engagement – ANDREW MELVILLE

Immeasurable Time In Time Out

October 11, 2024admin

A Timeless Essay

My deepest dive into nature happened unexpectedly.

I had taken myself on a solo retreat to Ōpito Bay with no people, no devices, no books, no writing materials, nothing. And then as an added dimension: no clock.

That I didn’t expect. No clock would prove to make the experience profound.

It was a time when I had no measure of time at all, other than the turn of the tide, the rising of the moon and the setting of the sun.

I yearn to be more connected with nature. I have long dreamed of what it would be like to be closely attuned to changes in nature, the weather, the way plants grow, the cycles of seasons, planets, tides. Tuned into the rhythms. And yet modern life and my busy mind has made this feel impossible.

I play flutes, including Māori flutes—taonga puoro. I have a pūtōrino flute, beautifully carved into the shape of Hine Raukatauri, the Goddess of Music. The story goes that the shape is that of the case moth, sometimes known as the whare atua, home of the spirit. It is the favoured food of the kōkako. The kōkako gets its beautiful song as an embodiment of Hine Raukatauri from the whare atua.

I went to meet the carver and told him how I had played taonga puoro with kōkako in the Hunua forest. It had been like a jazz jam session. We would play, and then the kōkako would sing back. They were clearly the masters, with notes soaring into the sky and through the ngahere. By comparison the sounds and notes from our taonga puoro were that of beginners.

The carver looked at me and said: That is wonderful. But what would be truly amazing would be to hear the sound of the case moth.

That has sat me with the past fifteen or so years. What would it be like to be in such a space of silence and connection that you could hear the tiny sounds of insects, or even the sound of a seed cracking as it grows beneath the soil?

And so I found myself at Ōpito and, like the name implies, on a journey of deeper connection to sources of nourishment, sustenance, to Te Taiao—a link, a thread, a chord, a pito.

At first it seemed pretty simple, cooking food, chilling out on the beanbag chair watching the ocean, dozing, and waking, drinking in the vista across the bay, watching the gulls chase silvery schools of ika back and forth, closely followed by optimistic figures in runabouts.

At dusk, there was more land bird traffic closer to me. Tūī, waxeyes, pīwakawaka and others, swooping in and out of the trees getting a last feed before dark.There were two worlds of busy birds in the sky, above the water and above the land. Without distraction, my observations of the natural surroundings were becoming more acute, just as I dreamed of, closer to nature.

On my second day I ran out of things to do. Well, ran out of patience at doing nothing really. So I planned a walk up the beach, to the prominent headland that gives Ōpito its name too, the far away edge. I had been up on that headland before with a friend, a special place where you feel like you are in the sky, in a fusion of land, sea and sky.

I wandered down to the beach, but it was high tide. There was no room to walk on the sand to the headland. So I sat in the boughs of a Pōhutukawa, waiting for the tide to turn, waiting. No measure of time from a watch or a tide timetable, just observing and waiting.

A little time passed. I was observing a kōhatu in the water, waiting for the water to recede and watching its level against the side of the rock. I closed my eyes for a little while, expecting when I opened them that the tide would be lower. It hadn’t shifted. I got more and more frustrated, annoyed, how come the tide and nature was not fitting in with what I wanted? I felt really impatient and actually upset. What was I going to do? I had my plan, I was sick of waiting. My idyll about being at one with nature was wrecked. She wasn’t fitting into my plan, she wouldn’t budge.

I closed my eyes again, let myself settle, and let go. I tuned into the rhythmic sound of the waves, lapping. And eventually the tide started to go out.

It seems a simple thing, but it was a huge learning. I saw how much I try to control time, and control it in ways that are simply not possible. How on earth could I ever influence a tide? And actually how arrogant, to think nature should or could bend to my whims?

My mind went back to another time when I had been left alone in nature without technology. When I was twenty, I did the Outward Bound course. Part of the course was called ‘Solo’, where you were taken by boat to a small bay in the Marlborough Sounds and left on your own for 3 days. You had no watch, no phone (although then it was pre-cellphone days), a small amount of food, a tarpaulin to make a shelter, and a notebook and pen.

The first day I thought I had everything sorted out. This was not going to be difficult. I portioned out my food, made my shelter. I could see the wake of the passing inter-islander ferry passing through the Sounds, and figured I had just seen a sailing pass that was around 6 pm. So I ate a little food and went to bed. I woke up several hours later, and it was still broad daylight. I had actually seen the wake from the 2 pm sailing. I freaked out. What was I going to do? I had all this time, and I had eaten all my food for the day. I was hugely uncomfortable, and I near panicked at the thought of having to keep going.

