I have a friend who asks leading questions to friends and family instead of watching hours of TV, to encourage discussion and share opinions. It’s not groundbreaking stuff, but it’s a great idea to get people to share their thoughts and maybe take in others’ viewpoints and ideas. I love it.

So she asked her dad the question, ‘Which woman influenced your life the most?’

Without thinking, he answered ‘Margaret Thatcher.’ He didn’t offer the obvious responses like, my mum, or my first girlfriend, or my wife.

He understood the word influence to mean the power or ability to change his life or affect how the course of his days was altered. Not influence as in to sway feelings or guide his own actions.

Margaret Thatcher. He chose her because her spell in power caused so many changes that affected his personal life chances.

She enabled many people to buy their council houses without organising for more to be built. She weakened many powerful trade unions, and widened the gap between rich and poor, fundamentally changing the experiences of work, housing and public services for many ordinary people. Many traditional manufacturing industries collapsed, causing mass long-term unemployment amongst the working-class. She sold off state-owned utilities like gas, water, and telecommunications. She reduced affordable social housing for future generations. She is still, to this date, one of the most polarizing and controversial figures in modern British history, seen by supporters as a brilliant, bold and transformative leader who modernized the economy and by critics as a divisive and callous figure who devastated so many working-class communities.

She may have improved the lives of some people significantly. But she didn’t improve my friend’s dad’s. And because of that, her name immediately sprang to his lips.  He felt full of regret.

That set me wondering about the other transformative women – and men – who significantly influenced the paths of people’s lives, taking away their chances, or giving them new ones, or propelling them in a completely different direction.

Many men come to mind immediately, and a few women, who certainly changed so many lives: Hitler, Mussolini, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot. Going back a bit, Cleopatra, Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan.

People who’ve promoted positive changes include Alexander Fleming, Edward Jenner and Louis Pasteur. Mahatma Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln. Some might say Nelson Mandela, Pablo Picasso, Rosa Parks, Marie Curie.

Depending on your criteria, let’s add Jesus, Muhammed, Einstein, Darwin, Confucius.

Or, looking at just women for a moment, Harriet Tubman, Jane Addams, Helen Keller. What about Boudicca or Malala Yousafzai?

I’m going to leave this question with you.

Then I‘m going to add another one. My friend’s father is eighty years old. He picked Mrs Thatcher because she changed his life beyond his expectations. He’d have been thirty-five or forty when she was first PM. He was looking forward to so much in his life. And now he’s reflecting, looking back.

So – imagine yourself being asked that question in the future, as an eighty-year-old.

Who amongst the current movers and shakers do you think you’d choose as the person who had the most influence over your life? And what do you think their influence will have been?

Or maybe you’ll take the easy route and pick your mum.

I wouldn’t blame you…