How to get along with everyone

Lessons applicable to life, as taught by John Key.

For nearly all my voting life, John Key has been Prime Minister. The smiling, shoulder-shrugging, former merchant banker was sometimes a larrikin, mostly relaxed, but always carried a hard edge for tough decisions.

This week, he signed off on a decade-long political career – eight years at the top. Love or hate Key’s politics, he was one of the most interesting people in Parliament.

Not because of his back-story, but for the way he reached his decisions, usually stuck with them, and all of his quirks – deliberate or not – that allowed him to carry New Zealanders along to the point where a U-turn was merely another decisive moment.

Key could read a situation and usually always adapt.

In his final speech to Parliament, he told the House of how he learned to operate in the world of politics, as a new backbencher. Roger Sowry gave him an early practical piece of advice.

‘‘He said ‘John, every moment you get, go to the house and watch the politicians who are good in the chamber.’’

Key went a step further. He’d then often call the editors in the press gallery to pick their brains on why that person was effective, or what they thought of a way a particular incident played out (mostly on deadline and bloody impossible to get off the phone, says one).

Those interactions obviously ceased once he became Prime Minister, but I got paid to watch him for at least half his time at the top, and I watched a lot.

It was impossible not to learn a few lessons in turn: Beguiling with the beer test ‘‘He looks like a laugh to have a beer with,’’ it was often said. It was because Key never stood on ceremony with anyone. He was not above pulling a duck face, derping or picking up soap in cell block.

Key played the clown, mostly effectively and occasionally disastrously.

None of these things should really be encouraged, but the sum was someone people immediately knew they could joke with at the bar, and they’d know he wasn’t above them. Get ‘em laughing There’s not much you can’t get away with, if you say it with warmth on your face. He wasn’t known as the smiling assassin for nothing.

The numbers of times he’d deliver a serious statement, face tough questioning and then decide he wanted to move on, so cracked a lame joke that got the room laughing, are too many to count.

He had a knack for half joking, and it wasn’t until the moment had passed one tended to realised he was only half joking.

The last word isn’t the end

By his own admission, he’s a ‘‘guy that likes to be liked’’. There were things often written about Key – justified or not – that he would have hated.

He rarely said a word, picked a fight, or prolonged an argument. Aside from the obvious desire to let a shallow wound scab over, silence in the right places can be helpful on its own – an air of mystery never hurt anyone. The constant gardener Key always knew the power of his words, and exactly how to plant a seed of an idea. A master of teasing tax cuts, a pro at turning a welfare stick into a carrot, he even managed to gently nudge New Zealand into accepting the political need to send troops to Iraq, although few supported it.

Self-assured, he knew he had the popularity that even if he said something not quite right, it would send people in his office scrambling to ensure it was, in fact, the case by the time he was next asked.