There has been more than a little schadenfreude around the unravelling of Liz Truss’s premiership. However, instead of simply judging her leadership, we would be much better off learning from her experience. We propose three take-homes:

1. Ideology can Motivate, but it can also Blind

All leaders have their ideologies – processes or theories which become their golden standard with which to measure all else against. For Liz Truss, hers is free market libertarianism.

This was likely built throughout her life of varied and active political involvement; Her parents were devoted left-wingers, she took part in marches from a young age, and was President of the Liberal Democrats at Oxford University before turning to the Conservative Party later on. It’s no surprise that a friend of hers from university, Maurizio Giulianoonce once said, ‘She was forceful and opinionated and had very strong views.’

While ideology can be motivating, when you’re too ideologically-focused or reliant on singular strategies, the possibility of it failing can become a psychological threat and lead to blind sightedness. Cognitive dissonance describes the state of psychological discomfort which arises when someone’s belief or action stands in contradiction to another belief or reality. For Truss, the economic fall-out after her tax cuts likely became a threat to her ideology and in turn, her self-esteem, possibly leading her to double-down on her policy plan rather than question it.

But leaders must be open to questioning their ideologies as they do not work in a vacuum. While there is undoubtedly rationality in sticking to methods which have worked in the past (or in Truss’s case, in theory), inflexibility loses all sense of reason when the immediate results are telling a different story. Leaders therefore have a responsibility to move past their individual discomfort of being ‘wrong’, challenge their pre-existing beliefs and remember that decisions must be collective deliberations, adjusted through criticism and support alike. 

2. Prioritise Scale over Speed

It is understandable that any leader who comes into office will have grand ideas, wanting to have a big impact and leave their mark. When a country is in the midst of an economic crisis this desire is certain to be even more salient. 

Liz Truss was elected by the Conservative Party on big promises to grow the economy and the internal and external pressure to deliver would have been immense. Pressure can have a positive or negative influence, depending on how a person frames it, but when it turns negative or is too great, it can become a limitation. 

Being under pressure is likely to make leaders unquestioningly feel like they need to make big changes, fast. In Truss’s case, her and Kwasi Kwarteng’s ‘mini budget’ proposed quick and drastic policy changes that many MPs disagreed with, but in her words she ‘wasn’t afraid to make unpopular decisions’. In other words, she knew her proposed changes were bold and rapid, but she believed it was part and parcel of delivering on her promise.

The corollary of Liz Truss’s tax cuts is high praise for the contradictory argument that when it comes to implementing change, prioritise scale over speed. Attempting to boil the ocean too quickly can lead to uncontrollable momentum towards a big bang – and it can be much harder to undo. 

Instead, leaders would be better off trading speed for scale. By implementing smaller changes step by step, leaders grant themselves greater control to gauge impacts, check-in with their colleagues and make necessary adjustments. While it is desirable for a leader to have bold ideas, this doesn’t have to be synonymous with breakneck pace. Lots of smaller changes can accumulate to greater and more sustainable impact.

3. Fundamental Attribution Error

There is also much that we, as observers of Liz Truss’s leadership, can learn about how we appraise her and other future leaders. So much of the criticism that has come out in the past week against Truss has focussed on claims of her “wooden” personality, awkwardness or bad listening skills, rather than considering the full picture.

In social psychology, this over-emphasis on personality-based explanations for behaviour is called the Fundamental Attribution Error, which goes on to state that situational, environmental or psychological circumstances are in turn, routinely under-emphasised. 

We need to guard against making this error. Without making excuses for mistakes that were made, we must remember that Liz Truss came into office at a far more precarious time than most other leaders have to deal with. Was it a case of the wrong person at the wrong time? Task difficulty has to be taken into account when judging her performance as – like in the business world – high-potential people can be less effective when the task at hand is so complex. 

We must also interrogate how much of our judgement of Truss is due to our perception of her as a woman. Despite the growing number of women rising to power across the globe, new research shows that a great number of people still don’t trust female leaders in the way they do male. We are more used to seeing men in positions of power and therefore are more likely to overemphasise a female leader’s failings, meaning that they still have more to prove.

Moving forward, the British people and politicians have much to think about. Hopefully, rather than judging Liz Truss’s mistakes, future leaders would do well to learn from them.