leadership

Ushering in the Age of Spacious Leadership

Ushering in the Age of Spacious Leadership

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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 21st 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.  

Building Story Mojo – Leadership in a Pandemic Age

Building Story Mojo – Leadership in a Pandemic Age

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Never before in recent history have the communication skills of leaders been more important.

Since the coronavirus pandemic hit the world in early 2020, people from every walk of life and in every corner of the globe have struggled to understand what on earth was going on. We had no framework, no reference point, no practiced skills, knowledge or experience to navigate a pandemic that would rend the very fabric of our communities.

The shock and the fear was deep and wide. The shock waves and trauma are still around and going nowhere soon.

Households and workplaces scrambled hungrily for information from any source; what was really going on? Whose information could we trust? Social media, news media, our friends, our families, political or workplace leaders, our spiritual leaders, our fathers, our mothers, our sons or daughters? How could we tell what was true? Even now, what sources do we trust?
Can we trust science? Who has a hidden agenda?

Sharply contrasting communication styles have emerged. There was blame, attack, metaphors about battles, fights and war. There were also appeals to calm, unity and working together, metaphors such as ‘bubbles’. New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, whether you agree with her politics or not, was lauded by leaders from the right and the left for her excellent communication skills, and these centred around her powerful use of metaphor to tell a story.

Research shows on average we all use up to six metaphors every minute every day. Our lives and our communication is (to use yet another metaphor) riddled with metaphor.

They can have immense power and influence. Neuroscientists have found that substituting power verbs and metaphors can dramatically influence us in our experiences and decision making and how we see the truth. For example if we substitute the world ‘collision’ for ‘smash’ when witnessing a car ‘incident’ people’s estimates of how fast a vehicle is travelling can change dramatically. If the word ‘smash’ is used people estimate a higher speed, if the word collision is used they estimate a lower speed, unconsciously. As we are awash (another metaphor again for drama and emphasis!) with endless notifications across social news media, TV, radio,  audio, video, politicians, community leaders, neighbours and friends, navigating what is true and what is not is immensely challenging.

Sometimes even what might appear to be quite harmless metaphors can create fear and disempower. Talk of ‘waves’ of the pandemic can give a sense that it will be a never-ending force with no end. Contrast this with the use of a metaphor like ‘fire-fighting’ which can enable people to fell they have a sense of control over something that can be overcome.

There are pluses and minuses with the use of all metaphors. The most important thing is to be aware of their power and how you use them, and to change and adapt them for different circumstances.

Building story mojo with the use of metaphor is now a key tool in a 21st century leader’s tool kit.

There is an onus like never before on leaders to reflect deeply and clearly on the language they use, the stories they tell. What metaphors and stories are you using? Will they create fear, or calm? Will they call people to action, or disempower them?

In my upcoming workshop Story Mojo: Story Telling for Authentic Leadership we will explore metaphor and storytelling in depth. Join us to take your leadership communication to another level. http://www.andrewmelville.com/workshops/

Let’s Teach Side Hustle at School.

Let’s Teach Side Hustle at School.

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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.

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

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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.