Empathy, Courage, and Leadership: A Conversation with the Former Mayor of Christchurch

I'd like to ship you a free copy of my book, Habits of High Performers. If you come and join the 2026 goal setting workshop, I will ship you.

One of these today.

The link is in the notes. Please come and join me to set up the very best 2026 you could imagine. If you've set up goals in the past or New Year's resolutions and they haven't substantiated, I'm here to help you across all the key pillars of your life, nail your goals. I'll see you there.

There were reports of a shooting. It sort of knocks you. Things can get under your skin. Most people know when I'm pretty upset. You can't fake empathy. I had an extraordinary team of people around me. I became very aware of sexism and the impact that it had on women. Putting a token woman on a board is not a good thing to do. I just and reimagined them as the two old men from the Muppets.

Something I've never said in the hundreds of interviews that I have conducted. You are the reason that I'm sitting here today.

Why?

Welcome to Lead On Purpose. I'm James Laughlin, former seven time world champion and now international keynote speaker and high performance leadership trainer. Each week I bring you an inspiring leader or expert to help you lead your life and business on purpose. Thanks for helping us be a consistently number one ranked show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. I hope you enjoy today's show.

This next guest joined me in the studio here in Christchurch and if it wasn't for her, truly, I wouldn't be here in New Zealand and I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing today. Leanne Delzil did something very special that impacted my life almost 20 years ago. She is an incredible leader, awe inspiring, is a lifelong learner. She worked in central government as an MP and she was also the mayor of Christchurch through some of our most challenging times. Here, look, please sit back and enjoy the show.

Leanne, a huge welcome to the Lead On Purpose podcast.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

I'm so glad to have you. Yeah, we've got lots to talk about, but I want to start off by saying something I've never said in the hundreds of interviews that I have conducted. You are the reason that I'm sitting here today.

Why?

Well, I discovered this.

You and I were at a strategy meeting with the Christchurch Foundation.

Yes, I remember that. Yes.

And we all had to introduce ourselves and say what who we were and what our background was. And I started Telling people. Well, the reason I came to New Zealand was to play pipe band drums and to help a Kiwi group become the first world champions. And I then said I was given a visa by the New Zealand immigration, which was a talent and culture and sport visa.

Yes, I know that one.

Who was the person that got that visa across the line?

I did.

You did.

When I was Minister of Immigration and must have been 19. No, 2003, I think.

Yeah. Like in 2005.

Right. Okay.

That was a game changer for my life.

Right.

To get out of Northern Ireland, a place that's beautiful and that I love, but a place where my life would be nowhere near what it is today here in New Zealand. So that visa meant the world to me.

Wow.

And then fast forward many years, it took me quite some time, I became a permanent resident and then I was standing on stage receiving my citizenship from the then mayor, Leanne Del.

Oh, really? Yes. I didn't remember that.

Yeah, real full circle.

Right.

So it's. It's just a privilege to have you here.

Oh, thank you. That's lovely.

Well, thank you.

Yeah. It's amazing, actually, that talent visa was something that I felt very passionately about because sometimes you have rules and regulation and. And government, you know, which are designed for a particular purpose. But if you look at the purpose, you ask yourself, well, why are we wanting to know X, Y and Z? The only things the government's interested in is that a person's healthy, that they're not going to be a burden on the system, as it were.

And that they're not an ex murderer from deep down in the past. We're interested in their character and their health status and that's it. If employers or organizations are prepared to take the risk on things of whether you're as qualified as you say you are and all of those other things, then that's down to them. And we took a risk and paid off 100%, no question.

Good. I'm glad. Well, you know, for me, there was no way I would have got it.

I'm so thrilled. Yeah.

No, it's amazing. And I'm sure it's added to the diversity of New Zealand in terms of the backgrounds and the people and the talents that they brought with them.

Yes. Because we didn't just leave it with employers. That was the primary motivation. And I think.

One of the big companies, well, company here in Christchurch was actually one of the first companies, actually was the first company to get accredited, and that was Tate Electronics. And so there's kind of a Large.

