Changemakers: Kate Robertson

Indeed, the younger generations are going to have to navigate some of the biggest challenges in history, thanks to decades-long failures of leadership by “C-grade candidates who wouldn’t last six months in the corporate world”. Take climate change, Robertson says. Very few global leaders have done “a bloody thing about it.”

“Nobody is exempt from that charge. At One Young World, we have never met a young person, anywhere in the world, who doesn’t look at us [the older generation] and ask, ‘Why didn’t they sort it out?’ That is our generation’s total failure. Climate change will dominate human history. Whether the human species survives on this planet or not hinges on that.”

Born in South Africa under apartheid, Robertson is “obsessed” with leadership: “Coming from where I come from, it took one man, maybe two, to change the course of history. I don’t think that sort of thing should be left to chance.”

One Young World ambassadors

This is precisely why Robertson and Jones set up One Young World. They hold annual summits bringing together young people from more than 190 countries. Delegates participate in speeches, panels, networking and workshops, “counselled” by influential political, business and humanitarian leaders and global figures such as Justin Trudeau and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.

Now there around 10,000 One Young World ambassadors worldwide. After the summits, delegates return to their own communities, be it the corporate  or charity sector, government or higher education, and many go on to assume powerful positions of leadership.

Can a person learn to be a leader? “When you see children in a playground, the teachers can tell you who the ringleaders are,” says Robertson. “Some people, even from a very early age, just have that ‘follow-me’ thing.” But leadership skills can also emerge later in life: “In some people, the latent talent is there, but it takes a new-found conviction or passion for it to suddenly wake up – and that can be the making of a great leader.”

Modern democratic leaders often fail to inspire, she says. There are “very few of them who stand and say, ‘Well, I know it’s unpopular and I know my party  doesn’t agree with me, but I believe X. When you look at [Margaret] Thatcher, like her or loathe her, that was a leader of conviction. She knew what she thought and what she wanted to get done.”

Being right isn’t enough, she says. Nor is being competent: “Theresa May was a very competent Home Secretary, but the change from Home Office to Prime Minister was simply a jump too far. You see it time and time again.”

From manager to leader

“People want that next slot, but wanting it doesn’t mean you’re the right person. It happens in business. You’ve got a candidate who delivers spectacular growth results or manages a department brilliantly, then wants to be CEO – they get the job and crash the car. Managing is not the same as leading. Competent management is not the same as leading. They’re very different things.”

What, then, are the skills for successful, dynamic leadership? “Determination. Creativity. Persistence. Being curious about people, attentive to people. Leaders have to have the ability to hear the mood music around them, to hear the people. You can’t get followers otherwise. Then there’s courage and bravery, that special kind of blind resolve. Often great leaders are so driven they can’t see anything else,” she says.

“Then it’s essential to have the ability to communicate. Trump is a good communicator. Brutal. Blunt. Ugly and unpleasant. But communicating just the same.”

Robertson is clearly a communicator and a leader.  But would she say she has changed the world? “No. Not at all,” she smiles. “The young people I work with? Are they changing they world? Yes. That, for me, is everything. The day that leaders of the G20 are One Young World ambassadors, I am 100% certain the world will be a better place. Will it be perfect? No. Will it be better? Yes. That is my Mandela North Star.”

“Young people today are staggering,” she adds, emphasising the final word. “I’m ashamed of what I was doing at 30 compared to the young people I see today.”

Dynamic and focused, with her tailored clothes, impressive CV and great confidence, Robertson has the air of someone who has always been hugely accomplished. But she claims she was once “the most useless person on planet Earth”. Her twenties were a write-off: “I finished my law studies [in South Africa] when I was 24. I went into selling advertising space for a radio station. I did as little work as I possibly could. Then I went sailing for a year. Then it was back to advertising. Then I drank myself stupid for the next four years. I got myself transferred to London by sheer luck. No one I was working with could believe it. They were saying, ‘That drunken hell-raiser – what?!’ I was  a bloody disgrace.”

Robertson arrived in London aged 30 in 1986. She married an Englishman, had a baby. By her early forties, she had entered a “middleage permafrost”, where you “don’t look for change or challenge a damn thing, you just try to hold onto your job and anything that gets in the way of that is a pain.”

She credits her journey since to Jones, who called her up one day, having worked with her years before, inviting her to work at the advertising giant Havas Worldwide. She became Co-global President before stepping down in 2015 to concentrate on One Young World.

“David told me then he was going to run the whole thing. Not just the London office, but the world! I came because of David, because I thought it would be a good ride. I was very lucky.”

Jones is perhaps the best leader Robertson knows. “He’s such  an optimistic human bring. He genuinely thinks the best of everybody. That gives you the chance to be amazing. When you screwed up, he picked you up. He never pointed the finger. He’d say, ‘Never mind, onto the next thing,’ which meant that you screwed up more, and succeeded more. Because you did more and took more risks.”

It’s the baton of these great leadership traits that Robertson hopes to pass on to the next generation – dynamic, determined and indomitable young people from all walks of life. Their spirit and success gives her hope that a better world is possible.”