A changing, kinder world leaves tone-deaf leaders behind

It’s fair to say that Facebook doesn’t always enjoy the best reputation among big business. The global giant, which has made a spectacular business out of selling your data to third parties, has made some spectacular bungles in the public forum.

Witness chief executive Mark Zuckerberg’s smug performance in front of the congressional committee a couple of years ago. Rather than saating the United States Government’s appetite to progress anti-trust measures against the social network, the ‘‘Zuck’’ seemed to have the opposite effect, with appearances that seemed to suggest that no Facebook customer’s data is safe, not even his.

Likewise, Facebook’s cavalier reaction last year to receiving a €225 million (NZ$374m) fine from the Irish Data Protection Commission just served to emphasise that virtually any fine is chicken feed to a US$140 billion (NZ$198b) company.

But since the rise of Covid-19 and an increasing awareness of a global social network in a time of a global pandemic, it seems to have changed its tune. Indeed, it seems to have developed an ear for hearing social context and responding in a way that is sensitive and also pragmatic.

One example of that new-found sensitivity emerged this week when chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg announced Facebook was buying US$100m worth of unpaid invoices from 30,000 small businesses owned by women and minorities.

In other words, Facebook is going to small merchants who are owed money for work done and paying up on behalf of the debtors.

Sure there is a commercial upside here as Facebook increasingly courts small to medium enterprise with its business services. But by choosing to buy the debt (and recognising how hard late invoice payment is on small businesses), what it is delivering is a hand-up rather than a handout, which is smart.

What’s more, it is doing it in the attitudinal wake of the Black Lives Matter and MeToo movements. Taken together, it’s a great example of social investment, achieved through a well-tuned ear for context and priorities.

Consider the opposite: The companies and leaders who have profound tone deafness to the pulse of the people and social cues. Yes, I’m talking about National Party leader Judith Collins.

Short of slashing the tyres on Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield’s hybrid car, you couldn’t come up with a worse thing to do than attack the nation’s favourite pink-haired microbiological explainer, Dr

Siouxsie Wiles.

This was always going to end badly, but Collins’ choice of epithets, suggesting Wiles was a ‘‘big, fat hypocrite’’, made it worse.

Bigness is not a reason to criticise anyone, and having met Wiles I can confirm she’s not big.

Fat. Are you kidding? Body shaming anyone is unacceptable, but doing it in the knowledge you are broadcasting that message nationally means you are giving up any hope of being prime minister.

Lastly, in an Aotearoa that is focused on being kind, biking 5 kilometres to sit and give support to a friend whom you share a bubble with doesn’t sound like hypocrisy.

You could just about hear the 32 other National MPs palming their foreheads with an audible ‘‘thwack’’ last week.

Although the National Party should be grateful that Collins stepped into a certain election defeat after the debacle of Todd Muller last year, that’s no reason to hang onto a leader whose superpower seems to be alienating Kiwis. Not to mention alienating her own staff, with three leaving in

recent times.

The thing is that Collins is up against someone who is the opposite of tone-deaf. Prime Minister Jacinda Arden has a remarkable ability to pick the mood, judge the context and pitch things just right.

Better than that, Ardern manages to inspire people to lift their behaviour to new levels. She’s even better at it than former prime minister Sir John Key, who was no slug.

So whoever replaces Collins, be

it Mark Mitchell, Christopher Luxon or Shane Reti, they need that ability to sniff the context, read the social cues and get it right.

Importantly, they need to get it right intuitively, just as Ardern does now and Key did before her, rather than rely on spin doctors and social engineers.

Ironically, Covid-19 has been identified as the catalyst for Zuckerberg to ‘‘make amends’’ with society. It was the spinning up of Facebook’s considerable resources to help combat the effects of the virus that led to initiatives like last week’s buying of small business debt.

And so it might be that using the power of the Opposition benches for good could be the catalyst for the next National leader’s success.

I’m no National Party advocate, but I am an advocate for an effective Opposition. And right now we don’t have one.