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26^th March 2019

Isentia’s second edition of its Leadership Index has revealed two distinct styles of leadership in Australian business – conservatives and disruptors. The report revealed the top 25 CEOs and top five disruptive leaders in Australia, identifying their differing characteristics and the roles they play in modern business.

As well as updating its analysis of CEOs in Australia and New Zealand’s top 150 companies, Isentia explored the characteristics of Australian leadership through the lens of disruption. The top 150 companies were derived from a combined list of the ASX50, the NZX50, the 2018 IBIS World Top 500 companies published by The Australian Financial Review and Deloitte’s Top 200 data in New Zealand.

Isentia’s Chief Insights Officer, Khali Sakkas, says observations around the behaviour and portrayal of disruptive leaders are key in understanding modern businesses.

“Often in business we focus on measuring performance solely with financial metrics. However, this approach fails to recognise the impact of leadership trends and values,” Sakkas says. “We included a study of disruptive figures because in the current business climate, every single industry is seeing disruption, whether from technology developments or heightened customer expectations.

“Assessing disruptive personalities adds another layer of insight into the leadership of Australian business. No single individual featured in both the top 25 CEOs and the top five disruptive leaders. What we’re noticing is two distinct styles of leadership.

“Traditional CEOs are typically required to be risk averse, answering to shareholders and board members. On the other hand, the new generation of disruptors are usually undertaking a potential risk, yet their creativity can have a huge payoff.”

Disruptive leaders

To identify disruptive leaders, Isentia used its extensive media database to search for varying forms of the word “disrupt” in combination with leaders’ names. The most mentioned disruptors were global business leaders with celebrity status including Tesla’s Elon Musk and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. Positive characteristics of this group included “ambitious” and “charismatic” while “erratic” and “impulsive” were listed as negative attributes. A significant 46 per cent of coverage regarding these individuals focused on their personal life, wealth and behaviour.

Coverage of Australian disruptors was often focused on business being disrupted, rather than the individual responsible for the change. Personalities were positioned as decisive and innovative leaders, with minimal negative attributes. The number one disruptive leader was Telstra CEO Andy Penn, who has led the telecommunications giant through a pivotal transformative period from mid-2018. With the rollout of the NBN, Telstra has required strong leadership to navigate the substantial changes to its business.

Penn exhibits the three most common traits of a disruptive leader: the ability to provide guidance in the face of circumstances outside of the business’ control, a focus on keeping technology front-of-mind in decision-making, and an aptitude for agile, flexible and forward-thinking ideas.

The top 25 CEOS

Isentia analysed more than 50,000 media items aired or published between 1 October and 31 December 2018 to provide an understanding of Australia and New Zealand’s top 150 companies. As in the first Leadership Index released in November, the CEO profiles and media trends of these businesses were assessed to reveal the top 25 CEOs. The three main factors that were evaluated were public perception, employee approval and financial performance.

Of the 150 companies assessed, the top 50 alone were mentioned in more than 700,000 media items. However, on average, the top CEOs were only present in nine per cent of their company’s coverage. BHP CEO, Andrew Mackenzie, retained his position as the number one leader in the final quarter of 2018.

Looking forward

The Isentia Leadership Index is designed to provide a benchmark to compare leadership profiles over time, highlighting key trends and figures as they shift each year.

“Broadening our report to include a study of disruption has really enriched our understanding of Australian leadership. It will be interesting to see which style of leadership becomes more prevalent in the coming years, as we continue to undertake our Leadership Index. Suggestions for other research topics are always welcome,” Sakkas says.

-ENDS-

For more information, please contact:

Sophie Willis
Howorth Communications
sophie@howorth.com.au 0458 111 948

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A weekly tracker tracing the stories, figures and policies driving media and social coverage in the 2026 New Zealand General Election across Online News, TV, Radio, Newspaper, Magazine, X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Threads and Forums. This edition covers conversations and coverage from 8th - 15th October, highlighting what’s shaping the election conversation.

