Review Tuesday: A Different Kind of Power by Jacinda Ardern -- #Memoir #Leadership #ReviewTuesday

A Different Kind of Power by Jacinda Ardern

Crown Publishing Group, 2025

On the day that thirty-seven-year-old Jacinda Ardern learned that she was going to be the fortieth Prime Minister of New Zealand, she also discovered she was pregnant.

During the formal opening of Parliament a few weeks later she was so ill with morning sickness that she barely made it through the ceremony without rushing to the bathroom. She met that challenge, though, just as she did the many others of her premiership—most notably the vicious 2019 terrorist attack on two Christchurch mosques and the Covid pandemic. Through a combination of intelligence, stubbornness and compassion, along with a leader’s skill for recognizing and relying on the abilities of her team, she made significant progress in implementing her Labour Party’s liberal policies and unifying her country behind her.

In A Different Kind of Power, Ms. Ardern offers a very personal history, sharing her experiences, her doubts, her mistakes, her vision and her accomplishments with an honesty and humility that’s rare among public figures.

I almost never buy hard cover books. After encountering an interview with the author in my local newspaper, though, I knew I had to read this memoir, as soon as possible. Right now, I need hope. I think many of us do. A Different Kind of Power reminded me that human values matter and that a committed individual can make a real difference.

I’d admired the author when she was PM. I’m not ashamed to say that my political and philosophical views align quite closely with hers. However, I didn’t know anything about her background or her rather unexpected rise to prominence. She grew up in a rural community, in a close-knit family of devout Mormons. When she later left the Mormon church because she disagreed with its views about sexual orientation, her parents and siblings continued to support her. From a young age, she had passionate convictions about many social issues, but she didn’t choose politics. Rather, other people recognized her strengths and encouraged her to use them for the good of her country.

Some readers might find this book boring or trivial, with its accounts of the daily conflicts between the demands of her public role and the pressures of her private life. I found this remarkably ego-free presentation refreshing. So many of today’s leaders are narcissistic to the point of megalomania. The memoir’s title is very apt. While Jacinda Ardern clearly understood the need to present herself as strong, competent and in control, she never succumbed to the illusion that she was some sort of super-woman—even though the media sometimes presented her that way. She wielded her power in softer, more subtle, but perhaps more effective ways than the ranting, self-aggrandizing leaders who currently dominate the world stage.

When Ms. Ardern was in power, her government accomplished remarkable things, including the implementation of widely supported laws that banned assault weapons within ten days of the Christchurch attack. Although she has been castigated in some quarters over her strict Covid policies, the New Zealand fatality rate was one of the lowest in the world, well below 0.1 percent of the population, more than four times lower than the U.S. She increased the availability of education, reduced urban and rural poverty and introduced policies that cut suicides dramatically.

The day she was sworn in as PM, a veteran journalist asked her “What to you want to do?”

Her reply sums up the whole book for me: “I want this government to feel different. I want people to feel that it’s open, that it’s listening and that it’s going to bring kindness back.”

Naive and overly optimistic? Maybe, but she and her team largely accomplished this during their tenure, without a lot of posturing or fanfare.

For me, that’s an inspiration.