Most people would put Jacinda Ardern at Community, and the map agrees. Kindness, empathy and bringing people along are where she stands, and it is the strongest level on her map.
The surprise is her main shadow. You might expect the People-Pleaser, the shadow of Community. It is there, but it is smaller than the Judge, the shadow of Order. Under pressure she reached for clear rules applied to everyone, asked a country to sacrifice now for later, and turned a hard voice on herself. Her shadows are small overall, so this is a lean, not a pattern.
Empathy with a spine. She felt what others felt, valued people nothing like her, and still made the hard call.
Mostly from its healthy side. What people needed drove most of her decisions. In a crisis, the Order shadow took more of the wheel.
The Judge. Active in 4 of 16 statements, one more than the People-Pleaser at Community. The shadows on her map are small.
| Level | Healthy side | Shadow side | Shape | Reading | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Owned | Not yet | N/A | Active | Released | N/A | |||
| Belonging | 6 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 16 | 0 | lightly held | |
| Power | 9 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 16 | 0 | clean, well-held | |
| Order | 10 | 6 | 0 | 4 | 12 | 0 | moderate, some shadow | |
| Achievement | 9 | 7 | 0 | 2 | 14 | 0 | clean, well-held | |
| Community | 12 | 4 | 0 | 3 | 13 | 0 | healthy, clean | |
| Responsibility | 6 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 16 | 0 | lightly held | |
| Love | 4 | 12 | 0 | 2 | 14 | 0 | lightly held | |
| Bliss | 0 | 0 | 16 | 0 | 0 | 16 | largely disengaged | |
This map of Jacinda Ardern has been read from her public life rather than from answers she gave, so treat it as our best reading of the woman the cameras saw. She stands at Community and operates from it, mostly from the healthy side. Order, Power and Achievement give her solid ground underneath, with Order carrying the largest shadow. Her main shadow is the Judge: rules for everyone, sacrifice now, and a harsh voice turned inward. The People-Pleaser sits close behind it.
Belonging is lightly held and carries no shadow. She knows where she comes from: small towns in the Waikato and Bay of Plenty, and a father who was a police officer. She grew up in the Mormon church and left it in her twenties, because she could not accept its stance on her gay friends. Her family stayed close, and she stayed her own person. She marks the occasions that matter. On Waitangi Day she was known to cook the breakfast barbecue.
What she did not own are the instinctive and spiritual parts: trusting her body before her reasoning, dreams, signs, a sacred side to the world. Her way in was people, not ritual.
Power is well held, with no shadow at all. She says no clearly when something crosses her line. In February 2020, standing beside Scott Morrison in Sydney, she told Australia not to deport its people and its problems to New Zealand. After the Christchurch mosque attacks she told Parliament she would never say the gunman’s name. She acts decisively when the moment calls for it, would rather try and fail than never find out, and can be wrong in front of people without it undoing her.
What she did not own is the competitive side: playing to win, loving a fight, being someone others are wary of. She used her strength for other people.
Order is solid. She has a sense of right and wrong that she worked out for herself, and she contributes to something larger than herself. She can postpone what she wants for something that matters more. In January 2022, when Omicron rules capped gatherings, she cancelled her own wedding and said such is life. She married Clarke Gayford two years later. She feels strongly and still acts well. When she gets something wrong she puts it right: in 2019 her government reset KiwiBuild and dropped its 100,000-home target.
This is where her main shadow sits, the Judge. It is four statements. She is hard on herself when she falls short; she has spoken openly about imposter syndrome. She believes what we go through now is earning something later, and she asked a country to believe it too. Rules should be followed even when they have stopped making much sense: through 2021 thousands of New Zealanders abroad waited months for a place in managed isolation, booked through an online lottery. And she spends a fair amount of time thinking about what might go wrong.
It is a small shadow on solid ground. It is also the one that showed most when the pressure was highest.
Achievement is well held, with a small shadow. She sees possibilities where other people see obstacles. In March 2020 she set out to eliminate COVID-19 from New Zealand when most countries were trying to slow it. She likes finding a better way: the 2019 Wellbeing Budget measured success by how people were doing as well as by growth. She changes her mind when the evidence changes, makes a case and can be persuaded, and takes calculated risks. In October 2020 Labour won a majority on its own, the first party to do so under the voting system New Zealand adopted in 1996.
The shadow is two statements. Failing in public is hard for her. And she is good at bringing people round to her way of seeing it, which is a gift that can tip into management.