1. Election Conversation

Media = news coverage. Social = all public posts across X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Threads and Forums - everyone posting, not just media outlets.

2. Media Issue of the Week

Green and Te Pāti Māori MPs Draw Criticism Over Meeting With Mongrel Mob Members

Candidates and sitting MPs from the Green Party and Te Pāti Māori attended a meeting with Mongrel Mob members at a gang address. When photographs from the meeting were shared on social media, the response from commentators and rival parties was swift and largely critical.

This was not the week's highest-volume story, accounting for only 112 of 4,479 media items (2.5%, after filtering out unrelated international content) and 116 of 13,938 unique social posts (0.8%, after collapsing retweet/repost duplicates down to one count per message), well below the volume generated by ongoing leaders' debate coverage, which totalled 1,125 media items. Two independent methods nonetheless support treating it as a genuine, separable story: an exact keyword count aligns closely with an unsupervised clustering analysis of the entire media population, which identified it as a distinct 47-item cluster - smaller than general campaign coverage and several specific policy announcements, but clearly distinguishable from them. What sets the story apart is the intensity of the reaction rather than its scale: 72% of social commentary on the topic was negative, the most one-sided sentiment recorded for any subject this week, and the average post attracted roughly 5.7 times the typical level of engagement. Taken together, these figures point to a genuine public reaction concentrated on social platforms, and the episode provides National and ACT with a law-and-order narrative that may continue into coming weeks. It has not been linked to a tracked party policy below, as it reflects a matter of conduct rather than a policy position.

3. What's happening across media and social?

4,479 media items · 13,938 social items · share of each channel's own conversation, so the two bars are directly comparable

"Social" is all public posts across X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Threads and Forums - not just media organisations' own accounts.

The most active commentary this week came from Sean Plunket, the Chris Chang and Tova O'Brien pairing, and John MacDonald.

By follower reach, the most prominent social accounts posting about the election this week were major outlets' own accounts - the New Zealand Herald, 1News, RNZ, Stuff and Radio Tarana - alongside the official Labour Party account. Individual leaders' personal accounts posted actively but with smaller followings than these outlet and party accounts.

The Greens continue to receive disproportionately greater attention on social media relative to traditional news coverage, accounting for 20.4% of social party conversation compared with 14.1% in media coverage - roughly 1.4 times the media share.

Law and order shows a similarly pronounced gap between channels this week, accounting for 10.6% of social conversation compared with 5.3% in the news. This is consistent with the public reaction to the Mongrel Mob meeting, which appears to have generated considerably sharper engagement on social platforms than mainstream coverage volume alone would suggest.

4. Party Share of Conversation

Shown for the four largest parliamentary parties (National, Labour, Greens, NZ First); ACT, Te Pāti Māori and TOP are tracked elsewhere in this report but not included in this chart, so these shares sum to 100% of the four shown, not of all tracked parties. Share of conversation measures attention and mentions only - it is not polling and should not be read as an indication of electoral success.

5. Top candidates this week

Winston Peters leads the rankings this week, a shift driven primarily by a widely circulated moment in the minor-party leaders' debate in which he described diversity as "a weakness rather than a strength" while delivering a pointed critique of the left-leaning bloc. Christopher Luxon and Chris Hipkins follow closely behind as the campaign moves into its final weeks, while David Seymour and Chloe Swarbrick complete the top five, each drawing attention largely through their parties' own policy announcements this week.

6. Election Issues

Top 4 themes this week

What's driving conversation about each party?

Each major party's top-ranked issues this week, by real topic volume in their social conversation (after excluding other parties' names, individual people, and procedural or horse-race chatter), with how that conversation leaned

Volume and sentiment above are based on social media data only.

