For a long time, the world seemed to be moving along a relatively clear path: more democracy, more trade, more international cooperation, more rule of law. That assumption no longer provides the certainty it once did.
Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney described the shift at the 2026 World Economic Forum as a «rupture in the world order»; the Munich Security Conference uses the term «multipolarization» to describe an international system in which a greater number of actors compete for influence and Olaf Scholz famously called Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a «Zeitenwende», a historic turning point in European history.
Different words, same direction: We are moving into a more fragmented geopolitical environment that is more multipolar, more polarised within and between nation states, more distrustful of institutions and elites and less confident that liberal democracy will automatically keep expanding or produce the best outcomes for people. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index 2024 recorded the lowest global average score since the index began in 2006; only 45% of the world’s population lives in a democracy, while 39% lives under authoritarian rule.
The guest of this short and rich Sparkr Podcast episode (available on Spotify, Apple Podcast and any other podcast app) is an exceptional guide to this kind of world. Rory Stewart has been a soldier, diplomat, explorer, provincial administrator in Iraq, founder of a development organisation in Afghanistan and British cabinet minister. Today, he is Professor in the Practice of Grand Strategy at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs and co-host of «The Rest Is Politics» podcast with Alastair Campbell.
That biography matters because it gives Rory’s reflections the weight of lived experience. These are not abstract observations from the sidelines. They are lessons drawn from institutions, conflict zones, political campaigns and difficult conversations.
In the Sparkr Podcast, the diplomat and public intellectual offers a set of principles for dealing with an ambiguous world full of conflicting interests and competing views of reality.
Leadership Principles Rory Stewart Rest is Politics
Leadership Principles Rory Stewart Rest is Politics
Disagreement will never disappear
In a dynamic world where everybody is interested in trends for the next 12 months, five or ten years, I like to ask people what they believe will remain constant. Because it is these constants that we can build strategies on.
When asked what remains the same in an ever-changing world, Rory’s answer is clear: Human beings will continue to disagree about priorities. The same piece of land can be seen as a place for wind turbines, affordable housing, a factory providing jobs or a protected landscape for biodiversity and wildlife. There is no purely scientific or objective answer to such questions because they are not merely technical questions. They are questions of values, interests and trade-offs.
Many people still hope that better data, better technology or better forecasting will dissolve political and organisational conflict. My own view is that human beings often try to delegate responsibility by asking science or technology for objective answers to questions that will never provide a single best answer for everyone. It is a false hope and sometimes an illegitimate attempt to pass on responsibility to externalized authorities because technology will never resolve differences among humans. Artificial intelligence may improve analysis but it will not eliminate competing interests. Social media may accelerate debate but it will not create consensus by itself. On the contrary: Today’s fractured media landscape often acts as fuel for conflict.
This also matters beyond politics. Companies and departments or teams within them face value conflicts too, such as growth versus sustainability or innovation versus stability.
The mature response is not to pretend that an algorithm or any other external authority can redeem us from tough choices. The mature response is to build structures and routines in which disagreement can be surfaced, examined and converted into actionable decisions. That’s what democracy is for.
Leadership principle 1: There’s good and bad simplicity
To reach a position of agency and take responsibility, simplicity must be achieved. Rory strongly supports the need for simple communication. But he does not mean slogans, over-simplification or populism. The expert communicator argues that true simplicity requires deep thought. The simple formulation must express the real core of the issue, the essence.
His example from the prison system illustrates the point. As the minister responsible for prisons in England and Wales, Rory faced a system with countless problems like violence, drugs, staff pressure and weak rehabilitation. He could have produced a long and impressive list of initiatives. Instead, after extensive work, he identified the central priority: Prisons had to become safe. Safe for prisoners, prison officers and families. He then attached personal accountability to that goal. If prisons did not become safer within twelve months, he would resign.
This is strategic communication at its best. It does not deny complexity. It cuts through it. Leaders need this ability in a multipolar world, whether that polarity is experienced in politics, business or civil society. They must be able to absorb complexity, identify the decisive levers and express it in language that allows action to follow.
The danger in today’s environment is that bad simplicity often beats balanced complexity. Populist actors frequently exploit this dynamic and democratic institutions experience significant pressure as a consequence.
The answer to populism, which usually is a form of bad simplicity, must be high-effort, truthful simplicity. That can only be achieved through deep analysis, outstanding communication skills and a trusted network of diverse expertise.