Sort of industry that kind of goes under the radar here in Christchurch. We write more code here than anywhere else in New Zealand.

It's got an amazing ecosystem around startups and, you know, so, so it's got all of this going on, a lot of technology, a lot of elaborately manufactured.

Technology.

Elaborately transformed technology. Get it the right way. And so we've got all of this, we've got a manufacturing base, we've got all of these things that often people just don't see because they think of us as a town that's sitting on the, the great plains of Canterbury and a service town to the agricultural sector. But we're a lot more than that. And so making it easier for people to bring talent, that was the primary motivation. But then we realized that there were a whole lot of people that would be in arts and sports and different areas that didn't fit the traditional employment arrangements. And so we opened it up to them as well.

Amazing. And to me that's like creativity, it's innovation, future thinking. I mean, I would have ended up maybe in Canada or somewhere in Europe, but because of that specific visa, I came here on a holiday initially. Yeah, I thought I never want to leave. And so I realized I could do this.

Fantastic.

Yeah.

So well done.

Excellent.

Now let's shine the spotlight on your decision making.

Right.

You decided to go down a life of politics. That is a huge decision with consequences and ramifications and it has different obviously impact on your life. What made you want to stand up and be heard and step into politics?

Wow. It was actually a total fluke. So I hate to shatter your dream there, but I, I was, well, I, I, I studied law at university 40 years ago, graduated and I started working in the union movement. I worked for a hotel hospital workers union which represented people in the, in the service industries. And we, and yeah, it was, it was ironic that I'd sort of arrived there at, I don't know, age 23, 24. And by the time I was 28, I was running for the secretary's position, which was the senior position in the, in the organization. And.

Then a couple of years later there was a sequence of events which led to the then Prime Minister stepping out, just stepping down just a matter of weeks before an election and announcing he wasn't going to run again. And all of a sudden a few people started looking at me saying, well, are you going to run for the seat? And originally I said, no, I'm not interested. But I had enough people persuade me to put my name Forward. And I got selected on the 19th of September, 1990. So it's a significant date because the 19th of September is actually women's Suffrage Day. So I've always had that as an anniversary of my selection.

That's amazing.

But the only reason it was the 19th of September, because the selection meeting was actually on the 18th, but it went after midnight. So technically I was selected on the 19th and the election was on the 27th of October. That's like.

Five weeks. And it was just a short, sharp, short, sharp campaign.

And all of a sudden I was a Member of Parliament. And if you'd asked me at the beginning of that year in 1990, was I going to be a Member of Parliament by the end of the year, I would have said no.

But it happened. Something changed your mind. And I think that's what I'd like to just jump into for a second. You went from, that's not for me. To all these people going, we need you to do that. What flipped the switch? Were you like, you know what? Okay, I'll give it a crack.

Well, I guess I sat down with another Member of Parliament, Larry Sutherland, who since passed away, became a very, very close friend, and his wife, Verna. And I was then married to my first husband. And the two of us went over and talked to them about what life was like, because, you know, it is. I'd only relatively recently got married, and I. I wasn't sure about.

What it would be like. And so we had a talk. And I remember Larry. Larry also had a union background. And I remember him saying to me that it was like when. When you dealt with problems that union members would come with you, come to you with. They would be narrowly focused around employment issues. He said that when you become an mp, then the range of issues that people will come and talk to you about just expands exponentially. And he said, though, that the skill set that you develop in. And working through issues with union members, negotiating, advocacy, all of those skills, they all come into play in a parliamentary sense. So it was kind of. It became something that I. I hadn't really considered doing to something that I knew I could do. And then I was. I mean, I was relatively politically aware, but I. I knew that the incoming national government, as it was then, was going to decimate the Labor Party. And I knew that they were going to change employment law. So the Labor Relations act, or whatever it was back in the day, that was going to change, and we knew it was going to change significantly. But even I wouldn't have predicted what they actually did. But I felt that I could take my skills and knowledge and experience that I'd had from the union movement and my legal background into a parliamentary setting, and that's what I did.

It's incredible. And in that journey. So we rewind to, say, the 90s, what was your experience around discrimination, gender bias? Did you experience that in your professional career?

