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Straits Times
a day ago
- Politics
- Straits Times
Jacinda Ardern thinks world leaders need more kindness
Jacinda Ardern at Harvard University's campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on May 31. After she resigned as prime minister of New Zealand, she got married, temporarily relocated to the United States and now has three fellowships at Harvard. PHOTO: LAUREN O'NEIL/NYTIMES CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts – It is easy to forget that Jacinda Ardern is a former prime minister of New Zealand. Standing in line at a cafe in Cambridge, Massachusetts, wearing a suit by New Zealand designer Juliette Hogan, with sneakers and gold hoops, she flashes a disarming smile and says to call her 'just Jacinda'. As she orders a cappuccino, the cashier wonders why she looks so familiar. Was she, by any chance, that person on TV? 'Toni Collette?' they ask, referring to an Australian actress. Ardern, without security detail, waves off the misidentification and does not set the record straight. The cafe is a 10-minute walk from Harvard University, where Ardern, who resigned as prime minister in 2023, now holds three fellowships. In the aftermath of her voluntary resignation, she married her long-time partner Clarke Gayford and temporarily moved her family to Massachusetts. The day before we met, students and faculty had gathered for their commencement and remnants of the ceremony are everywhere: tents, stacks of foldable chairs lying in yards and students milling around with cardboard boxes . The ceremony capped a school year in which the institution has been entangled in a legal stand-off with United States President Donald Trump's administration over allegations of anti-Semitism, with federal funding and the visas of international students enrolled at the university in jeopardy. It is in that tense environment that Ardern, who during her time in power was frequently referred to as the 'anti-Trump', is publishing her memoir, A Different Kind Of Power. The book, which was released on June 3 , makes the case that leading with empathy and kindness might be the solution for a range of global crises – an argument that has also been the subject of one of her fellowships at Harvard Kennedy School. Whether such a book will resonate in a highly charged moment is an open question. Ardern said she has been relishing the relative anonymity of life in the US. A step back has allowed her to spend more time with her six-year-old daughter, who, she said, has a 'greater awareness now' of the fact that her mother was prime minister, yet 'doesn't dwell on it'. But the book and a global tour are part of what appears to be a re-emergence into public life, which also includes a documentary about her, called Prime Minister, that will be released later in June . In the book, Ardern, 44, gets into the granular details of what it was like to lead a country through multiple crises, including a live-streamed terrorist attack in Christchurch, a major volcanic eruption and the Covid-19 pandemic. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. We are sitting so close to Harvard, which has been at the centre of heated debates, and now you are releasing a book about kindness and empathy in leadership. How does this all fit together? I started writing it after I left office – in early to mid-2023. Though there was a lot of difficulty in the world, now feels vastly different from then. So it's not lost on me, the environment it's going into. But I would have written the same book regardless. Because, even then, ideas of empathy, compassion and kindness in leadership were treated as if there was a naivete there, and probably even more so now, and I just push back on that. How do you push back? First, I think there's a disconnect. People make an assumption that because we have a particular type of leadership on display at the moment, that must be what voters are seeking. And I don't think that's true. There are very real issues that need to be addressed that I summarise as deep financial insecurity and uncertainty in the face of a very changeable world. Politicians can come into that space either with a message of fear and blame or they can take on the very difficult issue of finding genuine solutions. I think it would be wrong to say people don't want to see kindness and compassion in their politics, and that they don't want to see politics done differently. It's not naive. In the book, you say you worried that your compassion could be seen as a weakness and, by extension, that weakness could be seen as female. I decided early on that I was just only ever going to be myself. And in New Zealand, if you're not yourself, they can sniff out inauthenticity – there's so much proximity to politicians and leaders that you need to be yourself. So that was the environment. But did it come easy? Not necessarily, because I remember moments when I thought, I cannot let my emotions be on display. And there were certain times when it just wouldn't have been appropriate because it wasn't about me; it was about the situation, the victims, the circumstance. But I decided that sometimes, you're just going to have a human response and that's okay. In fact, maybe it builds trust, because people can see then that you're human. Do you think people now expect this style from female leaders? I get asked a lot whether these traits are gendered. I've worked with a number of politicians, and I see empathetic leadership in men and women. In fact, I like to think of it within the frame of what we teach our kids. If you ask a room of parents, 'What are the values that you think are really important for your kids?', you'll hear the same things. People want their kids to share, they want them to be generous, they want them to be kind and empathetic, they want them to be brave, courageous. Those values that we teach our kids, we then see somehow as weaknesses in leaders? I was struck by the push and pull you describe in the book between what parts of yourself to share with the public and what parts to hide away. In hindsight, when I look back on those moments, it's very clear to me that, if you are, for instance, only the second woman in the world to give birth while in office, you feel a burden of responsibility to still demonstrate that it's possible. And so I did hold back anything that might allow someone to question that I could be both a mother and a prime minister. But the thing that conflicted with that was also my desire to make sure that it didn't look like I was doing everything on my own. You know, the Wonder Woman fram e. NYTIMES Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
