This is an interview-style transcript excerpt from a James Laughlin YouTube event (recorded Aug 31, 2023) featuring Chris Luxon. In this chunk Luxon and Laughlin discuss studying leaders as models, and Luxon reflects on his New Zealand identity—born in Bishopdale, Christchurch—family background (parents left school early), being first in his family to attend university, and his global career (including work at Unilever and time living/working in Australia, England, and the USA). Luxon emphasizes adopting strengths from other countries while keeping ‘New Zealandness’ central to his leadership.
Questions this video answers
Bishopdale, Christchurch.
They left school at about 15–16.
Yes — he states he was the first in his family to go to university.
Unilever.
August 31, 2023.
Chapters
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And for the listeners as well. We're talking about leaders. And I said, you know, who do you model yourself after? And you said, james, look, I pick a leader.
Yeah.
And for a year. Yep, I'll go deep on them. And I've done the same. And it's been. It's been amazing. I used to get autobiographies of different people and, yeah, I went deep on Mandela that first year. Yeah.
Great.
And it was brilliant. I learned so much about him and I was able to apply it to myself.
Well, you learn that all these people have lived a life.
Yeah.
But they've achieved amazing things. They have the same 24 hours that you and I have, but they choose to, obviously, do a lot more with it than what we do. And so I've always been a big fan of, like, let's study leaders and actually work out what they did well, what they didn't do so well, and then take that forward. And actually, you don't have to go through that whole experience yourself, ideally because you've internalized the lessons from a life well lived and a leadership example. So, yeah, it's awesome you've been doing that. It's great.
It's been great. It's a lot of fun.
Yeah. Good.
Now, look, in a matter of months, you could be our Prime Minister and that's incredible. I love it and that's really exciting. So I want to ask you, what does it mean to you to be a New Zealander?
Yeah, I mean, I think being a Kiwi has defined my whole life, actually. I am incredibly grateful and blessed to be a New Zealander. I think it's given me a perspective on the world and who I am and what I'm about and a way of being that I think has served me incredibly well, I think. Leaving here as a boy. I was born in Bishopdale, Christchurch. I had young parents who left school at 15, 16. I went the first in my family to go to university. I joined a big global company, Unilever, and I got to see and experience the world. And as I took, as a Kiwi kid going out in the world, I learned to go to Australia. And you had to harden up and be a bit tougher and more direct to deal with Australians. So it's not personal, but just a bit more direct and straight up. When I got to England, it was slightly different. It was all about the intellectual underpinnings of your argument and making sure you had good rational justification for what you were doing. And there were some intellectual besting that would go on and the culture there. And then I went to America, and of course, it's a place that just prioritizes execution and getting things done. And so, you know, and each of those places have real strengths and real.
Things that they don't do so well either. You see the good and the best, the good and the bad of both of all those country systems and the cultures, but you actually take those little bits from your experience and put it into your own kit bag as a leader and. But keeping my New Zealandness at the core and being able to be successful in those places was actually really important. So I think as Kiwis, we're really grounded. You know, we've got good general skills, we're deeply relational often. And so the things that you try and learn and pick up as I learned about the importance of process, I learned about giving and receiving good feedback. Some things that we don't do so well sometimes as well, 100%.
And what I love about that is that you are a grounded Kiwi who grew up here, who understands the people, the quality planet, the country that we're in here. But you've got a global perspective. And I think as a leader, we need that. We need to have someone who's got a truly global take on things, because we're a player. We're a player globally.
Yeah, we're in a big world of 8 billion people, 195 other countries, you know, and there's 5 million of us incredibly talented people. I mean, I genuinely feel so optimistic and encouraged about the future that New Zealand could have in the next 50 years. I don't think there's any reason why we can't do well in the world. You know, one, we have incredibly creative, innovative, determined, passionate people that are world beaters. Two, you know, if you were going to build a country anywhere in the world, you put it bang smack in the middle of the Asia Pacific region with all the rapidly growing middle classes of America, Asia and Australia. And, you know, we've got a country that's been built on a rule of law and the Westminster system and has good, strong institutions. And so, you know, those give you the fundamentals to say, look, hey, I appreciate things, people are frustrated, but at the moment, our future, there's no reason why it can't be great. And there's no reason why New Zealand can't do well in the world at an economic level, a social level, an environmental level over the next 50 years. And that's what's motivated me to make the transition that I've made into political life because that's what I care deeply about. I want this country to realise its potential. I want every kid to be able to have the opportunity that I had, to be able to go out and to be successful and to make your Kiwi dream, whatever that was for you, a reality. If you. You're prepared to work hard in the best country on planet Earth, you should be able to get ahead. And that's what it's about. So that's partly why, you know, that's why I want to be Prime Minister, because I really want to be able to get the conditions set up so that New Zealanders can flourish.
