Latest news with #ADifferentKindofPower
Kiwiblog
20 hours ago
- Politics
- Kiwiblog
Guest Post: Kindness Above Arithmetic – A Timeless Manual from Jacinda Ardern
Jacinda Ardern has bestowed upon the nation a gift – a memoir as warm as a winter sunrise and just as forgiving of shadows. Every page hums with kindness, the quality that first sent global headlines floating south across the Pacific. What captivates is the considerate restraint. Entire policy battles slip past like polite strangers while budget lines stay unruffled and statistics remain at home. Ardern spares us the burden of numbers – empathy for those who deem arithmetic discourteous. She prefers melody to measurement, and her speeches rippling through these chapters are silky and consoling. Outcomes make only cameo appearances, which feel oddly soothing. Leadership, we learn, is about tone, not toil. That resonance endures. Corridors of Wellington still echo with her gentle cadence while Cabinets yet unborn prepare announcements that glide majestically beyond detail. The belief blooms that spirit alone will close deficit gaps, plant forests and build houses. Any later occupant of the Ninth Floor will draw from this manual. Each may decide that certainty is overrated and that firmness of vision need never be encumbered by measurable plans. In this, the memoir rebadges itself as an evergreen field guide for administrations that prize applause above arithmetic. Ardern's handling of memory is equally elegant. Lockdowns become communal song sessions, quarantine queues a study in national patience. The months when vaccines waited fashionably offshore look like lessons in mindfulness, each omission glowing like a candle left intentionally unlit. Readers hunting for a critique will find none, and therein lies the mischief. Such abundant praise inevitably frames the absent explanations. The kindness is infectious, the selectivity instructive. A Different Kind of Power reminds us that feeling good is half the battle and often the whole campaign. Results may fade, yet moods endure. In celebrating that truth, the memoir offers a compass for every government bold enough to govern by hope alone, secure in the belief that smiles travel further than spreadsheets.
Business Insider
a day ago
- Business
- Business Insider
10 leadership tips from Jacinda Ardern, the ex-New Zealand prime minister who became a world leader at 37
In 2017, Jacinda Ardern became New Zealand's prime minister at just 37, leading her country through some of its most challenging moments — from a terrorist attack to a pandemic. In her memoir "A Different Kind of Power," she offers a rare glimpse into the personal convictions and leadership style that shaped her political career. Rather than chasing power for its own sake, Ardern writes candidly about leading with empathy, staying grounded in values, and letting purpose outweigh fear. Here are 10 lessons drawn from her book. Say yes before you're ready Ardern never set out to run for office. She loved politics but saw it as a calling for other people — more assertive, more confident, more sure. So when Labor Party officials encouraged her to join the party list ahead of the 2008 election, she hesitated. She was living in London, working as a policy advisor, and becoming a member of New Zealand's Parliament felt far off and improbable. But something shifted: "You've said no so many times. But this time, maybe, you just said yes." Let purpose be bigger than fear While volunteering for the Labor Party and working as a researcher for New Zealand's former Prime Minister Helen Clark in 2001, the idea of becoming a member of Parliament briefly crossed her mind. It didn't seem practical — she doubted whether politics could ever be a real job for someone like her. "What would it be like? To not just help people one-on-one — by being a good community member and volunteer, as I'd seen my mum do for her whole life — but to also have a vote and a voice in the place that set and changed the rules. "What would it be like, I wondered, to be an MP?" Leadership is service, not status For Ardern, politics was never about prestige. Her early campaign work taught her that political change isn't about optics — it's about impact. "An election wasn't just something that was battled out on a television screen. It wasn't about phone calls or pages of an Excel spreadsheet. It was about real things that happened to real people." Empathy is not weakness — it's power Mocked and jeered in Parliament as a young MP, Ardern wondered if she was "too thin-skinned for politics." A party veteran urged her not to change. "Promise me you won't try to toughen up, Jacinda. You feel things because you have empathy and because you care. The moment you change that is the moment you'll stop being good at your job." The traits you think disqualify you may be what make you a great leader Jacinda Ardern often felt she didn't fit the mold of a traditional politician — too anxious, too empathetic, too filled with self-doubt. But over time, she learned to see those traits as assets, not liabilities. "If you have impostor syndrome or question yourself, channel that. It