ABC News
01-06-2025
- Health
- ABC News
Jacinda Ardern on having imposter syndrome and why 'confidence gaps' can be good for leaders
Former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern says we need to radically re-think our ideas about what makes a successful political leader. "I want to bring into question those old assumptions about the character traits we want in politics," Ms Ardern tells 7.30 in her first Australian TV interview about her new memoir, A Different Kind of Power. Sworn in as PM in 2017 aged 37, Jacinda Ardern became a phenomenon as Jacindamania swept New Zealand then the world, partly in response to her youth but also the highly unusual circumstances of her giving birth while in office (Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto was the only other modern politician to do so, in 1990). Ms Ardern's political achievements were only possible after overcoming deep personal uncertainty about her abilities. "My whole short life," she writes in her memoir, "I'd grappled with the idea that I was never quite good enough, that at any moment I would be caught short." "There are plenty of people who have this experience," Ms Ardern told 7.30. "There just happens to be very few who then share it or talk about it out loud. "I think one of the reasons that we don't discuss, for instance, imposter syndrome, we don't discuss confidence gap, is because people have something to lose in doing so. I don't. "You know, I've had a significant career in politics. I made the decision to leave. There was something very freeing in there and now I feel absolutely able to have this kind of open conversation. "Over time I've seen the strength that comes from what we perceive to be weakness. A confidence gap often leads to humility, a willingness to bring in experts and advisors, and I think ultimately makes you a better decision maker." Having worked in a junior position for former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clarke, Ms Ardern initially regarded herself as too sensitive, too thin-skinned to survive in politics. "Most people would look at politics and say, 'Have I got the armour required to be in that space?' And it was actually when I was in parliament itself that I really made the decision that I wasn't willing to change who I was in order to survive what we might call the bear pit." Ms Ardern said the purpose of writing the book, rather than producing a typical politician's memoir, was to encourage more people to consider entering public life. "I was convinced that if I was going to write anything, it should really be a story about how it feels to lead because you know, who knows who's out there, considering whether or not they have what it takes, considering whether or not they can succeed if they lead with empathy," she said. How it feels to lead included experiencing acute morning sickness just as Ms Ardern was about to be sworn in as prime minister. "I was slumped on the floor thinking, 'what if during this very formal ceremony I can't hold it in?' It's not the kind of thought process you want to go through when you're about to have the speech from the throne, from the then Queen's representative, all the heads of judiciary, the defence force and every single member of parliament sitting in one space facing you." Fortunately for Ms Ardern she got through it. Ms Ardern told 7.30 the reasons why she did not initially make the news of her pregnancy public. "I was in negotiation to become prime minister. That's a particularly delicate time," she said. "Equally ... I knew having just been elected, my priority somehow may have appeared to be misplaced. And I didn't believe that to be true but I felt I needed to demonstrate that was the case before revealing the happy news that I was also going to have a baby." In her meteoric rise to the top of New Zealand politics, Ms Ardern was subjected to plenty of critiques aimed at her gender. While in opposition she was often depicted as a show pony in cartoons and analysis. One female MP described Ms Ardern's appointment as Labor leader a "cosmetic facelift". She pushed back hard on morning radio when a host suggested that as a young woman she was obliged to reveal her reproductive plans. "That is not acceptable!" she thundered at the presenter, repeating the line three times. Along with her descriptions of juggling the demands of national leadership and a baby, the need for nappy bags and breast pumps at international events, Ms Ardern also reveals the importance of the position she held did not make her immune from parental guilt. "Some might think that that's an example of where maybe your guilt should be a little bit lessened because you've got a pretty reasonable excuse to be busy and to not always be there, but my learning was actually it never goes away," she said. The best advice she received was from Buckingham Palace. A pregnant Ms Ardern asked Queen Elizabeth II how she had raised her children as a public figure. The Queen's response was simple: "You just get on with it." And, so, Ms Ardern did. After serving two terms as prime minister, steering New Zealand through the immense demands of COVID, in the economic downturn that followed Ms Ardern's popularity dropped sharply. In January 2023, after nearly six years in office, she made the decision she was spent and wanted to step down. Now on a fellowship at Harvard University in the US, she is focused on the potential for empathetic leadership in politics. The memoir, she says, is part of that. "To share a little bit more about what it looks like behind the scenes in the hope that a few more people who might identify as criers, huggers and worriers might take up the mantle of leadership, because I'd say we need them," she said. Watch 7.30, Mondays to Thursdays 7:30pm on ABC iview and ABC TV Do you know more about this story? Get in touch with 7.30 here.