Hey, James, here.

I wanted to take a quick moment to let you know about something. Look, I get asked to deliver keynotes and workshops for teams and companies all over the world, from London to Antarctica, from America to Australasia, from armies to small businesses to large corporates to sports teams. But I go in and deliver keynotes around the mindset of high performers, around the habits of high performers, about how we navigate change. If you would like me to come and speak to your team or speak at your conference or deliver a bespoke workshop, please get in touch with my team. Carolinejlochlan.com will be able to help. I'll also make sure that we put that in the show notes.

Well, it was interesting because I'd started in the union movement.

I became very aware there of discrimination in the workplace. I became very aware of sexism and the impact that it had on women working in the hospitality sector. A lot of women could feel very vulnerable with aggressive employers. Sometimes if you're in a small business and you're pretty upfront and personal with an employer working alongside, then life can get pretty uncomfortable. If there's been, you know, a crossing of a line, and there was a reasonable amount of that back then, it has improved over time to the extent that people can now speak about it. But if you think of how long it's taken to get to the MeToo moment.

You know, it always feels like that there might be several steps forward and then there's several steps back, and you're never quite sure about where you might sit at any one time. I mean, I remember in the.

70S, they had the.

Women'S conventions and there was a lot of focus, and the fol, as it was then, the Federation of Labor, they were very focused on women's rights, and there were women's branches and women's organizations or women's councils being set up around the country.

And there was representation being put on the executive of women. I mean, I remember getting elected to the National Council of Women. There were only three other women on it.

Wow. And that's.

And one was there because they were appointed from the Women's Council, and one was the vice president, Sonia Davies and the other one was.

One of the other trades councils had elected a woman, so. And all the rest were men. And the average age dropped, you know, to about 70 when I arrived.

Wow. It's interesting you say that. So I spent a lot of time in boardrooms and with executive leadership teams around your street. New Zealand, Australia. I still see too many biases on those boards. I see too many males, I see too many, you know, 60 plus. I'm just like, that's. We need some diversity here. We need diversity of gender, of age, of color.

Yeah.

And I'm trying to say to them it's going to be an advantage.

It is an advantage. Every bit of research that's been done on this, this is a former Minister of Women's affairs speaking. Love it. But every single piece of research that has been done shows that diversity brings more profit to your business. So even if you're just looking at it from a bottom line point of view and you don't care about equity, then it pays off big time. And that's because if you're all kind of the same around the table, that encourages group think. And when you're all wrong, you're all wrong, you know, 100%. And.

Whereas if you've got diversity, different backgrounds, different genders, different.

Perspectives, you know, and that comes from race as well, you know, people's life experiences, they. I don't know, there are some people who just, you know, sort of your detectors.

Yeah.

And you need someone like that sitting on a door on a board who's prepared to call it out. Now, putting a token woman on a board is not a good thing to do. And there's been a lot of research, again, done on what is a minimum. So you, you know, if you, if you, if you're talking.

I don't know, different board sizes, I guess, but. But they say that you need at least three women on a board to. To start to change the dynamic of how the board operates.

That makes sense. 100. And it's interesting that I just don't see it changing fast enough yet here, but hopefully it will and we get more people at the table.

But isn't this strange? I mean, I was having these conversations over 20 years ago, 30 years ago.

What do you think keeps it? What do you think is holding us back?

Well, I think that every time those that benefit from the status quo start to fear losing their position, something. It's a power thing, something tips. Yeah.

Yeah, I would have to agree with that. I've seen it in different circumstances.

There is an exception that. It's called the glass cliff. Do you know about that? No.

Tell me about that.

So you know the glass ceiling.

Yes.

You know, where women gaze up through there? Well, the glass ceiling is when a company's about to.

Go off the cliff, it's about to fall over, and that is the time that they'll employ a woman chief executive.

Wow.

Wow. Or a woman care of the board. Wow. Yeah. And actually, those that do do better than those that don't. That's amazing. So there are a lot of women who have actually salvaged, you know, what would otherwise be a disaster. But. But they wouldn't have got the job if the company had been doing really well. Wow. You know, it's just. Yeah, there's a lot of that.

