Like many of you, I am always ready to engage with new insights on leadership. This book draws on ‘the great wayfinding tradition of the Polynesian navigators’ (xiii). Most of you live far from Polynesia, so please stick with me through unfamiliar surroundings! It will be worth it…

Drawing near to it

There is a lot to like about the way the book is put together.

It is a collaborative piece. All three authors are Māori, the indigenous people of New Zealand. Chellie Spiller is a professor in the field and is often engaging with other traditions of leadership (including ‘Western’ and corporate). Hotu Barclay-Kerr trains people in traditional navigation as they traverse the ocean in a double-hulled waka (canoe), the Haunui. His stories animate the book. John Panoho offers marae-based (communal meeting grounds) training and experiences in Māori culture. There is a fourth person, Johnnie Freelander, who is not on the cover. Johnnie provides an ongoing case study from his efforts to facilitate change within the Auckland (City) Council. 

If Hotu’s stories animate the book, then Johnnie’s case study earths it. The group have a website that supplements this book and keeps their work updated (see here). 

Each chapter closes with an extensive series of probing questions. Far more than a discussion guide, this helps the book be what it claims to be: ‘not just about wayfinding…but into wayfinding’ (3). 

The book is blessed with an extensive Index, copious Footnotes and a Glossary of Māori words.

Moving on with it

1. Metaphor

As a Christian leader I delight in, and am guided by, the metaphors that I find in the Bible (for example, shepherd, servant, steward, sage, seer …) and ‘wayfinding’ evokes a similar ancient and enduring wisdom. The authors capture the metaphor most fully and simply in ‘Wayfinding and Leadership’ (16-19):

Wayfinding is a living, breathing, dynamic and real skill which includes aspects such as genuine adaptive capability, multi-dimensional intelligence, empathetic humanity and the kind of authenticity and ethical conviction that grows valiant and honourable people (16).

They identify ‘Five Waypoints’, or ‘reference points for the purpose of navigation’ (21), each related to some part of the literal waka/canoe. So, for example, they relate Waypoint #2, Implementing Values, to the double hulls of the waka. 

2. Knowledge

If you want the big word, this book is about epistemology, and being open to fresh ways of knowing. To give you a taste, check out these sentences:

Steering is done through sensation as well as sight. Wayfinders observe cloud formations over high islands. Coral atolls produce unique cloud formations that provide important information for seasoned wayfinders. They observe the colours of the clouds—islands with heavy vegetation produce a darker tinge, and those with white sand give a brighter sheen. They tune into swell frequencies, which can help navigators identify land from as far away as ninety kilometers. The flight paths of homing birds that return to land at night provide important information … (with) the emphasis on the system of relationships between phenomena, not on an individual phenomenon alone (34-35, 41).

Fascinating, eh?! Then there are two guiding principles which process this data. One is a Philosophy of Recognition whereby ‘wayfinder leaders must recognise many elements in the information received to build a multi-perspective understanding of a situation’ (22, with an explanatory page on the website here). The other is Sphere Intelligence in which there is a ‘recognition of multiple ways of knowing’ (23, also with a helpful page on the website here). I had to put a ‘sticky note’ on pages 22-23 because these two principles popped up so much through the book…

It is such an interesting area. Wayfinding ‘synthesises many intelligences’ (38). As a Christian committed to working with God in his restorative mission in the world, I suspect there is a wisdom in these ancient, indigenous epistemologies to which there needs to be a greater openness. For example, there is more focus here on things like ‘sensory perception, gut instinct and emotional awareness’.  I bought another book at the same time as this one, on Mātauranga Māori (or, Māori knowledge) to help push me around in this area—while also recognizing that an endless openness is not the answer. 

One of the appealing things about this book is that Spiller keeps engaging with the wider literature. At one point, it is with Howard Gardiner’s Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. He writes about ‘three biases at play in Western societies’: (a) ‘Westist’, putting ‘Western cultural values such as logic and rationality on a pedestal’ (30); (b) ‘Testist’, and so ‘if something can’t be tested and assessed then it probably is not deserving of much, if any, attention’ (30); and (c) ‘Bestist’, namely that ‘success in these Westist and Testist terms are representative of the best’ (30). Yes, we do need to take care. 

3.  Strategic Planning

Although quick to affirm that ‘a wayfinding approach to leadership doesn’t fall into the trap of setting the analytical and intuitive approaches in opposition to one another’ (131), this is clearly a metaphor that commends the ‘intuitive’ approach. It raises questions about being ‘fixated on the map’ (48) and missing what is ‘unfolding’ (I love that word, and she uses it a few times) around you. For Spiller, the metaphor speaks of the need to ‘continually refresh’ (17); of being in ‘a state of constant ‘shedding’ and letting go…(and not) clinging to rigid mental models’ (17); of being able ‘to orient to signs in the world’ (29); of picking the ‘relational rhythms’ (34)…on and on it goes.

[Dare I shift across to Shakespeare, from the colonized to the colonizer? He dallies in a little navigation with ‘there is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune’…

It is in ‘Linear May Not Be So Direct’ (45-48) where Spiller focuses on these issues. An outstanding few pages! ‘An over-reliance on our maps can stifle the creative and intuitive dimensions required for engaging dynamically in our relationships and with our environment’ (45). She endorses John Kotter’s call for ‘an agile network of people who focus on spotting opportunities, creativity, innovation, and foreseeing the future’ (48). And there are some probing suggestions in the chapter-ending ‘practices’, as she urges us to ‘build our capacity for uncertainty, unpredictability and ambiguity—look for more subtlety and nuance’ (51).

I like having a plan, or a map—but, even more than that, I like jettisoning the plan for a season! Opening up a ‘blank page’ and in a careful process of listening and dreaming, sifting and discerning, creating the space for something fresh to unfold in a specific relational context which is responsive to a specific time. 