I wonder how many of us spend several days without access to anything that tells us what time of day or night it is?

At Ōpito, once the tide receded, I took my walk up to the headland. The moon came up across the ocean, glimmering like a golden pathway to something infinite. My wait, although painful, had been worth it.

I slept well that night. The next day I packed up and headed home. On the BlackJack Road the road had slipped away after Cyclone Gabrielle. There were temporary traffic lights. They were red. They stayed that way for ages. But I was happy. I felt so nourished and nurtured by my far out time out, that sitting in the sun at the red light was no problem. I could have stayed there all afternoon. As I reflected there on the BlackJack Road, I felt immense peace. That time, by whatever measure, had shifted something in me. That impatient wait for the turning tide had illuminatedmy demanding and destructive relationship to time. I had made it a battle.

It was one of the most refreshing weekends I can remember, and it was so simple to achieve. No clock was the making of it.

My time in time out. Time In. Time Out. Time in, time out. Immeasurable.

If I take my time, one day, I might hear the song of the case moth.

Ushering in the Age of Spacious Leadership

January 23, 2024admin

Whether it is the way we write, the way we think, the way we communicate, or the way we relate to one another—space is critical.

Space is the yin to the yang, the cause to the effect, the dark to the light. We often use space as a metaphor, one that is so ubiquitous that we take it for granted. The human body itself is 99.9% space. Yet, we seldom delve into our relationship with space.

We are in a constant relationship with space and time, and that relationship can often be a battle. There is never enough space, or there is too much. We can oscillate between an agoraphobic and claustrophobic relationship to space. Not only our physical and physiological spaces, but also our psychological and psychic spaces.

Over the last seven years, I have been blessed with the opportunity to develop a meditation, breath and yoga asana practice that has transformed my relationship to space.

I completed my training as an Art of Living teacher of breath and meditation in India just as the pandemic struck. It was the most amazing synchronicity to have this gift, both for myself and for those I teach, to find spaces and places of internal peace in meditation during those tumultuous years.

I learnt a lot about space, as we all did. As people across the world were confined to their homes in the pandemic, the greatest of fears arose in so many people, and the trauma of this continues to ripple amongst the population. Our fear of confinement is huge. It shows how much we have become ill-equipped to find an internal peace in difficult circumstances.

Watching the struggle of so many sowed the seed for my upcoming book. What is it about our relationship to space that is making so many people uncomfortable and unhappy?

Our spaces have become extremely cluttered. Not only with the endless cheap consumer goods and packaging that fill our homes and workspaces, but also in the digital spaces that define communication and work in the 21^st Century. Our world is cluttered by the constant streams of information we consume, clogging our thinking with our growing addiction to our digital devices that are constantly overloading our senses.

Our internal and external spaces are chocka. We are choking and suffocating from a lack of space in our minds and our environments. It is relentless.

Our digital world that held, and can still hold, the promise of saving us time and labour, has become a burden in the complexity we have become engaged with. Endless subscriptions, registrations, compliance processes, passwords, authentications, marketing… whew, it is exhausting. Not to mention the stress for those who struggle to navigate this world, due to age, ability, or expertise.

Working in leadership development, I observe closely the challenges of those with leadership responsibilities in the corporate world, the public and not-for-profit sectors, and in communities and families.

I started to reflect on what was missing for people. What are leaders struggling with most?

It occurred to me that the greatest challenge is the relationship to space and time.

The most successful leaders are those that find balance and harmony in this relationship.

So what does that mean?

Well far greater minds than mine have studied the relationship between time and space: just think Einstein and the theory of relativity. And long before Einstein, indigenous knowledge systems navigated this relationship and understood it at depth. Here in Aotearoa New Zealand, the concept of wātea, the time-space continuum, is a fundamental element of the indigenous knowledge systems of tangata whenua, the people of the land here. Across the Pacific we have the vā, the relational world of time and space amongst people and all living things.

It dawned on me (and I love the metaphor of dawn, of light emerging in the day) that the most important quality of great leadership is spaciousness.

Creating space for others to succeed is at the heart of great leadership models variously described as servant leadership, emergent leadership, distributive leadership, shared leadership, collective leadership, eco-ological leadership…

Leadership fails when it is all about a one man band. Success is always predicated on the engagement of others.