Yeah, it needs to change. It's interesting. And I imagine you have met hundreds of thousands of people in your leadership positions. What have you learned about human behavior over the years?

Well, quite a lot. I mean, there are. I mean, I wouldn't make judgments. I just make some observations. But there are some people that will behave in a particular way because of who's looking at them rather than how they really feel themselves.

And you can usually tell.

Always.

I've always noticed that anyway.

Why do you think they do that?

I don't know. Sometimes it can be because of positions that they hold. You know, I've always said that leadership isn't a position that you hold. It's a mark of character. And it's. And. Yeah. And so. But I've met people of great character. I've been very fortunate in that regard.

And do you think character is a trait that you're born with or it's one that you. You shape as you go through life?

I think it's both.

Right.

So. But I mean, you know that this is the nature versus nurture argument. I'm not an expert on this, but it does seem to me that if you grow up, you know. You know, there are certain things that happen when you're growing up that. That do shape your character and what you're going to develop into, but it can also be the basis for sending you off into two completely different directions. And sometimes it can be a not so good direction, and other times it can be very good.

And sometimes people will fight against what. What they've had instilled into their. Into their character as they're growing up. But I'm thinking for myself, one of the advantages that I had was that as.

A member of a large family, I've got three brothers and three sisters. Both my parents wanted all of us to go to university, so there was no sense of discrimination in that regard.

And quite often I would find, particularly people who are slightly older than I am, their parents wouldn't necessarily single them out for, for a university qualification as opposed to, you know, something else. Having.

And, and maybe treating the boys differently. Yeah, yeah. Setting one set of expectations for the boys and another for the girls. Well, I didn't have any of that. Yeah. You know, and it's a good thing.

That'S shaped your life hugely.

I think that has really helped.

You know what I really admire about you. So we were chatting before we hit record. So you got your law degree 40 years ago, but this year you're going to go back to the same university and you're going to get your Master's.

Yes.

That is the ultimate like, learner's mindset, like a lifelong learner.

Well, lifelong learning is a thing, you know, and it's really important that we never close our minds. I always say that an open mind isn't an empty mind, but we should never close our minds and we should never, never think that we know everything. And I think that there's some benefit in.

Study the sort of, the research side of things, because I haven't done that before. I've got an undergraduate degree in law, doing international law and politics and, you know, I'm sort of freaking out about dissertations and various other things and working out what I want to research. But there's a lot that's fascinated me in my life and this will be an opportunity to do something a little bit deeper with it. It's good.

Oh, that's amazing. And you said a moment ago, and it was really refreshing, you said, james, I still don't really know what I want to do. And like, that's so great to hear, like more of us need to hear that. You don't need to have all the answers about what you're talking about.

Oh, no, no, no, you don't. And I often say that to kids, you know, when I go in and speak and things, you know, I say, you know, I, I left school at I, the end of, end of the sixth form year, what do they call that? Year 12. And I.

And I had no idea what I wanted to do. And then my mum said my school closed. I didn't want to start a, a, a year 13 at a new school and make new friends. I couldn't be bothered. And so Mum said, why don't you go and work for a year before you go to university. So. And then she said, there's a job in the paper for a stamping and registration clerk, a job that doesn't exist anymore in a law firm. And your auntie used to do that job down in Dunedin. And I said, oh, I'll apply for that. So I did. And I thought, oh, law. I could do law. And that's the only reason that I did a law degree. I had no idea what I wanted to do.

I love that fluidity that you kind of roll with it, essentially. Let's see what's happening. Have you always been like that and carried that through your life? You've kind of just seen what can. Comes your way in terms of, hey, that's an opportunity. Oh, that's interesting. I might pursue that.

Usually I need to be pushed because, you know, I did. I did grow up with the standard imposter syndrome of the. That the Catholic Church is very good at imposing upon young, impressionable minds.

Yes, definitely. Well, growing up in Northern Ireland, I'm very familiar with that.

Yeah.

