Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s leadership has been the subject of more comment than usual in the past week after the CEOs in the Herald’s annual Mood of the Boardroom survey ranked him 15th among Government ministers. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Leaders aren’t necessarily the best people to talk about their own leadership styles, but in Christopher Luxon’s case, he is an expert.
He is not only the leader of the country, but he has studied leadership his whole life - particularly of politicians and sports teams.
And he was talking about it with Scott Robertson just last Saturday, after the All Blacks beat Australia in the Bledisloe Cup match in Auckland.
“I’ve been a big follower of high-performing sports teams since I was very, very young - read, studied them, watched documentaries on them,” Luxon tells the Herald.
“You always have moments where there’s lots of criticism and coaches going through a period of rebuilding a team or dealing with a tough set of circumstances.
“You’ve seen it actually with the All Blacks in the last week. I spoke to [coach] Scott Robertson about it on Saturday night.
“They’re jobs where everyone’s a critic, and actually, your job as the leader is to say, ‘stay calm, let’s not catastrophise when things are tough, let’s not go cock-a-hoop and get arrogant when things are going well’.
“Just stay consistent and even-tempered and calm, and see through the noise and stay focused on the prize that you’re trying to get to.
“That’s how I’ve always run my teams, you know, from when I was very young and having senior jobs at a young age.
“That’s the same way we’re trying to run government.”
National’s inability to fire in the polls, and Luxon’s average personal ratings as preferred Prime Minister, have fuelled commentary about his leadership.
But Luxon’s leadership has been the subject of more comment than usual in the past week after the CEOs in the Herald’s annual Mood of the Boardroom survey ranked him just 15th among Government ministers (he was sixth last year). Finance Minister Nicola Willis also rated low at 13th (3rd last year).
He cannot dismiss it. That would look arrogant. But nor can he suggest it represents a failure on his part. That would fuel further leadership speculation.
Instead, he adopts the view that the rating is born of a sense of frustration that the economic recovery hasn’t been faster, and he empathises.
“I get it. You know, many business leaders like myself and like all New Zealanders want to get over this pain and suffering we’ve been in, you know, experiencing economically.
“Nicola and I are the face of the Government in the economic sense, and I get it. And so, you know, I’m with them.”
So does Luxon get unsettled by the talk about his leadership and his own performance?
“Well, for me, I’m always dissatisfied with the performance of myself and everyone in general. You know, I’m just wired to be constantly constructively dissatisfied...while being incredibly optimistic.
“But it’s just because I want to get to a better place quicker, faster, that I drive quite hard.”
He said he had a lot of options in terms of what he could do with his time and what he could do pre- or post-politics.
“Instead, I choose to do this job.”
He said he would naturally look at his own performance.
“But I also don’t take offence from people I don’t take advice from. It’s a pretty simple rule.”
He was one of those people who was informed by social media but not consumed by it, because he went into politics four years ago to realise the country’s potential.
“When you’re connected to that mission and purpose, yes, I can listen to all the all the noise out there, but you also have to lead through noise.”
For many years, in fact since he was a schoolboy, Luxon has studied leaders. He likes to pick one a year and study them, although he took a break last year in his first full year as Prime Minister.
But this year, he has gone back to studying one he really admires, former US President Ronald Reagan.
“There’s a lot of life lessons in the histories of other leaders, whether they’re business leaders or political leaders or community leaders,” he said.
Luxon’s leadership is worth a study in itself - he took over the National Party leadership after just a year in politics. More importantly, he led its repair from the divided and chaotic party it had become in Opposition, to victory in 2023.
He has led the first three-party coalition under the MMP system with two experienced and wily politicians, Act leader David Seymour and NZ First leader Winston Peters, as coalition partners.
At a micro-level, he has a distinct style, preferring to work in his Ninth Floor office with music playing (on this day, it was Dua Lipa and Men at Work) and a can of V at hand.
And his political management involves a very hands-on approach with his ministers, similar to the style he developed as a business leader.
A lot is made of his six years as head of Air New Zealand. But it was his long career with global giant Unilever where he honed his leadership skills from an early age. He lived in Australia, Britain, the United States and Canada and had global and regional jobs in each.
“As a CEO, as a former CEO, you know, you build high-performing, high-culture organisations. That’s why ultimately people thought I’d be good coming into political life when I was CEO of Air New Zealand.
“But it’s the same thing here. You have to build a team and you have to build a culture, which is what we did with the National Party reset, given the horrific situation we were in, with our second-worst result [in 2020] in 80 years.”
Luxon said his ministers had very clear tasks, and his job was to support them, to encourage them and to work with them.
“I partner with all my ministers on all of their agendas,” he said.
“I’m the leader of a team, and so my job is to comfort my ministers when they’re being challenged and also to afflict them when they need to be stepping up their performance as well.”
Education Minister Erica Stanford, RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop and Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk were the National MPs rated highest in the Mood of the Boardroom.
When asked if they deserved it, Luxon instead points to other ministers he considers are also doing well, such as Mark Mitchell and Paul Goldsmith in getting youth offending down, Todd McClay in Trade, and Health Minister Simeon Brown in achieving targets “in one of our toughest, if not our toughest portfolios”.
A big part of his job in politics is to emphasise it’s not an individual sport but a team sport.
“And that’s the mantra that we beat into the National Party with the reset after the period of dysfunction and disunity is that actually we are all going up and down as a team.
“I can be first five and captain, but I can’t be prop and winger. And as a result, I put my aces in their places, and I get really clear about what role I expect them to play. And then it’s the collective effort of all of that team playing together well that actually delivers the results for New Zealanders.”
So will Luxon have a reshuffle before the election in about a year?
“I’ll just reshuffle when I feel like it and when I think it’s needed,” he said.
“And because I’m having more dynamic performance conversations with my ministers, which may be a different way of how it’s been done in the past, but I’m just very straight up about it.
“They have clear feedback as to where I think they’re doing well and where they think they could do better. I’ll do that when and where I feel the need to, but I don’t feel any need to be on a rhythm of a New Year reshuffle or an end-of-year reshuffle, as you’ve seen before.
In terms of running the coalition, he dismisses the view that Seymour and Peters ran rings around him in coalition talks after the election, or now.
The coalition partners had to sign up to the National agenda before talks began, including its fiscal plan, its tax plan, the 100-point economic plan and 100-day plan, with two exceptions: the foreign buyers ban, which has since been renegotiated, and raising the superannuation age to 67.
“We have real clarity around our program as a National Party, but also our coalition agreements with our partners,” said Luxon.
“That’s a lot of specificity, you know, it’s organised around the same three thrusts of essentially grow the economy, restore law and order, deliver better public services.”
The three parties were aligned around probably 75 to 80% of the agenda. There were differences between the parties around things that were important to them and their constituents.
“I fully get that.”
The coalition published quarterly action plans, which were there to focus government ministers as much as the public service as they progressed their agendas.
One of the criticisms levelled at Luxon in last week’s survey was that he didn’t listen, and he thinks that was a bit unfair.
“I always listen to feedback,” he said.
“But I’m not going to be bounced by a particularly bad column or anything like that.
“If I was, you just wouldn’t get out of bed.”
“I do listen. You know, and I have a lot of people offering me advice from all quarters, as you could well imagine, and you should expect as Prime Minister.
“For my job is to stay the course and to be very clear about what I’m here to do and what I’m here to achieve.”