will help you. You will read more, seek out advice, and humble yourself to situations that require humility to be conquered. "If you're anxious, and overthink everything, if you can imagine the worst-case scenario always, channel that too. It will mean you are ready when the most challenging days arrive. "And if you are thin-skinned and sensitive, if criticism cuts you in two, that is not weakness, it's empathy. "In fact, all of the traits that you believe are flaws will come to be your strengths. They will give you a different kind of power, and make you a leader that this world, with all its turmoil, might just need." Good leadership is good listening As a volunteer phone banking at 18, Ardern had to call through a dated Labor Party spreadsheet to recruit volunteers. Most people hung up. Some were hostile. But she got better — not by pushing harder, but by listening closely. "With each, I listened to how people answered, and tried to start a conversation. 'How do you think things will go at the election? What do you think might swing things?'" You don't need to be the loudest to lead During her years in opposition, Ardern was often told — explicitly and implicitly — that she wasn't "tough" enough for politics. She wasn't confrontational, didn't dominate debates, and didn't attack for the sake of scoring points. Commentators called her "vapid," "pretty bloody stupid," or a "show pony." But Ardern never embraced the shouty, aggressive archetype of leadership. "I would never be that kind of leader, and I didn't want to try. If the only way to put runs on the board in opposition was attacking and tearing people down, then maybe I was mediocre. "I didn't want to choose between being a good politician and being what I considered a good person. So I settled into the criticism." Let your values challenge your tribe Raised Mormon, Ardern supported civil unions and the decriminalization of sex work — even though her church opposed both. "Did my political decision differ from that of the Mormon church? Absolutely. But yet again, I ignored the clash of values, instead filing it away in the same metaphorical box where I put all the other things I couldn't square." Failure doesn't mean stop; it means grow In her third attempt at winning a parliamentary seat — this time in her hometown of Morrinsville — Ardern lost again. Labor's national result was its worst in nearly a century, and she returned to Parliament only via the party list. Despite campaign losses, she still kept going. "I cried myself to sleep. Then I went back to work." Know when to step back — even from the top Leadership took a toll on Ardern, physically and emotionally. In her memoir, she reveals that a cancer scare — a false alarm — was a wake-up call. The relentless pressure of leadership was beginning to affect her health, patience, and perspective. "I knew the next challenge, whatever it was, lay just around the corner. And when it came, I would need a full tank, more than enough in reserves. And I wasn't sure I had that anymore. It was time to say aloud what, until then, had been a thought in my head alone."
1News
a day ago
- Business
- 1News
Ardern takes swipe at Cunliffe over 'tokenistic' comment in new memoir
Jacinda Ardern singles out David Cunliffe, one of her predecessors as Labour leader, for criticism in her new memoir, describing an incident where he apparently suggested giving her a high position in the party list would be seen as "tokenistic". The exchange represents a rare public disagreement between two former leaders and amounts to an unusual moment of political candour from Ardern. She also recounts feeling relief when Cunliffe stepped down as leader after a crushing election loss for Labour in 2014, writing: "For the first time in a long while, I felt relieved." And she also wrote in her book, A Different Kind of Power, about questioning Cunliffe's authenticity and loyalty to the party. Party list ADVERTISEMENT Ardern describes a tense private exchange where Cunliffe allegedly told her he was considering her for the party's number three list position but was worried about whether it might appear "tokenistic". According to Ardern's account, Cunliffe called her to his office after becoming leader in 2013 to discuss the party's front bench positions. "I'd like to have a woman in my No. 3 spot," Cunliffe allegedly told her, before adding: "I've considered you for this spot. But I'm worried about that looking... well... tokenistic." Ardern writes she then refused to make a case for why she deserved the position: "'You either think that or you don't. I either deserve to be No. 3 or I don't. You need to decide." Ultimately she was not named at number 3 in the list, and nor was any other woman MP. Cunliffe responded to the claims in the book with a brief statement. ADVERTISEMENT "Jacinda did not raise any issues with me at the time and has not done so since," he said. "I have quite a different recollection of events." Ardern recounts volatile time for Labour The cover of A Different Kind of Power: A Memoir, set to be released on June 3, 2025. (Source: Penguin Random House/Supplied) Ardern also described her reaction to Cunliffe's infamous apology for being a man at a Women's Refuge event, writing: "I found myself holding my breath whenever he spoke." In contrast to her criticism of Cunliffe, Ardern speaks warmly of her relationship with Grant Robertson, who would later become her finance minister and deputy while PM, describing him as someone who would have been "an outstanding prime minister." She details how she supported Robertson's leadership bid, which included running against Cunliffe, and later formed a "Gracinda" ticket with him in a subsequent bid. 