Who’s keeping the score?

There’s a pattern showing up in leadership spaces right now that I find deeply troubling - and deeply revealing. 

With New Zealand’s general elections underway, the campaigning from the current coalition government has been, to put it plainly, more focused on attacking opponents than articulating any vision worth voting for. The debates have been less about “here’s what we stand for” and more about “here’s what’s wrong with them.” The scorecard they’re keeping is entirely external - measuring themselves not against a standard of good governance but against the perceived failures of others.

And, sadly, it’s not unique to New Zealand. Across the globe, we’re watching a particular style of "leadership" double down - loud, divisive, pointing outward, measuring up by pushing others down. And we’re also watching something else: people turning up at polls in numbers, turning over long-standing governments suggesting they’ve had enough. That the public scorecard and politicians' scorecards are no longer aligned.

Which brings me to the quote I posted on Tuesday:

“Stepping on others doesn’t make you taller. It just reveals how small you feel.”

This isn’t a partisan observation. It’s a leadership one. And it applies everywhere - in politics, in organisations, in classrooms, in playgrounds, in families. The leader one who measures their worth by making others look worse isn’t growing. They’re compensating. All the real growth - every bit of it - lives in the honest, uncomfortable, inward examination that most people would rather avoid.

I know. Because this week I sat in a spa pool questioning my own hypocrisy.

The spa pool
Over the weekend, we took our youngest to the local pools. While taking turns watching him, I treated myself to the spa pool.

And immediately, the internal scorekeeper arrived.

I hadn’t gone for my planned run. I’d attempted some indoor training and abandoned it when my shoulder flared up. By my own parenting logic - eat your greens first, earn your treats - I had no business sitting in warm bubbling water feeling comfortable.

And yet there I was.

The thing is, this isn’t the same as the gap between knowing and doing that I’ve written about before. This was something slightly different. This was a question about grace - about whether goodness has to be deserved before it can be received. About whether rest is only valid if it’s been earned through sufficient suffering first.

I’m not sure that’s true. In fact, I’m increasingly sure it isn’t.

There’s a version of the internal scorekeeper that’s useful - the one that holds you to your commitments, that notices the gap between your values and your actions, that refuses to let you off the hook too easily. That version is worth listening to.

And there’s a version that’s punishing - the one that won’t let you sit in a spa pool without a full accounting of your week’s productivity. The one that conflates rest with laziness and grace with weakness.

The politician stepping on their opponent is keeping an external score. My spa pool scorekeeper was keeping a punishing internal one. Both - I realised - in their different ways, are looking in the wrong direction.

The appointment
And then.

Today I was meant to do a lunchtime run.

Instead, I accompanied a friend to a medical appointment. He has no one else who could be there. English isn’t his first language. He carries anxiety into clinical spaces and navigates them alone more often than he should.

So I went.

I can feel the absence of exercise in my body today - the lethargy that comes from days without physical exertion. My own scorekeeper has noticed. The accounting note to my internal scorekeeper said: "It's for the greater good".

But here’s what I’m grappling with: I don’t get to decide whether this was the greater good. That accounting doesn’t belong to me.

What I can do is act from conscience - choose what feels right, what serves someone who needs serving - and then release the outcome to The Almighty, trusting that goodness given freely finds its way back in forms more meaningful than a run completed.

Meanwhile, this is the opposite of what the current ilk of politicians do. They’re trying to control the scorecard - to engineer how they’re perceived by managing how others are seen. I’m trying to release the scorecard entirely. To act well and trust the accounting to something greater.

There's a line between self-sacrifice as performance and submission as practice. And it's a very fine one.

Making change visible
This week I’ve also been preparing for a leadership session on making behavioural change visible.

Which, interestingly, revolves around the same question.

Because the leader who attacks opponents isn’t making their own growth visible - they’re obscuring it. The internal scorekeeper who won’t allow rest isn’t making health visible - they’re making fear visible. The choice to accompany a friend instead of running isn’t visible at all - to anyone watching, nothing happened today.

Real change - the kind that actually matters - often isn’t visible in the moment. It lives in the decisions made when no one’s watching. In the run you didn’t take because someone needed you more. In the rest you allowed yourself without having earned it by a punishing standard. In the choice to lead by standing for something rather than against someone.

The score that matters isn’t the one being kept publicly.

It’s the one kept in the quiet.

Final thought
So here are the questions I’m sitting with this week - and I’d invite you to sit with them too:

• Where are you measuring yourself against others - and what would change if you measured yourself against your own standard instead?

• Is your internal scorekeeper the useful kind or the punishing kind - and do you know the difference?

• And what would it look like to act from conscience, release the accounting and trust that goodness given freely finds its way back? 

Because growth doesn’t live out there - in how others are doing, in how you compare, in the perception you manage.

It lives in here. In you.

In the honest, sometimes uncomfortable, always personal examination of who you’re actually becoming.

Go on. Take the Next Step.