This is where she stands, and the healthy side is nearly full. After the Christchurch mosque attacks on 15 March 2019, which killed 51 people, she said of the Muslim community “they are us”, and she wore a headscarf to meet the families. She feels what others feel and can still tell where she ends. She values people nothing like her, says the hard thing when it needs saying, and weighs feelings and reasoning together. She can stay connected to someone while they disagree. In December 2022 a microphone caught her calling the ACT leader, David Seymour, an arrogant prick. She apologised, and the two of them signed the transcript and auctioned it for prostate cancer. It raised more than $100,000. She feels a responsibility toward the natural world: in 2018 her government stopped issuing new offshore oil and gas exploration permits.
The shadow is three statements, and it is the People-Pleaser. She believes most people would be good if treated well. She is uneasy when someone is left out. And she puts other people’s needs ahead of her own even when she is running low. On 19 January 2023 she resigned, saying she no longer had enough in the tank to do the job justice. It is a small shadow, one statement behind the Judge.
Responsibility is lightly held, with no shadow. She looks at her own part first when something goes wrong. She takes the wider consequences into account: two months after Christchurch, she and Emmanuel Macron launched the Christchurch Call to get violent extremist content off the internet. She stays warm toward people while thinking clearly about them, and she is content for someone else to lead. She stepped down at 42 and handed over to Chris Hipkins.
What she did not own are the looser parts of this level: holding views lightly, being comfortable not knowing how something will turn out, accepting people without needing them to change.
Love is mostly out of view. She wishes well to people she will never meet, and when she sees suffering she does something about it. Helping is what she wants to do, and being useful matters more to her than getting on. The shadow is two statements. She kept giving after it was wearing her out, because she felt she should, and she is kinder to others than to herself. The levels beneath are not yet steady enough to carry Love, so it is a place she reaches toward.
Bliss is not on her radar. Nothing in her public life points to meditative states, and none of this level’s statements apply.
Jacinda Ardern stands at Community and operates from its healthy side. Order, Power and Achievement give her solid ground underneath, which is why her kindness came with decisions attached: a gun ban within a month, a border closed in a day.
Her shadows are small. The largest is the Judge: rules for everyone, sacrifice now, and a harsh voice turned on herself. The People-Pleaser is one step behind it, and between them they explain the way she left. She gave until there was nothing left in the tank, and then she said so.
A map is only useful if it helps you see ahead. Jacinda is out of politics now, but if this map is right her choices are not random. They follow the shape of her windows. Here are five calls you can check against what she does next, each tied to the level that drives it.
Community is where she stands, and its healthy side holds feeling and reasoning together. Expect her books, speeches and causes to come back to the same idea: kind people can lead.
Already seen Her memoir, A Different Kind of Power, came out in June 2025. It argues that sensitivity and self-doubt can make a better leader, and its advice to readers worried they are too sensitive is that they will lead with more empathy.
The healthy side of Community can disagree without cutting someone off. Expect her to share a stage, a cause or a joke with former opponents.
Already seen In December 2022 she was caught calling David Seymour an arrogant prick. Within days the two of them had signed the transcript together and auctioned it for the Prostate Cancer Foundation. It raised more than $100,000.
Her Power is clean, and she uses it for other people. The no comes clearly and in person, not through a spokesperson.
Already seen On 28 February 2020, at a joint press conference in Sydney, she told Scott Morrison not to deport Australia’s people and its problems to New Zealand. After Christchurch she told Parliament the gunman would be nameless when she spoke.
This is the Judge, her main shadow. Under pressure the answer is structure: a plan, a rule applied the same way to all, and a promise that the hardship is earning something later.
Already seen New Zealand went into a nationwide lockdown on 25 March 2020 under a four-level alert system. Her message was to go hard and go early. Through 2021 New Zealanders abroad queued for managed isolation places through an online lottery.
The People-Pleaser puts others first even when running low, and the Judge will not do a job by halves. Together they predict a pattern: total commitment, then a clear exit rather than a slow fade.
Already seen On 19 January 2023 she announced her resignation, saying she no longer had enough in the tank to do the job justice. She gave her farewell speech to Parliament in April 2023 and left politics.
Watch for three things. A personal attack that she answers in kind. A crisis where she leaves the rules loose and trusts people to work it out. A role she clings to after she has said it is time to go. Any one of them would mean the map has her wrong, and we would be glad to redraw her windows.
Jacinda’s main shadow is the Judge. Everyone has a main shadow, and it is rarely the one you would guess. The Awaken Survey places you on the same ten-level map, draws your own eight windows, and names the shadow creature that is yours.
256 statements · 20 to 25 minutes · free · every map is read personally by Peter