Personality Assessment Of Prime Ministers Of New Zealand - Bill English And John Key

Importance of personality

Discuss about the Personality of the two Prime Ministers of New Zealand and also Critically assesses their personality traits in their working style and behaviour.

Personality can be defined as the product of social interaction between the people. It is the behaviour and the style of the person that the individual portrays in front of others at the time of interacting with other person. Personality is not about how the person looks but it is about how the person treats the other person. Every individual has different traits and these traits are projected by them according to their behaviour in the society. This collectively forms the personality of the individual (Pinder, 2014). This essay discusses about the personality of the two prime ministers of New Zealand and it also critically assesses their personality traits in their working style and behaviour. The two prime ministers who are discussed in the essay are Bill English and John Key. Both of these personalities are the leaders of New Zealand who have once headed the country with their leadership skills. Understanding the traits of their personality helps in determining the impact of the personality of the individuals in their behaviour (Kinicki and Kreitner, 2012). Their traits have been analysed and aligned with the big 5 personality traits in order to analyse their actual personality. Big 5 traits provides the information about the basic traits that forms the personality of the individuals. These traits are categorized according to the behaviour of the people that has been observed at the time of responding to different situations.

Personality is very important for the individual in order to be recognized. Physical appearance of the person can only draws the attention of others for a short period, the actual attention of the society can be grabbed only with the overall personality that includes the way of talking, intelligence etc. Along with the looks (Robbins and Judge, 2013). Thus, it is important for a person to have particular personality that allows the individuals to have a unique identity. Personality of the person is the reflection of his thinking and behaviour.

It has been analysed that different people have different response for the same situation. This is because of the difference in personalities of the people and this can be broadly divided into 5 domains that are called as Big 5 personality traits. These traits are used to determine the nature of the personality of an individual. Following are the big five personality traits:

What are big 5 personality types?

Openness: Openness is the trait that has been found in the individuals who believes in experiencing and learning new things (Naylor, Pritchard and Ilgen, 2013). The people who are open said to be imaginative in nature. The imaginative nature of the person helps him to resolve most of the issues. Openness can be related to the values in terms of creating the environment of equality. It can also be associated with the leadership (Robbins and Judge, 2012). This is because leaders have to be open and imaginative in nature so that they can think out of the box to resolve the issue and to manage the followers.

Conscientiousness: the individuals with this trait in their personality are reliable and prompt. This trait can be related to the individual who value order and perform their duties as said. They are the people who believe in fulfilling the responsibility (March, 2013).

Extraversion: These are the people who are extrovert in nature. They can work only when they can interact with people and cannot remain isolated (Luthans, Luthans and Luthans, 2015). The traits that can be associated with this element are talkative, assertive and energetic especially in groups.

Agreeableness: the people with this type of trait in their personality are compassionate in nature and always remain kind to others. They can adjust in any of the situation and understand the feeling of others.

Neuroticism: This is the trait that portrays the person with negative personality. The people with this trait are generally moody and face the issues of emotional instability in their nature. Their behaviour to others is not predictable as it depends on their mood.

Simon William Bill English is the 39^th prime minister of New Zealand. He has taken his responsibility and attended the office first time on 12^th December 2016. Before becoming the prime minister of New Zealand, he was the Deputy Prime Minister of the country. English was born and brought up in the large family of Southland region (Hogg and Terry, 2014). He attended St. Patrick College; it was a catholic boarding school for boys. After completing the school, he went to Otago University for the course of B.A. Commerce and Victoria University for B.A. English Literature. As he completed his education, he returned back to Southland and started working as a farmer for a short time period. He eventually joined the party called National Party and then elected as the house representative in 1990. English has attained the growth in his career of political stability in early years of his career (Wagner III and Hollenbeck, 2014). He has appointed as the health minister in the cabinet and also headed the treasure and finance department. After achieving so much success and when Key surprisingly reigned from his post, he also supported English as the candidate to replace him. This whole journey was a great experience for English from being farmer to the prime minister of the country.

Background of Bill English

English quoted himself as “boring”. This is because he belongs to the social conservative farmer family (DuBrin, 2013). The family background of English was not so sound and this can be seen in his shy and introvert personality. He was the leader who has supported the government as finance as well as health minister. This suggests that he is an intelligent person with great leadership qualities. His personality portrays him as the person who is stable and can maintain the continuity in the market with his ideas and practices. This is because he is not that much dynamic in his thinking and loves to create peace in the area he is leading (Nelson and Quick, 2013). The great weakness that is reflected in his personality is lack of interaction skills. He is unable to excite the public and fill energy in them. He is a low personality person who remains calm always. This calmness can be good as well as bad for him and his countrymen. It has been analysed that nobody knows enough about English even after he has spent so much of his lifetime in politics. This is because of his introvert personality as he has never shared about his personal life in the interviews. The only thing people know about him is that he belonged to southland’s farmer family (Hebb, 2013). Brash, the former National leader has termed English as “laconic”. Laconic is the person who uses few words in his speech and writing. This can be seen by the speeches of English that he does not speak much and thus fails to interact and convenience people. His dry sense of humour restricts him to bind people to hear him. Bill is a self-deprecating personality who is very modest in nature and thus has no hard feelings even for Brash who has replaced him in 2003. Brash has also admired the strong work ethics and intelligence of English. He has headed the finance and treasure of the country for three years and this shows his intelligence in the fields.

Newshub-Reid Research poll suggests that English is far below than John Key in terms of popularity. When English came to the throne, there was no expectation from him by the public. This is because everyone has the perception that he cannot be able to match the leadership skills of John. This was observed to be true because he actually fails to engage public with him.

