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"'It takes courage to be an empathetic leader. And I think if anything the world needs empathetic leadership now, perhaps more than ever.' Jacinda Ardern Jacinda Ardern was swept to office in 2017 on a wave of popular enthusiasm dubbed 'Jacindamania'. In less than three months, she rose from deputy leader of the opposition to New Zealand's highest office. Her victory seemed heroic. Few in politics would have believed it possible; fewer still would have guessed at her resolve and compassionate leadership, which, in the wake of the horrific Christchurch mosque shootings of March 2019, brought her international acclaim. Since then, her decisive handling of the COVID-19 pandemic has seen her worldwide standing rise to the point where she is now celebrated as a model leader. In 2020 she won an historic, landslide victory and yet, characteristically, chose to govern in coalition with the Green Party. Jacinda Ardern: Leading with Empathy carefully explores the influences - personal, social, political and emotional - that have shaped Ardern. Peace activist and journalist Supriya Vani and writer Carl A. Harte build their narrative through Vani's exclusive interviews with Ardern, as well as the prime minister's public statements and speeches and the words of those who know her. We visit the places, meet the people and understand the events that propelled the daughter of a small-town Mormon policeman to become a committed social democrat, a passionate Labour Party politician and a modern leader admired for her empathy and courage."--Provided by publisher.… (more)
Media reviews
And I don't take issue, either, with the overarching thesis. Ardern is an unusually empathetic leader. She has shown an extraordinary ability to deploy compassion and steel in dealing with crisis. It's really no wonder there's that queue of people wanting to write about her.
It's just the whole exercise is so utterly uncritical, fawning, cloying. At every other page, my shoulder blades clenched together. The repeated references to "Aunty Jacinda", as if that’s something people say. The weird elisions. Not just Churchill, but also: "Through Ardern, New Zealand has shown a kind of moral leadership that it once did in granting women suffrage." Or: "Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern may well be remembered in much the same way as her hero, the great Ernest Shackleton from the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration."
To be fair, Supriya Vani is not pretending to write anything but a laudatory, adoring book. In a post published on "Writer's Digest" last week, she offers her advice on "How to Write a Biography of a World Leader". The very first step is this: "Before writing the biography, make sure you can resonate with the qualities of the leader to ensure you're writing a positive biography." No doubt, she's done that. "Awkward" doesn't begin to cover it.