7. Issues to Watch

• The meeting between Green and Te Pāti Māori representatives and Mongrel Mob members represents a reputational risk for both parties heading into the final weeks of the campaign. Whether National and ACT are able to sustain this as a law-and-order narrative through to the 7 November election is worth monitoring closely.
• Labour's fiscal plan issue recorded the most negative social sentiment of any tracked policy this week, at 55.3% negative, followed by Greens' wealth tax at 53.7% and ACT's fiscal plan at 50.0%. All three touch on tax, spending or fiscal policy specifically, suggesting the fiscal debate is where social sentiment is running most negative across the board this week, rather than any one party facing an isolated problem.
• Social media discussion of the Greens continues to centre on polling performance and tactical voting considerations rather than policy substance. Coalition and tactical-voting framing accounts for 12.7% of their social conversation this week, compared with just 2.2% focused specifically on their wealth tax proposal - a pattern that has now held for three consecutive weeks. Whether that balance shifts as the campaign enters its final stretch would be worth tracking.

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If you want to find out more about how Isentia can help you understand the NZ media landscape, please reach out to us here.

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A weekly tracker tracing the stories, figures and policies driving media and social coverage in the 2026 New Zealand General Election across Online News, TV, Radio, Newspaper, Magazine, X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Threads and Forums. This edition covers conversations and coverage from 1st – 8th October, highlighting what’s shaping the election conversation.

1. Election Conversation

2. Media Issue of the Week

National Proposes Drug Testing and Benefit Cuts for Jobseekers

National announced a five-point welfare policy: random drug testing for JobSeeker recipients (with sanctions for repeat failures), reduced payments for long-term beneficiaries, and a doubled stand-down period for repeatedly leaving jobs without good reason. Labour and the Greens called it "punching down" and "cruel"; ACT proposed going even further; Luxon defended it as "fairness" for taxpayers.

The single largest media cluster this week (183 of 600 sampled items) was generic "campaigning intensifies as election day nears" coverage. This welfare policy, while smaller by volume (29 items), is a genuine flashpoint: a specific, controversial announcement that sharply divided every major party and will likely keep generating reaction into next week.

3. What's happening across media and social?

4,360 media items · 17,277 social items · share of each channel's own conversation, so the two bars are directly comparable

The Greens get more than twice the relative attention on social media as in the news. On social, the Greens are 20.8% of party conversation; in the news, they're 10.3%.

Health is a top-four issue on social but not in the news this week - Infrastructure takes its place in media's top four instead. Social conversation is tilting toward the health system while media coverage stays on economy, cost of living and infrastructure announcements.

4. Party Share of Conversation

Share of conversation measures attention and mentions only - it is not polling and should not be read as an indication of electoral success.

5. Top candidates this week

Luxon and Hipkins remain close at the top as the campaign enters its final stretch. Peters follows, still driven by coalition speculation. Seymour moves up to fourth on the back of ACT's economic-reform push (including floating a higher superannuation age), overtaking Swarbrick, whose fifth-place mentions continue to track the Greens' polling strength.

6. Election Issues

Top 4 themes this week

How are policies landing for each party?

Each major party's most prominent specific policy, and how social conversation reacted to it

Volume and sentiment above are based on social media data only.

7. Issues to Watch

• National's welfare drug-testing policy is a fresh, sharply divisive flashpoint - the "punching down" framing from Labour and the Greens, and ACT signalling it wants to go further still, both point to more reaction next week.
• Labour's capital gains tax remains the week's clearest negative outlier (85.5% negative on social). National's own infrastructure pledge is also net-negative this week (42.3% vs 21.2% positive), despite infrastructure announcements usually landing on safer ground than tax policy. ACT's KiwiSaver policy, by contrast, remains clearly positive (91.3%).
• On social, discussion of the Greens is mostly about polling results and tactical voting rather than their own policy: 14% of their social conversation is coalition/tactical-voting framing (which bloc to "party vote" for), versus just 2% specifically about their wealth tax policy - their polling surge is driving attention more than their platform is.

---

If you want to find out more about how Isentia can help you understand the NZ media landscape, please reach out to us here.

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