“At times in foreign policy we make mistakes because we act too quickly without first properly understanding how things really are.” This is recurrent complain among foreign policy geeks, but it takes a certain bravery to say so — on the record and in the world’s most prestigious think tank — if you are one of those people that actually leads the world’s foreign policy.

“At times in foreign policy we make mistakes because we act too quickly without first properly understanding how things really are.” Sure enough, this is recurrent complain among foreign policy geeks, but it takes a certain bravery to say so — on the record and in the world’s most prestigious think tank — if you are one of those people that actually leads the world’s foreign policy.

Yet, this is exactly what Italy’s Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini said in her address at the Brookings Institution, adding that there is a need to link analysis to action in order to stop faulting. Contrary to the use in Italian diplomacy, the minister was talking without a written speech or even talking points: Such refusal to use a predetermined text — where such words would have never found space — further testify of her courage and tells a lot about her leadership style: casual and relaxed, yet confident.

Mogherini, 41, mother of two, is the youngest foreign minister in the history of modern Italy. However, when an (Italian) member of the audience asked how she managed, being such a young woman, she politely dismissed the question saying that only in Italy a woman in her 40s is considered young. Privately, she admits that she can do it all because “my husband is a saint and I get a lot of help from my mother,” though she tries hard in her few spare moments to just be a “normal” mother, walking her girls to school or the like.

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