We can’t talk about ambition without acknowledging the cost of standing out.
I was the keynote speaker to 200 Council managers at Te Papa last month. It was in a large room, buzzing with chat and conversation. Lanyard-laden leaders squeezed around sweeping banquet tables, each adorned with a pile of goodies: corporate updates, a team-building challenge, and a copy of my latest book, Local Legends. The book had a note attached, encouraging people to check a copy out from the corporate library.
I was introduced to the room with a glowing bio, highlighting various sound-bite friendly accomplishments – international track-record, publishing history and so on. I took the stage, grinning widely, to a big round of applause.
Screech. Now, let's rewind eight years.
In 2017, I’d not long moved to Wellington. I had three young kids at home, and I was hustling morning and night to keep the lights on. After a flurry of emails and calls, I scored a meeting with a Council policy manager, hoping for a bit of contract work. I was unsuccessful.
This was one of 6 or 7 similar meetings that week, as I built my business in a new city. Most of them went nowhere. After many coffees, webinars, one-off gigs, articles and events, I eventually got momentum.
Eight years later, I’ve written three books, worked with 100 different organisations on both sides of the ditch, spoken to huge audiences and run heaps of cool workshops, courses, and podcasts. Good one, Alicia!
This landed on me all at once, just for a second, when I took the stage last month. I looked around the room in appreciation, my cheeks glowing with pride.
I'm not telling you this story to be a wanker. I’m proud of the work I’ve done, not just because I get to go on stage and soak up the applause, but because I’ve changed the trajectory of my family, helped thousands of people to deliver more public value to their communities, and created things that have made people’s work and lives much better. Why on earth would I not be proud of that? How could that make me an asshole?
And yet. I do feel super self-conscious writing about it. What's that about?
Kiwis are fluent in self-deprecation
The feeling in my stomach when I read that story back to myself (and my kneejerk apologetic disclaimer) reflects a culture where we often feel ashamed of our achievements.
Jehan Casinader called to this just yesterday in a LinkedIn post where he described the behaviour of New Zealand public speakers. Kiwis have a tendency, Casinader explained, to “put themselves down.” They’ll take the stage and start with “The previous speaker is a hard act to follow” or “I know I’m standing between you and lunch, so I’ll keep this quick,” undermining their credibility from the beginning.
That’s not just individual insecurity, or imposter syndrome. It’s a rational response to a well-evidenced tall-poppy culture that snarks at its most successful - what the E Tū Tāngata initiative describes as our "deep culture" - learned, hidden norms that discourage standing out. Deep culture isn’t made of conscious choices, but of automatic responses so ingrained we barely notice them. Every time we reflexively diminish our achievements, we reinforce a norm - what E Tū Tāngata calls our “culture of criticism.”
You get a promotion, and feel a flush of guilt for your friends recently made redundant. So, you stay quiet. If asked, you laugh it off: “I guess no one else wanted it!” You win an award, and are insistent you’re no better than the other nominees. You run a successful business, but insist you're just ‘winging it’.
Who needs enemies, with mates like these?
"True friends stab you in the front" – Oscar Wilde
Dr Jo Kirkwood and Professor Ross McNaughton’s 2022 study found tall poppy syndrome is alive and well in New Zealand - and that the majority of cutting remarks come directly from colleagues, rather than online or through social media. “Many of the comments were very sad, with participants telling us their experience of tall poppy caused self-doubt, depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, loss of opportunities, or caused them to leave the country.” said McNaughton.
New Zealand filmmaker Taika Waititi is blunter: "We've got a thing called the 'tall poppy syndrome' in New Zealand, where if anyone is doing really well, it's quite common to try and bring them down - like, cut them down and say, 'You've been to the moon? So what? I mean, plenty of people have been to the moon.'”
Should we be more American?
When I go to conferences in the US, the contrast is startling. The bald-faced ambition is confronting at first - it's brash, shiny, and kind of great. It's refreshing not to be in a passive-aggressive environment where people hide poppy-loppers behind their back.
In America, it's not impolite to say what you want, or what you're dreaming of. Success is celebrated, and professional and material achievements put on a pedestal. Money isn't evil, winning isn't bad, and wanting more isn't embarrassing.
US networking aficionados Bill Reichert and Adiba Barney noticed this difference over when they travelled to New Zealand over 10 years ago. Describing Kiwi founders, Barney observed “They really need to think bigger; they are holding back too much. They need more belief in themselves to go after the big dream, while understanding what that is and how it will affect them.”
I'm not suggesting we adopt unbridled individualism and winner-take-all capitalism. Or that the cultural relationship with ambition in the US is as simple or binary as I’ve presented here. But there's something to be learned from a culture where admitting to ambition doesn't automatically require a disclaimer and where success doesn't always trigger suspicion about character flaws.
Push your ambitions to where your feelings are: way, way down
Just as the cause isn’t an individual problem, but a social one, so too is the effect. All this downward pressure prevents good ideas from being attempted in the first place. When the cultural cost of visible ambition is high, people adjust their behaviour. They pitch smaller, aim lower, and ask for less. They don’t talk about their bright ideas, or their successes. They don’t celebrate one another, or share lessons learned. The whole culture suffers.
Anna Fifield captured this in a 2022 piece for The Post, describing advice given to newly returned Kiwis at a pandemic meetup: "Don't talk too much about what you did before." Kiwi travellers learn to hide their achievements when they come home.
This shows up in funding conversations, where Kiwi entrepreneurs undervalue their companies compared to international peers. It shows up in career decisions, where talented people choose safe options over ambitious ones. It shows up in creative industries, where artists learn to expect poverty as the price of authenticity.
Whether it’s embarrassment, fear of a snarky response, guilt, or internalised suppression, acceptance of mediocrity is not a charming cultural quirk keeping Kiwis humble. It’s a systemic pattern that limits our potential and encourages people to flee if they want to do anything cool.
What if you could stay here and succeed?
We have a generation of uni students who assume they have to, in my daughter’s words, “fuck off to Aussie if they want to make any money.” That checks out. Record numbers of young Kiwis have already fled - and a recent survey indicates 42 percent of New Zealand-based respondents would move to Australia for better pay and opportunities, (but only 2 percent of Aussies would come here.)
Let’s not abandon the genuinely positive aspects of Kiwi culture, of which there are so many - our egalitarianism, our scepticism of authority, our insistence on substance over style. That’s great stuff.
But we can separate those values from reflexive hostility to success. We can value humility without demanding fake modesty, and celebrate success without tearing people down. We can give our kids something to aim for (and stay for).
Do awesome shit. Be proud. Stop apologizing. I’ve got your back.
Til next week,
AM