In the 21st century, we still see examples of an antiquated and colonial way of leading, where command and control leadership is administered from the top of a hierarchy. It is a failing system. Our diverse populations and newer generations do not buy into this: it is a hero based model that has had its day. There is no space left for it to thrive.

The emerging great leaders of today are frequently unseen and unheard, because they are busy creating space for others to succeed. They lead by serving others, rather than cluttering up space and sucking up oxygen telling people what to do, and telling people what they themselves are doing.

Sure, great leaders must communicate and engage powerfully and share vision, purpose and inspiration. But not from a pedestal.

The old Taoist maxim, that the leader leads well when the people believe they themselves have achieved success, has never been more true. It is creating space in leadership for others to succeed and to lead that is the most successful leadership.

Fundamental to the exploration and navigation of external space is the journey of inner space, the unseen journey. Achieving spaciousness in the world around us starts with creating internal space within us.

Decluttering our minds, our psyche, our thinking is fundamental. And in today’s world, it is something that most of us do not pay enough attention to. The art and science of doing nothing, of creating internal space.

This is where a meditation practice kicks in.

Meditation can look very different to different people, and the practice should never be a ‘one size fits all’ thing. For one person, vacuuming the floor may be a meditation. Driving a car may be a meditation for another. A walk on the beach or in a forest may be it for someone else. Others may wish to practice the meditations of spiritual knowledge systems.

What is your meditation practice? Is it conscious or unconscious?

With these final questions, perhaps it is timely to create some space for you as the reader. Here is where I stop writing, and let you go away and reflect. There is more to come, watch this space…

This year I am celebrating seven years since I published my book The Weave: The Surprising Unity in Difference. I don’t know what it is about a seven year period – it is a cycle that many people have beliefs about, ranging from astrological cycle of Uranus through to the seven year itch in relationships. My relationship to space and time has fundamentally changed in the past seven years, and I am excited to share with you some of the story behind my upcoming book.

Making Space to Build Great Teams

September 13, 2023March 22, 2024admin

“Holding space” takes time to master. It requires a deep commitment to serve others, and to focus on the group in all its diversity rather than on one’s own voice, opinion and ego.

Providing the right physical and psychic space is critical to creating highly functional teams and organisations.

When facilitating groups, making space for people in a psychic sense makes a huge difference to the successful cohesion of a group and the outcomes they achieve. Disunity, division, conflict and breakdowns are seeded when people feel excluded and unheard, engendering a sense of not belonging. Creating psychic space requires a great deal of listening and a term that gets used in facilitation: “holding space.”

“Holding space” takes time to master. It requires a deep commitment to serve others, and to focus on the group in all its diversity rather than on one’s own voice, opinion and ego. It is a subtle skill, but starts with honouring all the voices and ways of expression in a group, and seeking connection, building on the contributions that are offered.

Read the full article on the Tetramap website…

Let’s Teach Side Hustle at School.

October 8, 2020admin

Like many people growing up in the late 20th century, I was told at school and home that success looked like achieving well in education and work, focused around core subjects and career paths into professions or trades. There were set steps to follow, and you were always being measured against others and ranked. The measurements, metrics as we talk about today, were numeric, linear and quantitative. There was a cut off point where those with enough marks headed in one direction in life, and those with not enough marks headed somewhere else, usually to lower paid employment or perhaps no employment at all.

However, turns out my greatest successes in life have been my side hustles. But no one ever taught me that. When I was very young, I experimented with friends about making things to sell. It was a game. We made art, cookies, or perhaps even mud pies, and played shop, selling them to family or friends for a few cents. It was a little glimmer of what it might mean to be entrepreneurial and receive reward for something you made from your efforts. Later in life, products and services I have designed and delivered myself have been the most satisfying and the most lucrative.

But my education for this was only ever a game. This approach to creating things, selling or exchanging them, was certainly not on any school curriculum. And once in the work force, creating new ideas, products and services in most of my early roles was not valued whatsoever. You followed a set line, a set of formulas with parameters around delivering work and outcomes. Step outside of the set rules too much and you were reprimanded.

Today, I still see this continue. I have witnessed children in school, students in university, hungry to turn their ideas into realities that will benefit their families, communities, and themselves shut down time and time again. Many is the time I have seen an inspired student or graduate deflated as their enthusiasm, their vision and their creativity is shut down. They get told to follow the script in their career, if they can in fact find a job.