Yahoo
26-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Sundance: Jacinda Ardern On Her Docu ‘Prime Minister;' Feminism, Semi-Automatic Weapons Ban, Covid Border Closing And Women's Rights Including Abortion In Kiwi Country
Rarely does a political leader come through a documentary with such a sense of empathy and an appreciation of accomplishment as Jacinda Ardern does in Prime Minister. The Sundance documentary starts as a homespun tale, where at 37 she steps up to run New Zealand, and soon learns that she and her mate Clark Gayford are pregnant with their first child. The press narrative over whether a new mother can run the land of the Kiwis soon gives way as the movie becomes like a documentary version of 24, where Ardern is suddenly championing a ban of semi-automatic weapons after a devastating massacre, decriminalizing abortion and handling the Covid outbreak by leaning into the saving of lives more than the re-starting of the economy. She then walked away and is now a climate rights activist whose first major book A Different Kind Of Power is coming, and who among other things is a Senior Fellow in the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard. The docu is for sale, and was backed by Madison Wells' Gigi Pritzker and Rachel Shane, who add this to a roster of films that often touch on female empowerment themes, including The Eyes of Tammy from Deadline 'Atropia' Review: Alia Shawkat & Callum Turner Play War Games In Absurdist Bush-Era Satire - Sundance Film Festival Sundance: Bill Murray Makes Surprise Appearance In Park City 'The Ballad Of Wallis Island' Review: Carey Mulligan Hits Just The Right Note In A Melancholy Musical Rom-Com - Sundance Film Festival GIGI PRITZKER: From our perspective, we were lucky recipients of the opportunity to do the film. Having never done a doc through Madison Wells before, Rachel and I immediately said, if we're ever going to do something, this is the thing. We were beside ourselves and then once we got more engaged, we realized that the biggest gift was that Clark Gayford, her husband and a broadcaster, picked up a camera almost as if you were going to just do home movies, as you said. The result was a treasure trove of ARDERN: It's a great question. The first thing that prompted the idea of keeping a record of a time in office, I'm not the first politician to do that, but many politicians will do it through notes. We have in New Zealand something called the Oral History Project, and it's been running for decades where on a semi-regular basis, someone will call you and just record an audio interview with you. I'd already been doing that. Part it was just I wanted to keep a record for myself, for my family. I appreciate and love history, and perhaps my history teacher was ringing in my ears when I thought about just keeping a visual record. But you can see that often I was a reluctant I think that is fair, though it probably built on an existing passion that I had. One of the reasons I got into politics was, as a child I spent a few years living in a town where there was a lot of inequality and poverty, and I eventually associated politics as the place to make change. There's something about thinking about the world through the lens of a child, and certainly having a child and then thinking about what kind of legacy are we going to leave her, it amplified all of the passions that I already had. But she's been a motivator for so many things. She was one of the reasons Clark wanted to keep a record, because it was her story as Yeah, I mean, I wonder whether or not the reason that I often took it in stride was because I was aware that I was in an unusual set of circumstances. And that wasn't to say it justified the assumption that you couldn't do both, but I could understand why I was being asked the question. I didn't always like it. But I could understand when you're only the second leader in the world to have a baby, in office. So rather than being defensive, I just took on the perspective that I just needed to get out and do the job. That was only really the way, and I would not be the first woman who's had to multitask and face those questions or try and hide that there's any impact from caregiving on the work that I do. I am not be the first woman who's experienced that. It was just very, it was Do you know what I appreciated that we were just discussing? The depth of the applause for Clark at the premiere. I think that was acknowledgement not only of the origin of the story, but the role that he played as well. When you are in public office, there's not always a lot of