Leadership for Dummies

A reference guide for the rest of us...

If you’re going somewhere, do you maybe take a bit of an interest in the place? Read up a bit on the history, current events, places to see - that sort of thing? Presumably, if you’re taking a trip somewhere, it’s for a reason. But what if you’re going somewhere for no actual reason at all?

Do you just rock up hoping that someone speaks English and you can use your phone charger? Risk ordering the food “mild” without knowing if it is genuinely lightly spiced or if it is a local joke on foreigners. Their own taste buds dulled from decades of dining on food far too fiery for a bland Kiwi palate. Delicacies that threaten the sensibilities of a weary traveller as they attempt to determine the origin of their meal.

Time used to be that you’d buy a travel guide, a Lonely Planet or a Rough Guide, perhaps a Frommer’s if you enjoy the volume of Americans abroad. Things these days are easy: point and click - no ringing on a pay phone from one country to another, and desperately hoping that the person who answers can speak English.

This week our frequently flying Prime Minister turned up to South Korea for something so important that he missed the Tangi of the Māori King. Although not so vital a trip that he had prepared by finding anything out about the place he was visiting.

Despite the fact that, as every Kiwi knows, the first thing we ask a visitor, possibly even in arrivals, is, “What do you think of New Zealand?”

As you know, the best Christopher Luxon could come up with was K-Pop, which I found hard to believe. This guy is about my age; we have the same cultural reference points. Surely, to all white blokes across the Western world of a similar vintage, the Korean Peninsula means only one thing.

No, not the war. At our age, we know you “don’t mention the war”, but a different TV series. It’s just four little letters, it starts with an ‘M’, and when it ended a lot of people were very sad, declaring it to be the greatest thing of all time.

Cast of MASH. By CBS Television - Public Domain.