'My intent, never in writing this, was to ever malign' ADVERTISEMENT Ardern was asked about her candid writing regarding Cunliffe in an RNZ interview yesterday. "With any character in the book, for the most part, I've just tried to write experiences so without giving too much commentary on anyone as an individual person," she responded. "There were a few moments that were perhaps a little bit formative in my career, where I was struggling with this question of whether or not I was viewed tokenistically. The former Prime Minister was asked by Seven Sharp's Hilary Barry whether she could return to New Zealand without being given a hard time. (Source: Seven Sharp) "And the story that I shared came up through the course of those events. To not share it would have been a very deliberate edit, a deliberate exclusion of something that really did stand out in my mind. It wasn't just about the person. It was about the moment." The former prime minister said: "A lot of the things that are in there are also a reflection of that period in opposition, which was pretty tough for us, it is fair to say." ADVERTISEMENT "My intent never, in writing this, was to ever malign, but just to share an experience." 'The red wedding' Cunliffe, who now helps run a consultancy firm, has largely stayed out of the public eye since his time as a Cabinet minister and stint as Labour leader though he sometimes appears as a political pundit. He took over the leadership in 2013 following a divisive contest but stepped down after the 2014 election defeat. Ardern described the party's turbulence in detail, comparing the aftermath of Phil Goff's election loss to "the red wedding in Game of Thrones". Then-prime minister John Key and David Cunliffe go head to head at the TVNZ leader's debate on September 17, 2014 (Source: TVNZ) The leadership period was marked by internal party tensions, with factions emerging within the Labour caucus, including an "Anyone-But-Cunliffe" grouping. Years later, just weeks before the 2017 election, Ardern went on to become Labour leader and subsequently became PM in a coalition with NZ First and the Greens before winning with a landslide in 2020. When asked yesterday if she remained in contact with Cunliffe, Ardern said no. But she added that if she saw him, she would still stop and chat to him. "Not everyone do I have regular exchanges with," she said.
The Spinoff
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Spinoff
From Hilary to Oprah: Everything you missed from Jacinda Ardern's whirlwind promo tour
Tara Ward watches the big interviews from Dame Jacinda Ardern's promotional book tour. Dame Jacinda Ardern's memoir A Different Kind of Power was released around the globe this week, and hot on its heels came Ardern's promotional book tour. New Zealand's former prime minister gave a series of interviews to a variety of national and international media outlets, speaking to everyone from Christine Amanpour and CBS to Seven Sharp to Oprah bloody Winfrey. Not only was it a chance for Ardern to answer questions about her early life, political career and style of leadership, but it was also an opportunity for the world to – at last – find out what the Dame's favourite emoji is. Here's what she had to say. Seven Sharp Ardern began her interview with Hilary Barry by announcing that this chat – and not the one with Oprah or the BBC – was the one she was most nervous about. The reception in New Zealand is the most important to her, Ardern said, and admitted to feeling 'a bit squirmy'. Later, she acknowledged that she knows she remains a reminder of tough times for a lot of New Zealanders, but that Aotearoa is still home. Barry and Ardern covered plenty of topics from Ardern's book – including a breast cancer scare and a positive pregnancy test during coalition negotiations – with Barry sometimes reading aloud from the memoir. They talked a lot about kindness, and while both women admitted to being bawlers from way back, Ardern reckoned we should embrace our overthinking and worrying. 'It's not often you get leaders talking about these common character traits as not weaknesses, but strengths,' she said. Not a single tear was shed in the 30 minute interview, but this writer/overthinker would pay good money for Hils Baz to read me a bedtime story every night. CBS Sunday morning The big revelation here was that Ardern's local cafe in Boston charges an extortionate $6USD ($10NZD) for a sticky bun. A Boston bun, no less! This short interview with CBS' Robert Costa saw Ardern reflect on the changes to gun control after March 15 ('if we really said we didn't want this to happen again, we needed to make it a reality'), and the place of empathy in politics. 