Perseverance: Lessons from Margaret Thatcher

A note to young leaders.

To do great things, you must first be prepared to lose – to lose often, if necessary – and, more often than not, to lose publicly.

Take Margaret Thatcher.

She nurtured ambitions to be a politician at a time when few women pursued such careers. At just 24, she ran as the Conservative candidate for Dartford, a working-class district no Tory had any hope of winning.

She ran and lost in 1951. Unfazed, she ran again for the same seat in 1952 and lost again – although she managed to cut the Labour majority by one third.

Those early defeats did not deter her. Far from it, she “hugely enjoyed the experience.” Still, it would take another seven years before she finally entered Parliament.

By 1975, her party was demoralised following two successive election losses under Edward Heath. Thatcher, then a 49-year-old MP, challenged Heath for the leadership. No woman had ever led the party, and she was far from the obvious heir. But she stood anyway, driven by her convictions. To everyone’s astonishment – including her own – she won.

Many had underestimated her. Nobody thought a woman could win – and then suddenly, there she was, a diminutive figure in a sea of suited men, proudly breaking through Britain’s political glass ceiling.

What defines Thatcher’s career is not intelligence, but courage. The courage to commit to a political career early, to suffer multiple defeats, to interpret them as positive learning experiences – and, through it all, to persevere.