What Efeso tells us about leadership
The world is awash with leadership books with no discernible improvement in leadership. Going by results, the more that is written on the topic, the worse the leaders. Imagine a world without Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu, Donald Trump, or Yehiya Sinwar, who ordered Hamas’ outrageous spree of murder and sexual violence last October.
If Sinwar released the Israeli hostages and fled into exile with the remaining Hamas leadership, Israel would stop bombing. If the corrupt career politician in the Knesset, Netanyahu, put his country ahead of himself, and stopped genuflecting to his racist far-right base, the bombing would stop.
Without Putin, tens of thousands of Ukrainians would still be alive. Alexei Navalny would not lie dead in an Arctic prison. He would contest this year’s election in Russia, and modernity and civilisation there would have a voice.
The fate of Poles, Finns, Estonians, Lithuanians and Latvians on the Russian border would not depend on who wins the US election.
We are living on the edge of an historic precipice, in which bad leaders around the world this year are seeking to drag us into darkness. In Europe, parties descended from fascist movements are surging. Marine Le Pen is the frontrunner to be France’s next President. The AfD in Germany is polling around 20%, behind the conservatives but well ahead of any of the three parties in the centre-left governing coalition.
The appeal of illiberal cultural conservatives, such as Victor Orban of Hungary and Giorgia Meloni in Italy, is that they speak to working class voters: They fluently oppose wealth inequality and support domestic jobs in locallyowned businesses. They thunder about crumbling healthcare and schools, and promise to blow up the system and rebuild it in your favour. They sound nothing like the austere, greed is good capitalists of Reagan and Thatcher.
Their trick is their story of blame
– elites. Outsiders. Global rules and institutions. Immigrants. Bad leaders divide. You cannot help people by bullying the weakest. What bad leaders have in common is not ideology or policy, but selfinterest. They seek power or cling on for their own ends.
The good leader is motivated by the interests of the people they serve. I thought about this distinction as I mourned my friend Efeso Collins this week. He too spoke to “the square pegs, the misfits, the forgotten, the unlovable, the invisible”.
The rough edges of this preacher-politician had not be sandpapered away by the politics of diplomacy. He was the progressive populist we need. When we lost Efeso, we didn’t just lose a leader, we lost the leader he would have become.
A few days before he passed, I had chaired a warm discussion between Jim Bolger and Helen Clark. Between them, the pair led New Zealand for 20 years.
Their advice to their successors is that delivery is everything. You are not there to feel good. You are there to do good. Delivering means doing your homework. Design pragmatic, evidence-based policies in opposition so you are ready to go in government. Know why you are in politics. You are there to make a difference for people. Efeso knew why he was in politics. To make the life of people who looked and spoke like him better off. “I’m not here to learn, I’m here to help”, he said in his maiden speech as an MP.
You have probably read about his gentleness and compassion. Do not forget his toughness. Palace politics was not for him. He refused to suck up to his party during Covid and challenged Labour to do better for Pacific communities. This gentle man was prepared to be excommunicated to get stuff done.
Efeso did not need a title or permission to lead, as a youth mentor, an Auckland councillor, and a fearless media commentator. Credit to the Green Party for recognising the leader he always was and bringing him across, disillusioned, from Labour.
In his maiden speech, Efeso quoted the American writer, James Baldwin. “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.“
Facing change takes courage. Courage in leadership is the epitome of selflessness, of putting purpose ahead of personal interest.
Courageous leaders would have rallied citizens to support Ukraine this week. Instead, this week’s Munich Security Conference, about Ukraine, showed us what politics looks like without courage. “Words, words, just words,” sighed one attendee.
They could have said to the Ukrainian soldier dodging Russian bullets while scrolling through his phone to see if US politicians had approved funding for his country, “Put your phone down. If others step away, we will step up.”
I see clearly the leader that Efeso Collins was, and the leader he would have become. Humble in his love for others. Mighty in his determination to fight for us.
There is no need for yet another book on leadership for the person who is hearing Efeso’s voice now, to step towards his baton and pick it up.