Mitigate the risks of untraced cases triggering a

mitigate the risks of untraced cases triggering a resurgence of community transmission. As a
simple to grasp metaphor that conveys crucial scientific advice, the ‘bubble’ has been pivotal
in enabling New Zealanders to make sense of how they should personally act to contribute
to the shared mission. These sensemaking efforts have also helped build trust through pro-
viding a shared language that enables clear communication.
Recognising a pandemic creates multiple stressors for people, a further feature of the
government’s response has been a focus on enabling kindness . Ardern specifically asked that
all New Zealanders ‘be kind’ and offer support to one another when announcing the move
to Level 4 (Ardern, 2020c). The government’s key COVID website has resources reflecting
an interest in kindness and in the lead up to Easter the Prime Minister confirmed that both
the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny were essential workers, thus demonstrating kindness
to children and parents (Easter Bunny ‘essential worker, says PM’, 2020). When
advised that some commercial landlords were increasing rents while under Alert Level 4,
something the government was unable to prohibit, she condemned such actions as ‘utterly
unfathomable’ and asked that landlords ‘just be a good human being’ (Molyneux and
Lynch, 2020). A focus on kindness has, of course, been an enduring value that Ardern
has emphasised (I want the government . . . to bring kindness back, 2017), however perhaps
more people have come to appreciate its importance in such testing times. Either way, this
focus on a universal human value of such salience in the context of a pandemic likely builds
trust in leadership.
The final key leadership practice my analysis has identified is that of developing creative
responses. Novel coronavirus poses novel problems and much of what we used to take for
granted doesn’t apply at this point in time. A couple of key initiatives that exemplify the
kind of creative thinking that the government has been willing to try in an effort to respond
to various effects of the pandemic include, firstly, a wage subsidy scheme that basically
requires only a brief declaration for employers to access it. While accessing government
benefits normally requires extensive paperwork and cautious decision-making, with
small businesses being such a significant part of the New Zealand economy this policy is,
as at 24 April, now supporting 1.6 million New Zealanders and NZ$10.4 billion has already
been paid out (Robertson and Sepuloni, 2020). A second key example is a home schooling
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package, which includes learning resources, including laptops and modems where needed,
delivered directly to homes to support parents in helping children learn, along with
the creation of two television channels to provide online learning opportunities, thus reliev-
ing teachers of some of the load associated with learning how to teach remotely for the first
time (Hipkins, 2020). The government’s seeming willingness to try to whatever it can to
minimise harm to lives and livelihoods, even when so doing involves radical changes