And imposter syndrome is a real thing. When you look at the psychology of it, the. Is as a syndrome that.

Yeah.

Many people, it holds them back.

Yes.

How did you then step up? You know, you've been in Parliament, I'm sure you've seen all sorts of things unfold. How did you step up into that arena and then deal with some of these individuals who were power hungry, who did want to suppress? I'm sure you came across that in your career in Parliament.

Yeah, I mean, because I started so young, I had a lot of experience, you know, in the house, you know, sort of. I mean, in the debating chamber, I felt relatively confident in that environment, you know, And I mean, some of the older guys.

On the other side of the house, you know, they. They used to chip away. And then I just reimagined them as the two old men from the Muppets. You know, I love it. And then, you know, and then, then, then. I mean, because, you know, things can get under your skin.

Yeah.

But it's best in that environment not to. Not to let it show. And that's a skill. No, I don't always do so well at that. I think most people know when I'm pretty upset about something that they've said or done. So. Yeah, the environment itself.

Look, there's one side of it because. And I've got quite strong views on this and people will say that I'm being political, but when a disaster happens, like the earthquakes here in Christchurch, there's no room for government and opposition. Actually, there's a lot of room for a collaborative, or they call it radical collaboration now.

A collaborative approach that actually brings parties together and enables people that have got knowledge and skills and experience to bring to the table to actually be part of the recovery. And, you know, I felt that.

There was a. Quite a lack of understanding and the Minister for Earthquake recovery, in terms of how he approached.

How he approached it, it became very political, very divisive, you know, which was I felt unfair and actually unfair to the people who I was elected to represent and I thought was able to represent quite well, but would have been able to represent better if I'd been in a position to contribute more to the decision, not the decision making. I don't mind governments making decisions. They're not going to give it away. But actually if you're engaged in the decision making, then it's. You get better decisions.

Well, it's truly collaborative and it represents all sides.

Right, yeah, that's important. I think it is. I think it's the other thing that's frustrating for me is this complete inability to learn lessons from things that have already happened.

So what I call dumb tax, by the way. So when you.

What do you call it?

Dumb tax. So when you make a mistake and you go, okay, I learned a few lessons, and then down the line you make the same mistake again, you're paying dumb tax.

Right.

We want to avoid paying dumb tax in life.

All right, okay, I'll go with that. Dumb tax. Very good.

We don't want to be making that as governments. That's because that's got massive ramifications.

It has huge ramifications. But, you know, every time something happens, I think.

We should be obliged to review what's happened, actually analyze everything that you'd want to pull from that. And look, I use the example of they call them mortality reviews in hospitals, and essentially that's a very deep dive into a death that's happened in a hospital. And they've got all of the people that were involved, they're questioned and there are discussions and anyway, they come up with a report that is a very good, good explanation of what's occurred. And, you know, but nobody can. Nobody is held to blame. Yeah, they are held to account, but not to blame. And they are. That they are exempt. You know, all of the stuff that comes out of the mortality review is not capable of being used for prosecution or anything like that. So you get to the truth of the matter. And I said this in my valedictory speech that I had been.

Involved in a particular issue where I'd ended up going to the coroner's court with a group of people whose family members had died at the hospital. Not to do with the earthquake, but before then.

And I said that there were lawyers there representing everyone. There was a lawyer for the hospital, there was one for the, for the doctors, one for the nurses, one for the training interns, one for the blah, blah, blah, you know, like everyone had a lawyer except the family members of the person who died. And I thought that that was wrong. And I. And it shouldn't be.

It shouldn't be a.

Subject to legal aid because it shouldn't be based on.

The family members income. It should because I said the client in this case is not the family member. It's the truth, of course, and the truth is in the public interest. And so that's why they should be represented. But the point that I was trying to make was that.

We have to find ways of learning lessons that enable us to look back, not to blame, but to learn.

That's so powerful and it's interesting because I look at your career and in your leadership role, you've had to navigate some really large adversity and the world looks to you in a lot of ways around how do we become more resilient, not only as cities but as individuals. So when you think of resilience, what does that mean?

Well, resilience is not an end point. I'm not the only person to have said that.

