Could Kiwi Leadership Be A Model For Us? Brutal Honesty, Understated Fortitude, Action Bias

There must be something wonderful in the crystal clear waters and the pristine air of New Zealand - they seems to produce the most empathetic and successful leaders in diverse fields. In an increasingly raucous and belligerent world, the champions from New Zealand seem to quietly, but assuredly, bring a style of leadership that not only produces remarkable results, but do so in a manner that unifies everyone around. 

My basis of this conclusion are three leaders, unique in their own right. Kane Williamson, Captain of Kiwi Cricket team, Jacinda Ardern, the Prime Minister of New Zealand and Andrew Grant, a Senior Partner in McKinsey & Co (with whom I had the distinct pleasure of working). Three stalwarts in completely different fields, but showcasing a standard of leadership that punches well above its weight in their respective fields. Upon rumination, I could distil three elements that seem to be common to “Kiwi Leadership” that makes it so effective.

1. Brutal Honesty

No Bulls***! That seems to be the mantra for Kiwi leaders. They are disarmingly practical and clear headed in laying out the situation. Neither using rose-tinted shades to glaze over the problems, nor overly negative to present the worst “doom & gloom” scenario. They seem to have perfected being clear, unbiased and unfiltered, whatever the situation. Nowhere was this more evident than after the finals of Cricket World Cup 2019. (With apologies to those unfamiliar with Cricket) New Zealand scored 241 runs - a sub-par score, by Kane’s own admission - but rallied to limit England to the same score. A Super Over followed - England scored 15, and New Zealand equaled that too. But then, England was awarded the trophy based on an obscure rule that they scored more boundaries. Now this is where Kane Williamson’s leadership shone through - he was a picture of poise (despite being “gutted” by his own admission). He declined to blame ball ricocheting off an English player in the penultimate over and going for a boundary, or obscurity of the rule. Instead, he called out the many opportunities where they could have won the game outright and stating that the rule was pre-agreed and was the same for all teams. He surely won millions of hearts (and followers) that day.

2. Understated Fortitude

The bravado, the bluster, the bombast are all missing from the Kiwi leadership style. They always seem to come across as empathetic, with a ready listening ear, encouraging positivity and inspiring those around. But this “softness” of style is built upon an understated fortitude. I believe that it is their quiet confidence that empowers them to exercise a collaborative leadership that fosters follower-ship. Do not mistake their approachable demeanour for lack of strength in their ideas and beliefs. The case that jumps out is the utterly humane, but steadfast manner in which Jacinda Arden handled the situation after the Christchurch shooting. While she stood in solidarity with Muslim community and took responsibility (even though the shooter was a foreigner), it was her resolve to make a change that shone through. Under her leadership, New Zealand took immediate financial and emotional care of victims and their families by setting up call centres with language proficiency of victims and paying all expenses, including bringing relatives from overseas. More importantly, she brokered a broad coalition of all parties that allowed New Zealand to pass gun control laws within 3 months that banned assault weapons, something that other countries have failed to achieve, despite many more such cases happening in those countries. The two speeches of Jacinda Arden - one in parliament and the other at quickly convened National Remembrance Service are classic examples of empathetic, but resolute leadership. More recently, Jacinda Ardern’s successful handling of the COVID crisis meant that New Zealand was one of the first countries to declare itself virus-free. And the voters rewarded her by a thumping majority (not achieved in decades before) in the Kiwi general election.

3. Action Bias

The other trait (that I have seen in action first-hand) is a bias towards action. While these leaders take active inputs from those around, they don’t get into analysis-paralysis mode. They realise that they will never have 100% information - they engage teams around them to get inputs, instigate discussion and analysis, but then move quickly into action. It seems that they intuitively do what modern “Agile” methodology recommends - take quick steps towards implementation, but have a robust learning mechanism to make course corrections.

I found myself in the middle of one exact such situation. McKinsey & Co. has long been a pre-eminent professional services firm. In 2008, Andrew Grant was the Managing Partner of Greater China Office. The firm was exploring additional client service models, besides its traditional fixed-time, specific-topic project based consulting model. The firm was exploring a new approach called McKinsey Solutions which was a longer term engagement model leveraging McKinsey datasets, insights and experts. It was evident that several Partners were not convinced of this model (“why fix something that ain’t broke?”). However, Andrew quickly worked to establish McKinsey Insights China - a solution based on macroeconomic and consumer datasets and McKinsey experts. He brought in fresh talent, broke through internal resistance and launched the Solution within 3 months. Since then, the McKinsey Solutions model has gained significant acceptance and there are more than 20 such Solutions globally.

These are some of the traits of Kiwi Leadership that, I believe, the world needs a lot more of. Being empathetic, having a clear strength of conviction and a bias towards action (Plan - Do - Check - Act - Repeat) are precepts that are increasingly finding their way in modern leadership - it seems that Kiwis have been exercising them for some time now and present a great model of us to follow.