Jacinda Ardern Thinks Politics Needs More Empathy

At a time when global politics is defined by confrontation and “strongman” leadership, former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern believes something different belongs at the centre of power: empathy. Speaking at an International Women’s Day event at the Sydney Opera House on Sunday, Ardern reflected on the values that shaped her six years in office — and why empathy, often dismissed as soft or overly emotional, is in fact a crucial political value.

The idea was simple to her, she told the packed crowd. Entering office in 2017, she knew that how governments treat their people matters just as much, if not more, than what they promise to do. “It’s incredibly important to put out your policy agenda, people need to know what you are going to do and how you are going to do it. But I also had a sense that it mattered how you did things as well.” Ardern recalled having a debate with an MP who tried to tell her she wasn’t ideological. “And it occurred to me that somewhere along the way, the idea of ideology had become a dirty phrase, that if somehow you were ideological, that made you tribal, and if you were tribal, that meant you were blind to working with others or the ideas of compromise,” she said.

“I didn’t agree with that definition. In my mind, you may call it ideology, I call it values. If people didn’t know what you stood for, then how would they know how you’d respond when something you didn’t expect came your way?” Those values, she explained, became the compass for how she wanted to lead — particularly in moments of crisis or uncertainty.

“That’s probably how, along the way, I started talking about kindness,” Ardern said. “I wanted people to know that was a really important value to me, so that if things came along that we didn’t expect, people would have a sense of the values I would lead by.” Central to that philosophy was empathy — something she believes politics has historically glossed over. “Empathy is a political value,” Ardern said, reflecting on the approach she tried to bring to government. 

Her empathy-led leadership, she continued, wasn’t just about rhetoric or symbolic gestures. It was about how institutions treat people in their everyday interactions with the state. She pointed to the kinds of stories that shaped her thinking during her early years in politics — families living in cars during the housing crisis, or parents trying to access social services but being forced to wait for hours without basic facilities for their children. “It felt to me like we’d lost our humanity in the way we were treating one another,” she said. In that sense, empathy wasn’t something separate from policy. Governments, she argued, should be judged not just on their promises but on whether their decisions reflect an understanding of people’s lived experiences. “It’s not an empathetic society if we allow those things to happen,” she said.

Ardern acknowledged that her leadership style wasn’t without its critics. She said she was often asked whether empathy could really succeed in a world where the dominant model of power is, for lack of a better term, “strongman” leadership.

“The short answer to that would be, well yes, the dominant form of leadership is strongman leadership, and look where that’s got us,” she said, reminding the crowd that empathy is a strength that leaders can no longer afford to ignore.