In the Māori and Pasifika world I have seen this frequently occur too with another twist. These students want their study and their research to go straight back to their whanau and community, and yet they get told their study is an ‘academic exercise’ and they do not get to deliver their ideas and have to turn to compromised roles in mainstream workplaces.

An entrepreneurial or creative spirit happens on the sidelines.

In 2020 as traditional jobs disappear in the thousands and kids have spent half the year out of school, what new alternatives can we look at to fulfil on dreams, to source an income, and to ‘make a living’ in the true sense of the word? (Interesting how we default to thinking about cash when we talk about ‘making a living’ rather than giving this phrase a broader intent!) I’m pretty damn sure that professional roles for life are on the way out for good.

The power base of the tired old professions of accountancy, law, medicine and engineering are less and less relevant in today’s world. Many of the services offered by these professions you can now google, or manage yourself. I see more and more of the traditional firms resort to fear tactics as they desperately try to remain relevant, inculcating a risk averse business culture, telling the population that it is very dangerous to do without a lawyer, an accountant, an engineer or a doctor. It is tragic that many parents, teachers, academics, business and government leaders still push these professions as the pinnacle of achievement. And in so doing they’re selling their children and their children’s children a very dud deal.

Maybe it is a bad idea to try and quantify and systemise something as creative as a side hustle. But then again maybe we should honour, celebrate and encourage rangatahi today to have a few strings to their bow, to experiment with technology and creativity, with science and with art, and where all these often sidelined endeavours intersect. I once teased an old friend with a strict socialist ideology that the best thing I could ever teach my children growing up was how to write an invoice. And I wasn’t kidding. Writing an invoice can give you many things; an awareness of business, financial literacy, self sufficiency, self worth. I know for myself writing an invoice for my services is very satisfying and empowering.

Let’s pivot, no in fact lets pirouette, to put the entrepreneurship of the creative and tech sectors at the forefront alongside sustainable uses of the land and our beautiful resources, to grow food and shelter. Is it timely to change out what has been seen as the ultimate professions. Let’s honour the collective, the diverse skills in our communities. It is time to move away from hierarchies that values certain human attributes above others.

Kia Manawanui, Kia Kaha, Kia Māia.

The Opportunity For Māori Values To Re-Build NZ Inc.

September 18, 2020admin

Whatever way you choose to cut and dice it, colonisation was, and still is brutal for Māori.

If not at the scale of warfare of some parts of the world, the brutalization of the spirit, of a way of life, of a humanity has deep scars still running through Māori communities today.

But there is a further tragedy, and one that could become a triumph if people’s mindsets can shift.

Three massive fissures in the wellbeing of Aotearoa, the Christchurch earthquakes, the Christchurch mosque terrorist massacre, and the COVID19 pandemic have shown the generosity and values of Māori communities coming to the rescue again and again, often in simple understated ways.

On each occasion marae, always a place of welcome and haven, were instantly in action providing food and shelter for displaced people, without question. Again and again. No delays or processes about waiting for approval, funding, or criteria to be set. And alongside those marae, Māori health and social service providers rose quickly to each occasion supply what people needed, door to door.

And there have been more subtle ways that te ao Māori has been a massive contribution in this nation’s times of need.

When the mainstream public; numb, speechless, and desperate were flaying around to understand, to find meaning, to make sense of it all, we started to see words like whānau, aroha, kia kaha on placards and on lips throughout the motu.I

will never forget witnessing a crowd of many cultures gathered outside a Ponsonby mosque bursting into a rendition of Te Aroha to express just that… the waiata led by a Chinese man.

Why does the nation turn to kupu from Te Reo Māori in times of great hurt, of great need? On the one hand mainstream New Zealand continues to persecute Māori, with racist jibes, institutional racism, casual racism, fear and ridicule. But on the other, when the chips are down, what set of values do people turn to?

When we hear talk of the Kiwi Ingenuity of Aotearoa New Zealand, of our ‘down to earth’ nature, of our ‘can do’ attitude, and our non-judgmental friendliness on the world stage, what is the source of that in our history?

Without research, and without any academic nous, I strongly believe that it was not simply the pioneers and colonists that forged the ‘kiwi’ way, it was Māori.

And yet that contribution, as with many others from the Māori world is never fully acknowledged. Our qualities as a nation are assumed to be an evolution of some pioneering spirit, and anything wonderful in the growth and forming of this nation is rarely attributed to Māori.