light shone on the people who are supporting you, in the village that's around you. I think we should do more of that, because I didn't do the job alone and I didn't raise my daughter on my own. And so it was great to give an insight to him as well. PRITZKER: I think that's also one of the fallacies that we as a society give to women, which is you can do it all. But you don't do it all alone. No, that's a crazy conceit. Not only were you stepping out as a woman, but that you had this other element that was so universal, not only to women, but to Gosh, they were all hard. But abortion law reform, that was a conscience vote in New Zealand. We have an incredible system, where you vote on certain issues. You don't have to vote on a party line. You vote according to your conscience. And I think the incredible thing about that system, it means that if you have a particular religious perspective or persuasion, or if you happen to be a liberal, but in an otherwise conservative party, you're able to express that. And so abortion law reform, actually, that was about bringing individuals on board and the timing for that was, the New Zealand parliament was ready for that change as it should be. So that was about building consensus and shepherding a piece of law through the other challenges. Those others are the unexpected crises that you sometimes face in leadership. And I wouldn't want to give one more weight over the other because each was devastating in their own ways. I will always carry so many lessons from March 15, most of whom came from New Zealand itself, and the Muslim community. Covid was a global experience, and it was difficult for everyone. New Zealand's experience just happened to be unique in some ways, but it was still hard, particularly the I can only speak to the New Zealand experience because I only really know its history and culture in any depth. And what I can tell you is that in the aftermath of March 15, that there was a public appetite, maybe expectation is a better word, that as politicians, we reflect how New Zealanders felt. And that's why ultimately I believe, and yes, we did move quickly. I'm not going to diminish that. We did move very quickly, but that is why I believe you had a parliament where all but one…so 119 members of parliament all voted in favor of that change because they were reflecting their Well, I mean, one thing I would say is that our political system there is very different. We have something called MMP [Mixed Member Proportional]. It means that we often have multiple parties in government. It means that there's a diversity of views, and it means that you have to can't govern without working with others. And so it's a different system. Mike, you know your system better than I, I'm an observer, but I know that our system is one that I think, no system is perfect, but it is one that really does reflect voters. And maybe it's one of the reasons we have such high turnout, in the 80% mark of New Zealanders enrolled, out voting. Perhaps it's because they know that that vote counts. But again, I'm only speaking to New Zealand It is, yeah. Just as a sidebar, there's some discussion over exemptions and things, but for the most part, that's in Well, I hope you saw in the film that thought process. I think that was one of the goals of the film, from the storytellers' perspective, to just provide an insight into leadership, into decision I hope that the viewer sees that it is just decision making in real time. Often, you see the decision, you don't often see the choices. So I think that's what the film tries to do. It provides the context. You see the choices that are I think it's human nature to always reflect on that, particularly if it's something as significant as leading a country. Though when I left, I remember saying this, and I can't remember if I said it in my departing speech or not, but all of the things that brought me into politics are never things that are going to have necessarily a nice tidy endpoint. I came in because I believed in equality and reducing inequality. I believed in addressing child poverty. I believed in the preservation of our environment and addressing climate change, and they just don't have tidy end points. So the time I was in office, I felt was about trying to make as much progress as I could rather than just job done. Best of Deadline 'Severance' Cast Through Seasons 1 And 2: Innies, Outies, Severed and Unsevered 2025 Awards Season Calendar: Dates For Oscars, Spirits, Grammys, Tonys, Guilds & More Everything We Know About 'Only Murders In The Building' Season 5 So Far