New World Order Rory Stewart Leadership
Rory Stewart Rest is Politics Podcast
Leadership principle 2: Complexity is navigated through people, not omniscience
Another of Rory’s principles concerns expertise. Leaders often think they must master every technical detail before making decisions. The former minister rejects this notion. In complex situations, the task of the leader is not to become omniscient. The task is to identify the right people to learn from. The task is one of judgement.
Rory uses air quality as an example. A leader can get lost in the chemistry of air pollution. But that is usually not the leader’s role. The more important task is to know enough to judge the expert: their quality of reasoning, their ability to distinguish the essential from the secondary, their character, their pragmatism and so on.
In other words: In an ambiguous world, decision-makers must become better judges of judgement. Credentials matter, but they are not enough. Leaders need to sense whether an expert is dogmatic or open to debate and trade-offs.
This also means that good leadership is relational. It depends on conversations, not only reports. It depends on active, patient listening, not only deciding. It depends on the ability to distinguish real competence from superficial confidence.
Leadership Rory Stewart
Leadership Framework Download
Modern leaders must manoeuvre seven dimensions of tensions. Effective leadership is fluid and adjusts to the goal and circumstances at hand along those seven dimensions.
This leadership framework (available in German) helps you become a more effective leader and you can access a free PDF download.
Leadership Principles Rory Stewart
Leadership principle 3: Big questions brought to human scale
Politics can become too grand in a sense of “We must save the world.” It can also become too small by discussing technocratic details about potholes. Great communication in politics and business must bring the big questions to human scale.
In the podcast conversation, Rory and I referred to a formulation quoted by New Zealand’s former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. According to Ardern, a politician she looks up to once said that people need somewhere to live, something to do, someone to love and something to hope for. That’s it. Ardern, Rory and I value this formula because it brings politics back to human fundamentals and provides a frame for otherwise abstract topics; similar to using archetypes and other tools for making communication more impactful and relatable.
This is also a useful corrective for strategy work in organisations. Many strategies fail because they remain too abstract. Employees do not only require a grand vision. They also ask whether their specific work has meaning, whether their contribution matters to the bigger picture and whether the future feels worth committing to.
Rory Stewart's role model of quiet leadership
When asked about his role models in leadership, Rory names David Gauke, the former British Justice Secretary. What impressed him was not charisma in the theatrical sense. It was the combination of delegation, listening and courage.
Gauke delegated in a way that gave visible authority to the person receiving responsibility. He listened to difficult truths without interrupting, including from junior or shy people. And he was willing to make hard decisions like freezing pay, laying people off or challenging cabinet colleagues. Importantly, Rory says, he did all of this with humility and without ego.
In unstable times, many people are drawn to loud pseudo-certainty (often providing the bad kind of simplicity). With Gauke as his role model, Rory points in the opposite direction and frames leadership as disciplined attention, moral courage and institutional seriousness.
The new world order is about geopolitical fault lines. But in another sense, it is also about competing leadership philosophies: Leaders who merely perform strength (and tend to «chicken out» every once in a while) on the one hand and leaders who can handle contradiction without panic, disagreement without contempt and power without vanity on the other.
Leadership Principles
Get Your Leadership Sparring Partner
The best and most effective leaders rely on a network of trusted and independent sparring partners to break out of their own bubble. This is the only way to reflect on their own visions, strengthen their focus, or critically question trends.
Nothing helps more in dealing with today's VUCA world than a well-trained inner compass. The host of the Sparkr Podcast, Christian Lundsgaard, is happy to collaborate with you in calibrating your compass.
New World Order Rory Stewart
It is a feature, not a bug
We must accept conflicts as a feature rather than a bug while the long-term quality of any operating system in politics or business depends on the ambition and ability to resolve them.
We cannot eliminate disagreement. We cannot reduce every value conflict to a technical answer. And we should not externalise responsibility to a illegitimate authority such as AI in order to find comfort in the illusion of delegated responsibility.
But we can practice becoming proficient in navigating conflict. Rory’s principles are a strong starting point: accept trade-offs, create better conversations, simplify truthfully, judge expertise carefully, bring strategy to human scale and lead with quiet, humble courage.
To conclude with borrowing Carney’s memorable phrase from Davos: In a fragmented, multipolar world, this may be the long-term recipe for being at the table rather than on the menu.
Sparkr Podcast Workshop Moderator Leadership Coach Christian Lundsgaard
Sparkr Podcast Workshop Moderator Leadership Coach Christian Lundsgaard
More Episodes of the Sparkr Podcast
You find all the Sparkr Podcast Episodes here and you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Soundcloud or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.