'We teach our kids to be kind – why shouldn't we role model that in politics?' Sure, sure, but let's hear more about the time the barista mistook Ardern for Toni Collette? The Rest is Politics Ardern was at her most relaxed with The Rest is Politics ' Alistair Campbell and Rory Stewart, cracking jokes throughout the hour-long podcast. Her memoir became a springboard to dive into bigger themes, with the interview touching on personal vs political drive, the state of progressive politics today, and about how Ardern is too coy about describing fellow political leaders in the book. 'There's certain audiences for certain things,' Ardern explained, while I couldn't stop looking at the globe on Ardern's shelf which had Australia placed front and centre. Maybe Campbell noticed it, too. He asked Ardern to rank China, the US, the UK and the EU in order of the importance of their relationship to New Zealand. 'That's a terrible question,' she answered, arguing that this kind of binary thinking is the current problem with foreign policy. Undeterred, Campbell pressed on. Which did Ardern prefer, England or Scotland? Ardern is Scottish, which left Campbell with the only option left available to him: to bring up the controversial spear tackle during the 2005 Lions rugby tour of New Zealand. ABC News In-depth It's not often a 2017 clip from The AM Show is shown on Australian television, but Ardern's interview with ABC News' Sarah Ferguson (no, not that one) dragged that pointed Mark Richardson rebuke up from the deep recesses of our cultural history. 'For context, this is the day after I became leader of the Labour Party, seven weeks out from the election,' Ardern explained, as we relived the moment she unleashed the finger point to end all finger points in response to Richardson's argument that women should have to disclose their pregnancy plans to employers. Eight years on, Ardern had no regrets. 'There's a real sense for me in that moment of 'it's fine for me', but what about everyone else?' she said. 'I don't think anyone for a moment would assume that when an employer asks you your plans, it's because they're going to prepare a gift basket for you.' The Oprah Podcast Oprah Winfrey's podcast studio looks like a beautiful summer greenhouse, with lovely rattan furniture, lush green plants and… big microphones. What better setting for Ardern to have a hearty natter about imposter syndrome, pandemics and lockdowns with the one and only Oprah? Winfrey began by recommending Ardern's memoir for 'anyone wanting leadership in their own lives', and the conversation flowed easily from there. 'I am in awe of your ability to stand in such grace and such power,' Winfrey told Ardern, as they discussed putting power to empathy, Ardern's unexpected pregnancy and leading through a global pandemic. We saw clips from the upcoming documentary film Prime Minister, which gave an insight into the realities of leading a country while also navigating pregnancy and parenthood. We watched Ardern feeding baby Neve in parliamentary offices, pumping milk in the back seat of a car, reading documents late into the night. Breastfeeding wasn't easy; as a young woman in power, there was no room to fail. What did Ardern learn? 'You can do it all, but don't expect to do it alone.' Oprah sipped chilled water through a straw while Ardern talked about gun control, Covid-19 and Ernest Shackleton. Then, after 75 minutes and several American ads for weight loss injections, it was over. 'People say don't meet your heroes, but I'm so glad to meet my hero today,' Oprah said. 'Come back to New Zealand soon,' Ardern replied. 'There are plenty of people who want to go hiking with you.' RNZ There was not a garden fern in sight for Ardern's interview with RNZ's Jesse Mulligan, who appeared to be sitting inside in some sort of heavily curtained tomb. Mulligan took us on one giant hoon of a chat, veering from small talk ('where have you been?' he began) to misogyny in politics to the moment Ardern told Winston Peters about her pregnancy over a platter of club sandwiches. 'Do you still, according to the Mormon tradition, keep three months worth of groceries in your house?' he asked. Ardern does not. Mulligan was worried about how David Cunliffe came off in the book. 'He looks like – what's the RNZ word for this – a douchebag?' he continued, having looked off camera to presumably check the official RNZ style guide. Ardern, ever the politician, said something about having just put her own experience on the page. 'You don't talk much about Winston Peters, can you explain him to me?' Mulligan asked. 'No,' Ardern laughed. After 30 minutes, we came to the really important stuff: the quickfire question round. Ardern wasn't keen, but she got on with it, just like the Queen told her. 'What's your most used emoji?' Mulligan queried. (Cry laughing). 'When was the first time you drank too much?' (Mid 20s). Finally, Mulligan asked the question that was on nobody's lips: First kiss? 'Absolutely not,' Ardern replied. 'If it didn't make the book, it won't make this interview.'