And the reason I say it's not an endpoint is that we should always continue to aspire to be resilient. And it is a process of becoming more resilient, but you do not, there's no end to it. So you can build resilience in infrastructure. The infrastructure, you know, the techniques for increasing resilience and infrastructure will change over time, they'll get better and there'll be new products developed and things will be enabled that weren't available in the past.

That helps to build resilience, but it's not an endpoint. You don't say, I've got a particularly. I've got a resilient piece of. I've got a particularly resilient piece of infrastructure, but it's not an end point. And it's the same with communities. Communities can build resilience, but actually resilience is built on the social capital, the relationships that people have with each other in their local communities, the relationships their local community has with decision makers, councils, governments, whatever. And it's the strength of those relationships? Can they call upon each other in times of need? We found out that, you know, after the earthquakes that actually the strength of our neighborliness was really the measure of.

Our resilience and capacity for, you know, getting through those initial hurdles for the long haul. That requires a deeper relationship with the decision makers and a much more engaged approach.

With the government as people build their own sense of capacity back again.

I did read.

An item that was written by the. The Prime Minister's chief science advisor at the time, and he said that.

That the earthquake or any crisis like that is a.

Is a destabilizing event. You know.

Sort of knocks you and. But, but to. You can't make the recovery. Add to that sense of.

You know, losing your ability to do things for yourselves. You know, you've got to build that back up. And that's why empowering that was. It was. It's a disempowering event. And so empowerment is the antidote.

That's a solution there.

Yeah, yeah.

What about from a personal point of view, your own resilience when you are the leader and something horrific happens, an event on your watch, how do you respond in the, in the immediate moments?

I kind of depends which one.

You know, what the issue is. Because sometimes, I mean, the one event that.

You know, that I'll never forget and I do get a bit emotional when I think about it, is the 15th of March.

Which was.

An attack by a white supremacist terrorist on a group of Muslims and two mosques in Christchurch at their time of prayer. So they had gone for Friday prayers and he burst into the first one. He killed 51 people, injured many others, and impacted the lives of everyone who was present at both mosques and their families and their wider community. And the whole of the city felt it. So, to be honest with you, when I first was told that there were reports of a shooting at the mosque, I didn't believe was just unbelievable, literally. And as time went on and I started to realize just how serious it was.

You know, it was, yeah, there was a real sense of, well, I don't know, helplessness, this.

What can you do? Which isn't a very good leadership thing to say.

This is a human experience, though, right?

It is. I felt it very much so because, you know, I had friends in the, in the community and.

You know, and.

You just don't know where this is going to go.

But I did know that people would want to come and express their feelings of sorrow.

And so we didn't really want to direct them to the mosques, because they would be crime scenes and the police would have them cordoned off. So we suggested a wall by the Botanic Gardens, which had the hospital in the background. And so it was kind of a. There was a connection, a place of connection. Well, it suddenly became the backdrop for this overwhelming expression of support and compassion from the city to.

A group of citizens who had.

Been attacked in this way. And.

The response from the wider community was incredible.

And it was love. Like, all I experienced was this outpouring of love and compassion. And what can we do?

Well, it was one week later when the.

Call to prayer. So it was a Friday afternoon, and.

The Muslim community had indicated that people could come. But it wasn't as though people were invited, you know, and they came in their thousands. It was. It was the most.

It was probably the most.

Moving and cathartic moment.

Of a city's response to such a travesty. And.

You know, we were very fortunate as a city and as a country that we had the Prime Minister that we did at the time.

And how do you feel about your response, taking those moments where you're like, okay, take a breath now I've got a front up. How do you feel that you responded, looking back on it?

Well, the. On the Saturday morning, we'd got as much information as we possibly could, and I did a press conference, and I've played it back since. Not recently, but I was.

I felt that I.

Was able to communicate factually what had occurred, but at the same time to, you know, to express all of the things that needed to be expressed and to really.

In many respects, it was very much a reinforcement of what the Prime Minister had said the night before, but it was.

It was. It was. It was to.

I don't know. It was.

I don't know. I can't really answer the question.

