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Sandy Burgham is a principal at Play Contemporary Leadership CoLab, a consultancy practice specialising in leadership development and organisational culture. She joins listener.co.nz to write about modern corporate life. Here, in her first This Corporate Life column, Burgham considers whether former PM Dame Jacinda Ardern’s Field Fellowship is really injecting hope or reinforcing polarisation.
OPINION: I was vaguely triggered by the recent announcement that former PM Jacinda Ardern is to lead a new leadership initiative, the Field Fellowship. It has the stated intention to “challenge and change” the status quo of politics.
But it is not to do with the opportunity of giving deep leadership development to emerging leaders and a new generation of talented politicians. As someone who has devoted more than a decade to leadership development, I would applaud this notion. My interest is purely professional, not political, it is also not to do with where I sit politically.
It is more a sneaking suspicion that this may simply reinforce polarisation in the global political landscape, particularly when the fellowship derives from a left-leaning organisation, the Center for American Progress based in Washington, DC, the capital of polarised politics.
Ardern herself is now a polarising figure, which no doubt added to the recent furore over public funding for a film covering her leadership. While she enjoyed unprecedented approval ratings during the time where everything seemed to be “unprecedented”, this trended downward as New Zealand accepted Covid as “the new normal” and wanted a bit more hope and optimism in politics, which ironically the Field Fellowship seeks to inject.
Back then, it felt that Labour was out of ideas of how to get ourselves out of this mess. Ardern was great in the midst of a crisis where, if screening her leadership through the lens of Daniel Goleman’s six leadership styles, we welcomed her commanding and pacesetting leadership, which was balanced out with public displays of democratic leadership (eg, sharing the stage with medico-idol Ashley Bloomfield) and affiliative if-only-I-could-give-you-a-hug leadership, at which she is particularly adept.
In fact, for some, part of the irritation around Ardern is a particular rhetoric around kindness in her affiliative ways. “Kindness” is a type of persona that Ardern has latched onto as part of a “personal brand”. It is a feminised trait, and so as seen as ‘on trend’ and particularly desirable in a patriarchy drowning in masculine traits.
If one so strongly identifies with kindness, then they might reject the notion of ever being unkind. But it can be argued that not allowing unvaccinated people to keep their jobs was unkind (though I personally am on the side of science when it comes to vaccinations). Even treating anti-mandate protesters as if they didn’t matter could be seen as a passive-aggressive expression of unkindness.
My point is not to drag out old baggage but simply to point out that if one is to navigate polarisation in politics, then it is important to deal with the polarisation within.
Ardern’s intent around injecting “hope and optimism” into politics also infers that hope and optimism does not incur in those with other political beliefs. But it could be argued that her old foe on the right is scrambling to inject hope and optimism with some radical reform. In Goleman’s terms, this is called “visionary leadership”, a style to bring out when change is really needed.
In March this year, the World Economic Forum released its risk report, which ranked social polarisation as the world’s third biggest risk we have during the next two years, after misinformation and extreme weather events.
One of the key things missed by political leaders is that if they are to navigate a polarised social context, they must first deal with their own internal polarised beliefs and ways of being, something a mature leader like Nelson Mandela was adept at doing. Research into leadership and adult development tells us there are only a few leaders with the conscious maturity of a Mandela, who was able to unite a polarised country.
One of the fundamental principles my colleagues and I start with when working with leaders is to bring to the surface their own polarised opinions, beliefs and ways of being that lie within the construction of their ego.
This is commonly referred to as shadow work where one explores the direct opposite of one’s persona. The ego prefers to identify with the latter. We all have personas we attach ourselves to and shadows we deny, and it takes real courage for leaders to own up to ever displaying undesirable shadow quality. But if polarisation in families, in workplaces, in society and politics is to be dissipated, then it is critical that leaders at either end of the political spectrum take this reality check.