Personality traits of English

All the traits of Bill’s personality suggest that Bill has some positive and some negative aspects in his personality. His calm behaviour sometimes helps to take decisions but also results in lack of energy among the public (Aucoin, 2012). Public lost any confidence on him. He is a person of ethics and discipline but his nature of being social conservative results in lack of interaction between him and his public. As far as the Big 5 traits of personality are concerned, it has been analysed that Bill has conscientiousness in his nature and personality. This is because he is the responsible person and understands his duties well. Some of the part of his personality also reflects agreeableness (Esselment, Lees-Marshment and Marland, 2014). This is because he is one of the most modest leaders in New Zealand.

John Key was the Prime minister of New Zealand from 2008 to 2016. He resigned surprisingly from his position and after that English was chooses to be the new Prime Minister of the country. As far as the background of John is considered, it has been analysed that he was born to George and Ruth Key in the year 1961 in Auckland, New Zealand. He has two siblings. He started his schooling at Aorangi school and Burnside high school (Cobb-Clark and Schurer, 2012). After completing his school education, he went to the University of Canterbury in order to learn Bachelor of Commerce in 1981. He developed his interest in politics at the time when he was around 27 years of age. He elected as the member of National party and in the year 2008, when he became the prime minister of the country, the party has won around 59 seats from the total of 122. At the time when he has positioned as the Prime minister, the country was facing the issues of global financial crisis; he made some initiatives and brought stability in the economy of the country at early stages of the crisis. In 2011, the company again faced a calamity of earthquake and key by his efforts again brought stability in the economy as earlier.  He won the election for Prime ministers for 3 consecutive times thus his popularity is hard to break by nay of the ministers later (Credé, Harms, Niehorster and Gaye-Valentine, 2012).

Key was thinking to resign sine a long time but at the time of his New York visit, he decided and framed his decision. This is because he realized that he has to leave the position happy and not unhappy. He did the same in 2008 and this shows that he is the man of his words (Gregory Marshall, 2012). His firm determination has allowed him to take such a great decision. He was one of the most popular political leaders in the country. This is because of his likable personality. He likes everyone and everyone likes him. He sets his image very different from other politicians because he touches the heart of every member in the county and this made him so popular. It has been observed that he is very much fronded and there is no sign of proud (Helms, 2012). He was praised by many leaders for his work but he has always remained humble to everyone. Even in his speeches, it can be found that he has the capability to bind the crowd for long. He believes in the phrase that “what you see is what you get”. Thus, he always sees things in positive manner. Media has noticed that whenever Key is between public, there is no barriers found in their communication or interaction that generally exists between the political leaders and the public. He is considered as the most pragmatic and the spontaneous leaders in the country (Harris and Leberman, 2012). This is because he lacks the ability to plan. He believes that being spontaneous helps in doing rather than wasting time in thinking about the action. His upbringing journey was very tough and his family background helped him in becoming what he is. His father died early and his mother always taught her children the importance of education (Ross and Comrie, 2012). On dining table daily, his mother ties to raise a topic of conversation that divides knowledge to her children. This habit helped him in developing the ability and the trick to attract people by his speech. He has the great communication ability and this helped him in becoming great leader. This is because being a leader provides a person with lots of responsibility and the basic responsibility is to make a connection with the public. He was very pragmatic and spontaneous in his decisions. At the time of global crisis, he was the one who brought back the economy of the country to stability. It has been analysed that the leader made too many decisions such as partial privatisation, increase in GST, focus on welfare system, introduction of zero budget etc. These initiatives have helped him to increase the economy of the country (Colbert, Barrick and Bradley, 2014). These initiatives by Key has not only developed the economy of the country but also results in creating new jobs so as to reduce unemployment from the country. He was considered as the true leader as he gain proved that when the country has faced the calamity of earthquake. He showed his strong leadership skills and kept the country stable. He was a performer and thus never has a fear to remove the person from the position who is underperforming.  Critics were always there but it never affected the leadership of Key. This is because when he realized that the politics in taking the dirty turn and which can be against him, he decides to resign (Colbert, Judge, Choi and Wang, 2012). His decision was a surprise for while New Zealand.

He always believes in giving enough time to his family. Thus, taking the decision of resigning was influenced by his love for his family.

As far as the Big 5 traits of personality are concerned, it has been analysed that the major trait that portrays the personality of John Key is extrovert. He was an extrovert leader and was very talkative in nature. Extrovert is the person who can share his views to others and always remain the favourite of everyone in a group (Bono, Hooper and Yoon, 2012). Key was one of a kind and always tries to make connections with the public through his words. He was an emotional person as it is described by the way he has showed his love for his family. Openness can also be the element that is found in his personality. This is because he was considered as the spontaneous leader and a person who takes spontaneous decisions and has the capability to generate new ideas. He believes in facts and thus known to be very pragmatic. His personality is a mix of being emotional as well as practical (Antonakis and House, 2013). This personality helped him in being a great leader because a leader needs to be strict but at the same time have to be emotional so that he can understands the situation of his followers and can feel their pain before making the decision.

Conclusion:

It has been concluded from the study that personality is the very important part of any individual. This is because it makes him or her different from each other. Big 5 traits theory of personality is the theory that describes 5major division of the personality that has been found in the people. These 5 traits categorized the personality of the individuals. There are five traits such as openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. The personalities of two prime ministers of New Zealand have been discussed in order to determine the effect of personality on work and behaviour of the people. There is very much difference between the personalities of John Key and Bill English. It has been analysed that Key was the minister who has open and extrovert nature while Bill is the shy and introvert individual. At one hand, Key used to interact with the public while Bill portrays himself as boring personality and always fails to bind the public with his speech. There were no expectations among the public from Bill after having the leadership of the leader like Key.

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