Winston Churchill
How mental schemas shaped his success
Winston Churchill achieved great things, while also being responsible for the disasters of Gallipoli and the Bengal famine. This short article adapted from 21 Remarkable People, in the year of his 150th birthday, looks at his larger-than-life efforts as an example of him enacting particular mental schemas.
I can see vast changes coming over a now peaceful world; great upheavals, terrible struggles; wars such as one cannot imagine; and I tell you London will be in danger – London will be attacked and I shall be very prominent in the defence of London … I see further ahead than you do. I see into the future. The country will be subjected to a tremendous invasion … but I tell you I shall be in command of the defences of London and I shall save London and the Empire from disaster.[1]
These are the words of a 16-year-old schoolboy. Admittedly a public school boy, from an elite family with a strong attraction to the idea of Britain’s Empire. His father Lord Randolph Churchill spoke against “home rule” for Ireland in the early 1890s, about the time young Winston was looking to the future. Lord Randolph claimed, “Home rule would plunge the knife into the heart of the British Empire.”[2]
Winston Churchill as a Harrow schoolboy in 1889: nzpinterest.com
About 50 years later, in September 1940 the air defense of Britain’s south-east was controlled by Keith Park. The country was two months into the Battle of Britain.
Air Vice-Marshall Park presided over an operations room with a large table map showing the attacking formations of German bombers and their escorting fighters. The defending RAF fighters were also on the map – moving from their bases to intercept the attacking forces, together with information on weather and the readiness of the British fighters on the ground.
On the 15th of September the now 65-year-old Winston Churchill was visiting – one of several times he visited the operations room. He had been told by Park that the air-conditioning could not cope with cigar smoke, so he chewed on an unlit cigar.
As the information from radar and observers came in it was clear that today’s was going to be a large attack.
Churchill commented “There appear to be many aircraft coming in.” Park replied calmly “There’ll be someone there to meet them.”[3]
Two days later (although the British would not know until later), Hitler decided that air superiority had not been achieved and postponed the invasion of Britain[4].
Churchill exuded the positivity of someone who believed in his inevitable success. Stephen Fry tells a story of Churchill visiting the Special Operations armoury and being shown rubber sheaths used to insulate rifles in freezing conditions to stop the freezing of their lubricating oil. “This is wrong,” he said. “These sheaths should be labelled ‘condoms, medium size’. And the Germans call themselves the master race!”
His pugnacity is an obvious trait describing the “how” of Churchill getting things done. Mental schema inform the “why” of what he did. The distinction is analogous to that between the Apps we run on our devices, and the underlying operating system.
Churchill was the advocate of Britain and its Empire. Under attack and with the need for audacious and sometimes autocratic decisions he was the right man at the right time. What were the schemas that drove this style?
Humans require nurturing for a substantial time. Over that time young people are learning how the world works. How to avoid problems and access rewards. During this critical period the absence of acceptance and nurturance predisposes the individual to develop defensive schemas. Alternatively, for those with an abundance of positive support, secure in the love from those around them, the likelihood is that they will develop outgoing, reward-focused schemas.
Schema Therapy was developed by clinical psychologist Jeffery Young and his colleagues[5] in the early 2000s and is used for the successful treatment of complex problems such as borderline personality disorder. Iain McCormick (who helped me with the definition of Churchill’s schemas) has applied Young’s insights to coach leaders with complex and deep-seated challenges.
In the case of Winston Churchill, his own writing and that of many other authors reveals that he had two obvious positive schemas. These two schemas drove his resolution, epitomised by the popular nickname of “British bulldog”.
His first positive schema is a deep and abiding belief in the inevitability of his own success. That he would achieve this through his extraordinary hard work, capability and competence. This emergent success schema is clearly seen in his early adulthood as described in the first volume of his autobiography My Early Years.
Twenty to twenty-five! These were the years! Don’t be content with things as they are. ‘The earth is yours and the fullness thereof’. Enter upon your inheritance, accept your responsibilities. Raise the glorious flags again, advance them upon the new enemies, who constantly gather upon the front of the human army, and have only to be assaulted to be overthrown. Do not take No for an answer. Never submit to failure. Do not be fobbed off with mere personal success or acceptance.[6]
Churchill also had a confidence and a firm belief that his own opinion was more important than that of others. In schema terms this is known as self-directedness.
In a letter home from boarding school to his mother he pleads to visit London: “…I want to see Buffalo Bill & the Play as you promised me. I shall be very disappointed, disappointed is not the word I shall be miserable, after you promised me, and all, I shall never trust your promises again. But I know that Mummy loves her Winny much too much for that.”[7] This was followed by two more letters and a draft of what she should write to the Headmistress. Churchill got his way and went up to London.
The same self-focused approach was observed by Rear Admiral John Godfrey, Director of Naval Intelligence: “His preference for pursuing ideas of his own devising is, after all, an attribute of great men. In Churchill, it led to ruthlessness in his opposition to the ideas of others that he felt stood in his way. To get his own way he used every device, and brought the whole battery of his ingenious, tireless and highly political mind to the point at issue. His battery of weapons included persuasion, real or simulated anger, mockery, vituperation, tantrums, ridicule, derision, abuse and tears, which he would aim at anyone who opposed him or expressed a view contrary to the one he had already formed, sometimes on quite trivial questions.”[8]
Winston Churchill, 1945: military-history.org
In 1965, now 90, Churchill commented to his private secretary Anthony Montague Brown that he was a failure: “I have worked very hard and achieved a great deal, only in the end to achieve nothing.”[9]
What could have contributed to this view from the man instrumental in saving European democracy from fascism?
India was declared independent in 1947. India, the jewel in the crown of Britain’s Empire during Churchill’s father Lord Randolph’s time as Secretary of State (he had ensured the annexation of Burma). By the 1960s the British Empire was gone, replaced by a Commonwealth. The Dominions were independent states looking away from the United Kingdom for allies and trading partners.
“It is no good,” he pointed out, “being wise and benevolent if no one listens to you and if you are not in a position to enforce your will”. This is the end result of the schema of self-directedness colliding with a world that is not moved by individual will.
Graham Sutherland portrait, 1954: winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu
Churchill learned to go beyond his self-directed schema. His gamble to attack Turkey via Gallipoli in 1915 was misjudged and a failure. In the Second World War he insisted that his Chiefs of Staff expressed their view of any campaign, and he never over-ruled them. He had learned that self-directedness needs to flex around reality.
Churchill was Britain’s bulldog and the leader of the 20th century. Working with rather than surrendering to his schemas improved his capabilities. There’s a lesson for us in understanding and flexing around our own schemas.
A huge thanks to Iain McCormick for his contribution to this article. His latest book is an excellent guide to the use of schema approaches in executive coaching: Schema Coaching: Overcoming Deep-seated Challenges
[1] Page 294, Niall Ferguson (2003). Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World.
[2] Page 250, Ferguson (2003)
[3] Page 254, Richard Collier (1968), Eagle Day: The Battle of Britain, Pan, London
[4] Vincent Orange (1984). Sir Keith Park. London, Methuen.
[5] Young, J. E., Klosko, J. S. & Weishaar, M. E. (2003). Schema therapy: a practitioner's guide. Guilford Press. ISBN 9781593853723. OCLC 51053419
[6] Churchill, W. (2010). My early life: 1874-1904. Simon and Schuster. P66 of 378
[7] P 14 , Gilbert (1991). Churchill: A Life
[8] Godfrey was writing in 1939, P 482, Roberts (2018)
[9] Churchill’s comment to Montague Browne, P 959, Roberts (2018)