Also, it's a really difficult thing to think back on. Look, I was a member of the community. I lived a few minutes from the mosque, and seeing your response gave me hope. I was like, oh, my God, that's what I needed to hear. Like, I could see that you were deeply moved. I heard the facts, but I could also see that, hey, we have to move forward. We have to find a way to actually step into the future together. And you should be deeply proud of how you responded. I don't know how you did that in such a short space of time, but certainly as a member of the community looking to you as a leader, I was like, you did exactly what I hoped for today.

Well, I had a great team, too. So that's the other thing. And I think, you know, I know that, you know, you'll talk to people who've held leadership positions and they will, they will inevitably say that there is never one person on their own. And I had an extraordinary team of people around me.

And some very good leadership in the, the police and the district Health board and, and others. And we were able to connect and support each other as well.

So when you reflect back on that moment and your response and looking at what unfolded since, what was the greatest lesson you've learned from that?

I think that, and this is not.

So much me, but also the Prime Minister.

Is that.

Empathy is an absolute. You know, you need to.

Look, there isn't a member of the Muslim community locally that did not think that Jacinda Ardern was their prime minister. She was their Prime Minister, not.

Someone else's Prime Minister. She was their prime minister and she was there for them and she understood exactly how they felt. I mean, I remember going into the.

Community college with her.

And.

She spoke. The place was still. I mean, there was a lot of noise when we walked in and they quietened for her. She spoke.

She, there was, there is just no question that she was there for them. And, you know, I, I, that's why I say that we are so lucky to have had her as our prime minister. But for me, the interesting thing about the word empathy, my sister always used to have a joke that she used in debates, which was.

Sincerity is your finest asset. Once you can fake that, you've got it made. I love it so. But the thing with empathy, empathy is like sincerity. You can't fake it. It's authentic. It is, by definition, authentic. And that's the only reason that that other one is a joke, because you know that you can't fake it and you can't fake empathy. And they understood that. Everyone understood that. We all understood that. The media understood that, and that's what was communicated here and across the world. And I.

You know, have traveled a bit and I've spoken to leaders in other cities around the world. And that sense of empathy rippled out across the world, and people gathered in town squares and different places and lit candles for those who had been lost here. And that, to me, is the most extraordinary.

Result of something that could have been completely the opposite and could have incited retaliation.

Absolutely. And I think what I'm hearing and what I felt as a citizen at the time, the retaliation was a real thing that we were all kind of almost waiting like, what's going to happen? But the difference was leadership. It came down to leading on purpose, came down to yourself here, right on the ground, and it came down to Jacinda. And that's probably two of your. For both of you, two of your most memorable leadership moments, I imagine, very deeply harrowing, but incredibly defining as well. So well done. Can I ask you one last question?

Please.

I like to ask this at the end for all guests. So for a moment, join me. We're going to fast forward into the future, many, many years into the future, and you're highly aware that it's your last day here on Earth. And a very young person comes into the room. They might be 10 or 11 years old, and you really care for them, you love them, and they say, leanne, how do I lead my life on purpose? What would you say to them?

I would say.

Lead your life with courage. Don't be afraid to give things a go. Don't be afraid to open your mind to new ideas. Don't be afraid to let people in.

You know, sometimes that can take courage, especially if your own position is different from others. You know, work these things through. But courage of your convictions, it's important.

The empathy, learn to walk in other people's shoes. I think it's really important that.

That it isn't just.

An academic view. It's a true understanding of where people are from and where you might travel together.

I love it. Thank you for sharing that. And I can see in your journey, you've had courage and you've taken big swings and you've jumped in to things that you're uncomfortable with and maybe had that imposter syndrome around. So to me, you're the epitome of leading life purpose. And I just want to say thank you for taking the time to share that with us today.

Thank you.

Thank you. That was awesome.

Thank you.

Well done.

Thanks for tuning in today and investing in your own personal leadership. Please hit that subscribe button. And I'd love if you'd leave me a rating and review. I've got some amazing guests lined up for you in the coming weeks and leaders, it's that time to get out there, lead your life on purpose.