Image in the original: ‘Empathy is a kind of strength’: Jacinda Ardern on kind leadership, public rage and life in Trump’s America
In 2023, Jacinda Ardern, then Prime Minister of New Zealand, stepped down from politics.
At just 43 years old, she quietly announced that she no longer had “enough in the tank” to continue.
Two years later, in May 2025, The Guardian published an in-depth interview with her.
It’s a rare and candid reflection, in her own words, on why she left—and what she still believes in.
Here are some key takeaways from that article, which I believe carry important lessons not just about leadership, but about what kind of world we want to live in.
“A very ordinary person in extraordinary circumstances.”
Born in 1980, Jacinda Ardern grew up in a small town on New Zealand’s North Island. Her father was a police officer, her mother a school lunch lady. She and her sister were the first in their family to attend university.
“A very ordinary person who found themselves in a set of extraordinary circumstances.”
This wasn’t modesty for show—it’s her core worldview.
She never saw herself as a superhero with exceptional gifts, just someone trying to do the job in a time of exceptional global crises and grief.
Raised as a Mormon, Ardern once went door to door spreading the gospel. That early training would later shape her gift for dialogue and her resistance to giving up in the face of resistance.
“Empathy is a kind of strength.”
Of all the lines in the interview, this one stands out as her political philosophy in a sentence.
In March 2019, a white supremacist carried out a mass shooting at two mosques in Christchurch.
51 lives were lost. The world watched in horror.
Ardern went immediately to the grieving families, wearing a black headscarf, hugging the survivors, and crying with them.
Then she stood before the world and said:
“They are us.”
She continued:
“Many of those who will have been directly affected by this shooting may be migrants to New Zealand, they may even be refugees here.
They have chosen to make New Zealand their home, and it is their home.”
This was not just a powerful moment—it was followed by real action.
Within 10 days, her government passed strict gun control laws, banning military-style semi-automatic weapons.
Empathy, for her, was never mere sentiment.
It was a source of political courage.
Leading with reason in a time of fear
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Ardern again stood out.
She closed borders early, instituted strong lockdowns, and implemented contact tracing when most other countries hesitated.
“You’ll be attacked for doing too little or you’ll be attacked for doing too much. And I know what I would choose.”
Her choice saved lives.
But it also made her a target.
The rage that made her walk away
In 2022, at the Auckland airport, Ardern was washing her hands in a restroom when a woman came too close and hissed at her:
“Thanks for ruining the country.”
Ardern later said:
“It felt like something new. It was the tenor of the woman’s voice, the way she’d stood so close,
the way her seething, nonspecific rage felt not only unpredictable but incongruous to the situation… What was happening?”
This wasn’t disagreement.
It was fury detached from fact.
She called it “nonspecific rage.”
And it was everywhere—protesters outside Parliament carrying gallows with her name on them, her image drawn with a Hitler mustache, being called “dictator of the year.”
She saw it not as politics, but as the loosening of something deeper in society.
“Something had been loosened worldwide.”
Public servants were being dehumanized.
She felt the shift physically.
That’s when something in her began to break.
Was it burnout? She says no.
Many assumed Ardern resigned due to burnout.
She disagrees.
“Burnout is very different from making a judgment in yourself as to whether or not you’re operating at the level you need to be.”
She left not because she was exhausted, but because she didn’t want to stay just for the sake of power.
“I was probably in power in spite of the power bit.”
“People only see the decisions you made, not the choices you had.”
She tells a haunting story: a young teacher had a bad reaction to the vaccine and lost her job after not taking the second dose.
Ardern met her in a market long after stepping down. The teacher didn’t shout. They talked. They connected.
And Ardern said:
“People only see the decisions you made, not the choices you had.”
This line is one of the most devastating and true things I’ve ever read about leadership.
When empathy is mocked as weakness
Tech billionaire Elon Musk has said that empathy is the “fundamental weakness of Western civilization.”
In response, Ardern offers this:
“Saying loudly and proudly that you believe in empathy and that you’ll govern in that way is an act of strength.”
She still believes that kindness is not incompatible with courage—that in fact, it requires more of it.
Kindness will win the day
Now based in the U.S., Ardern teaches empathetic leadership at Harvard.
She is just 44 years old. And her ideals remain intact.
The Guardian closes the interview with this line:
“Decent, resolutely human, and only 44, Jacinda Ardern still believes modesty, kindness and compassion will win the day.”
And what kind of leader do we want now?
A strongman? A shouter? A man who always has enemies?
Or someone who holds you when you cry?
Ardern’s leadership was different.
It may not fit this moment in history.
But perhaps it’s exactly what this moment needs.
And I, for one, still believe in politics with tears. ■
〈Reference〉
‘Empathy is a kind of strength’: Jacinda Ardern on kind leadership, public rage and life in Trump’s America
https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/may/31/jacinda-ardern-kind-leadership-public-rage-life-trump-america
First published on Substack on Jun 8, 2025 (JST). Archived here as part of the Fabio Caipirinha permanent archive (published on this site: Oct 15, 2026). Images from the original are omitted here pending rights clearance. Original: https://fabiocaipirinha.substack.com/p/politics-with-tears-what-jacinda
Cover image: Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand (CC0, Wikimedia Commons — source)
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