Hotu, Chellie and John—at the book launch

4. Mana

For almost 15 years my life has been focused beyond New Zealand. I could not count the number of times I have reached for this Māori word (pronounced something like muh-nuh), before realising “oops, they won’t understand it” … and then, on those occasions when it does slip out and people ask me what it means, it is a case of “double oops”, because I am not so sure I understand it that well either. It feels kinda untranslatable, full to overflowing with meaning and nuance.

Well, there are no shortage of descriptions in this book!

Mana is multi-faceted and can be explained as including qualities such as prestige, authority, power, influence and charisma…  (it is) ultimately a spiritual energy … The leader with mana shows the way for others and does not stride ahead expecting others merely to follow. The leader with mana builds the mana of others. Mana is actualised in relationships, and comes into being through recognition by others (22).

True mana-based leadership…does not come from being a know-it-all; rather it comes from ‘all know it’. Humility is part of a belief system that knowledge is for all rather than being the domain of an elite few and, as seen on the waka, shared knowledge is empowerment (60-61). 

Being a rangatira (leader) with mana is not about standing at the front, in a way that casts others into a shadow. That is pseudo-mana. Such people merely want to be seen as ‘players’. A rangatira is about how you stand with others and what you stand for. When a waka arrives at a destination, Hotu isn’t always at the front of the group, thrashing through the surf and leading them to shore—he is one of the last ones off, because he wants to make sure that no one has been left behind (65).

Mana is not simply a homogeneous blob of ‘greatness’ that attaches to a person. The Māori approach to leadership is a mana-mana model. The leader gains mana by growing it in others and thus it is a process of reciprocity and mutual recognition. Mana points to the collective effort—not the efforts of a single ‘superior’ leader. Leadership is co-created. Whilst mana does have an element of merit, as in the meritocracy of modern capitalist societies, true mana comes from what we can describe as more akin to a manatocracy … In the Māori world, the leader who seeks to accumulate all the mana by putting down others’ mana in an effort to raise her or his own can be described as a ‘mana-muncher’. Not to be confused with healthy confidence, ambition and focus, mana-munching is a top-down control style of leadership that can be extremely debilitating to organisations and teams. It creates resistance, resentment and detachment (105, 106, 107).

Well, that was a bit of fun! Pseudo-mana. Manatocracy. Mana-muncher. 

But do you see what I see? It is deadly serious as well. In recent times the world of Christian leadership has been racked and wrecked by horrible stories. I sighted another one just last week. This little word packs into it some big wisdom for us all.

5. Values

One of the first things I noticed on returning to New Zealand is the way schools create a set of ‘core values’ by drawing on Māori words. It is so interesting that I created a new assignment for a preaching class in which students identify the Māori values in a local school and then demonstrate how these can/must shape the preacher as well. 

For me, the highlight of the book was the chapter on ‘implementing values’ (55-89). We soon discover that not all the helpful words are short, like mana [NB: the suffix -tanga (see below) ‘connotes action, a process, something that comes into being as it is practised’ (57)].

(a) Hūmārietanga—humility (58-64); (b) Rangatiratanga and Manaakitanga—personal sovereignty, kindness and generosity (64-67); (c) Whanaungatanga—belonging (68-72); (d) Kaitiakitanga—stewardship and guardianship (73-77); (e) Wairuatanga and Aroha—spirituality and love (78-85).

…and then the chapter-ending ‘practices’ unfold(!) over five pages (85-89). So valuable.

6. Practices

One of the chapters is devoted to ‘Deepening Practices in Leadership and Management’ (127-160). The contribution here is the freshness of the topics which unfold(!) across the chapter. Here, listen to the descriptors and I think you’ll see this as well…

(a) Reading the Signs (‘being involved, open and aware of the world around us’, 127); (b) Moving from Stillness (‘master wayfinders…possess a steadfast calm clarity’ (132-133); (c) Listening for Difference (‘tuning into subtle shifts and differences’, 127); (d) Adapting to Change (‘the wayfinder steps right into the eye of change … rather than resisting it, they seek to dwell in it’, 142); (e) Shedding Resistance; and (f) Learning by Doing.

…and then do it all with ‘grit and awe’ (154-157).

7. Conversation

I am an inveterate, compulsive Christian worldview person. I can’t help myself. I want to look through that lens all the time—and make sure that voice is listening, but also directing the conversation. When I do so, as you can see, there is a lot to like in this book—a lot more than in many a book on leadership which leans on more corporate-business models and metaphors! 

And not just leadership… The chapter on destination is begging for a little eschatology! The community in the waka where, switching the metaphor, ‘every person is a thread in the whole fabric of a community’ (64), is suggestive of a little ecclesiology—as is the conviction that ‘everybody is a wayfinding leader’ (xiv). Love it. 

But there is also plenty about which to keep me thinking. Where and how does the living God, revealed in the Scriptures and in Christ, squeeze into this discussion? I’m still not sure about concepts like ‘personal sovereignty’, or mauri ora (life force)—and I need to lean on smarter minds than mine to find the best way forward with epsitemlogy. I am chuffed enough with myself when I am able to spell the word correctly…

If I was teaching a class on Christian Worldview, this would be a fun paragraph to engage:

Applied to leadership, the star path is a metaphor that requires us to look up and see the higher potential for creating a relational culture that supports success on board the waka. Success is not simply a matter of reaching landfall, or achieving a goal; it is a matter of process and how to get there, including the transmission of skills to all on board, the growth of people on the journey. It is a matter of personal and interpersonal wellbeing, or reciprocity, respect and interconnectedness with the world of the ocean, with stewardship, with faith in ancestral know-how, and always, a concern for the spiritual well being of all (41).

nice chatting

Paul