Now, as we face years of re-set, come-back, re-formation and re-invention, where does a Māori tikanga sit in the mix?

From every vantage point that I can see, the collective spirit, the focus on whānau, manaaki, tiaki, aroha and whenua is an operating system robust, age old, harmonious, productive, unifying and fundamentally utterly humane. It is a universal and cohesive winning formula. This is what we need to re-emerge.

We have led the world for so many initiatives in our history. We love being the David to the world’s Goliath and we are good at it. But we have hugely underplayed how much Māori contributed to these successes. It remained hidden.

Now as communities process the grief of a decimated economy with work and livelihoods in complete disarray, we can perhaps finally start to take seriously the ratification of Te Tiriti o Waitangi forward. We can move on from it being an abstract idea, that has been thrashed and manipulated by colonising governments to this day, ignored by the business community, and reviled by the mainstream public to have it be a living document, and foundation for a cooperative template for partnership.

The tragedy and missed opportunity is that the colonial view of Te Tiriti was so literal and narrow that it fully missed the nuance, the inter=connected, holistic and sustainable operating system of Te Ao Māori.

Wake up people! A true partnership between the best of the kiwi mainstream western world, and the best of Te Ao Māori can make our place magic. We know we can pull together as one. We all get the concept of rowing the waka together. Let’s now live into that promise, that opportunity.

Let’s learn to fully love our whenua, our maunga, our awa, our moana as living beings, as extensions of our whānau. We’ve started to write this into our legislation, let’s honour it, let’s be it.

My personal experience as a pakeha in Te Ao Māori has always been one of love, of acceptance, of an all encompassing aroha that stretches way beyond words. I am at a loss to understand why so many pale, stale, males like myself are so frightened of this world.

I guess it is attitude, and that dear Aotearoa, is what we have to shift.

I’ve had the privilege to be invited to document and articulate efforts around co-governance between hapu/iwi and government. When this has progressed well, usually after decades of intransigence on the part of bureaucrats and colonised thinking in Iwi, it has been beautiful to behold. People work together to make the whole far greater than the parts, the whenua is loved, cherished and gives back, and stormy times and conflicts are navigated.

I am not suggesting a utopia, that is always a lie and a fantas\y. But we can do and be so much more.

Kia Kaha, Kia Māia, Kia Manawanui.

Know Your Place

May 9, 2016admin

Navigation is about triangulating where you are.

You identify three points, and you have located where you are.

Knowing your Place is also about understanding a trinity of who you are and where you are from.

1. Your place- geographically
2. Your place – where you welcome others
3. Your place- the legacy you create

Knowing your Place also requires another mighty threesome to be in balance; heart, mind and body.

Knowing your place will ground you in every environment and every interaction.

Why is this important?

Knowing who you are and where you are now, where you have come from, and where you are going are critical to effective engagement with others.

Today people want to know your back story, your current story, and the story of the future you are creating.

Knowing your Place is more than identifying with one geographic spot, that of your birth or your upbringing.

A nomad (both digital and physical) can Know Their Place as much as someone who has lived and worked in one place for many years.

It is about a knowing, a belonging, an identification with place, self and others than will ground you.

Most indigenous cultures start from a place of seeking to know your lineage and where you are from. Many consider our lineage to connect right back to the beginning of time and the creation of the planet and universe. And if you are into metaphysics, you can follow your DNA back to when were were an idea for an atom in the primordial soup.

But that gets very deep.

And that is great, because Knowing Your Place is about taking a deeper look at where you fit.

In English Victorian and Edwardian times the phrase ‘know your place’ was to ‘put you in your place’ in a hierarchy or stratified class system. Today we don’t have to do that. We can connect with our natural world, and the nature of our worlds of family, teams, groups, society and people. And take a journey to identify our place.

Our Place.
Your Place.
This Place

Sense of Place.

Place is a many layered concept.

I think of a metaphor for fly fishing. To be a great fly fisher, you work to cast your line to place it gently on the surface of the water. Your aim is to replicate an insect alighting on the surface of the water. The more attuned you are to your environment, the place you stand, the grace with which you move, your attention to the micro world of insects, and movement of current, and wind, the more you will find the sweetspot of place, to replicate the delicate movement of an insect.

A sense of knowing your place is akin to being ‘comfortable in your own skin’ and the world around you. Knowing your place allows you to embrace uncertainty, diversity and change.