Newsroom
2 days ago
- Business
- Newsroom
Jacinda, by Janet Wilson
Nothing better explains the polarising opinions that crop up about Aotearoa's 40th Prime Minister, the Right Hon Dame Jacinda Ardern, than a phenomenon psychologists call splitting. It's a form of black-and-white thinking in which the patient sums up a person as either an exalted angel or an evil wrongdoer. And if both groups are looking to confirm their biases – the Greek Chorus of devotees and the Baying Crowd of haters – they're bound to find ample ammunition in Ardern's new memoir, A Different Kind of Power. In her 15 years as a politician, six as Prime Minister, Ardern has always been a master at framing-up all the feels. Many of her Greek Chorus don't reside here but are examples of the kind of progressive elites CNN's Jake Tapper and Axios's Alex Thompson inventory in another recent Penguin publication, Original Sin: President Biden's decline, its cover-up and his disastrous choice to run again. Their lavish praise is spread unctuously on the book's first page, accompanied by names like Melinda French Gates (Bill's ex), actress Natalie Portman, and Ben Rhodes, who was Obama's speechwriter. It signals the book wasn't written with the New Zealand market in mind but for all those progressives in the Northern Hemisphere who exulted in Ardern's considerable wins, such as her handling of the Christchurch Mosque shootings, the Whakaari/White Island disaster, her successful Covid-19 shut down of the country in 2020, and the political qualities of kindness she espouses. Ardern has always been the queen of identity politics. She turns her beliefs into full-blown convictions that you're either onside with, or absolutely not. It's revealing that issues outside of that, for example the broken promise to build 100,000 KiwiBuild properties, receive scant attention in her book. Instead, her memoir indexes the life of a thin-skinned and sensitive kid who channelled her impostor syndrome and, jet-propelled with considerable amounts of determination, became the leader of the Opposition amid the 2017 election campaign. And it's here that Ardern, a priestess of presenting just-enough information at the right time, seems to be sharing the PG-version of events. Ardern contends that with polling at 23 per cent, it was Opposition Leader Andrew Little who declared he should stand down and she should take over as leader. Her version of events is that she told him that a leadership change only months out from election day was a bad idea– but nevertheless walked into the Legislative Chamber Council six days later to tell media she had been elected leader unanimously. According to Ardern, when Little informed caucus he was resigning and immediately nominated Ardern, the only ripple of discontent came from a colleague who shouted, 'This is fucked!' As a bystander of not one but two leadership changes in National Party ranks three years later, I rather think this ignores the fact that there would have been several MPs in the caucus at that time who were facing certain electoral annihilation and would be shouting that from the rooftops. 'This is fucked' wouldn't begin to explain their rage. At any rate the Age of Jacindamania was born, and the gamble paid off. But politics is a zero-sum game. You enjoy some success until, eventually, you lose. Covid-19 presented leaders around the world with a once-in-a-lifetime challenge–and in the first year it arrived on Aotearoa's shores, Ardern shone. Her March 2020 announcement of the first lockdown was a masterclass in call-to-arms speeches. By and large the country's population of just over five million rallied. 'We began a new phase,' she writes in A Different Kind of Power. 'Long stretches of normalcy punctuated by the occasional raising of the alert level.' By the end of that year Labour had won more than 50 per cent of the vote in the October election, and the country was enjoying a summer of festivals and barbecues. Fast forward to just over a year later to February 2022 when Ardern's zero-sum game reached its nadir. Because if 2020 was where she excelled, 2021 was the year where the mistakes piled up, layer upon layer upon layer. First the then-Government was too slow to order vaccines. Then it gave the Rapid Antigen Testing contract not to a provider with a track record but an outfit who didn't even have one. By December 2021, Auckland had been in a different lockdown from the rest of the country for three months, and many, many Aucklanders were fed up. Not that Ardern mentions anything about this. But she does talk about her nadir – the Parliamentary Protests. Ardern describes the antics of the growing crowd protesting the vaccines and mandates wearing their tinfoil hats, and provides readers with her own explanation of why she didn't greet the crowds. She writes, 'How could I send a message that if you disagree with something, you can illegally occupy the grounds of Parliament and then have your demands met? No, I would not meet the protestors.' She goes on to say the occupation 'was about trust…. or more accurately mistrust.' That mistrust rose, biliously, from a fed-up nation. Less than a year later Ardern announced she was stepping down as Prime Minister and leaving politics. Ardern's analysis of getting to that point is an interesting mix of her analytical head and her sensitive heart. She discusses leaving politics with Grant Robertson, as well as her Chief of Staff Raj Nahna, telling him that she'd become a flashpoint, 'a political lightning rod.' But it was also daughter Neve asking, 'Mummy, why do you have to work so much?' It had 'got to the heart of my dilemma, and that of parents everywhere.' It's too early yet to assess Ardern's political leadership skills except to note it was an administration of striking highs and lows. Her own book doesn't attempt to make an assessment. It's less a political memoir than another sprinkling of Jacinda fairy stardust to her adoring Greek Chorus of devotees. The Baying Crowd will read it too, just to confirm their bias, and to sneer. Her book has landed at a time when politics, in New Zealand and across the world, is taking a particularly cruel turn. The New York Times characterised it this week as 'the death of empathy'. Will progressive liberals take A Different Kind of Power – Ardern is their posterchild after all – and use it as their talisman to lead them out of electoral darkness? Probably not, but expect the virtue signalling to continue unabated. A Different Kind of Power: A Memoir by Jacinda Ardern (Penguin, $59.99) is available in every bookstore across the land. ReadingRoom is devoting all week to coverage of the book. Monday: experts in the book trade predict it will fly off the shelves. Tuesday: a review by Steve Braunias. Tomorrow: a review by Tim Murphy.
