Last week’s newsletter got me thinking about leadership, and how and why businesses flourish, or don’t. So this week, I want to unpack a leadership concept I learned while making First Eat, the podcast I made this year with my friend and collaborator Nakkiah Lui.
Earlier this year, I met with Chelsea Winstanley – a woman who has many titles including film producer, director, cinema owner, entrepreneur, film industry leader, mother, mentor, story sovereignty advocate… the list goes on. Nakkiah and I wanted to ask her a few questions about the Māori economy and her business successes. If you’re unfamiliar with the Māori economy, suffice to say it is projected to be worth $NZ100 billion in assets by 2030. And importantly — in my view anyway — it’s a slice of the New Zealand economy that’s changing the way we do business here in Aotearoa. Why? Because wāhine (women) Māori business owners are considered the sector’s unicorns — magical. That’s what interests me the most because I’m forever asking: how do we change this capitalist system we’re all wedded to? How do we change leadership styles or decision making processes, because there are big problems to solve. Like, food affordability.
Chelsea explains that she’s interested in addressing gender disparity in business circles for the simple reason that she wants to provide a clear and easy pathway into business ownership for her daughters. As she says, it hasn’t always been easy: “I look at my mum… my god, they couldn’t have even got a loan from a bank. They had to have a husband, or be part of a marriage, they couldn’t just be themselves,” she says.
“So I’m making sure whatever I’m doing I want to be showing my daughters that you can be in control of your own destiny and your own choices because actually there will be nothing stopping you.”
Inspired by Chelsea’s words, I started researching different styles of leadership. As I wrote last week, Jack Manning Bancroft’s book Hoodie Economics, has provided inspiration of late. But so too have the words of Māori lawyer turned business leader Liana Potou. She introduced to me the concept of service leadership, and it’s stuck.
Liana is from Te Ati Awa, an iwi (Māori tribe) with ancestral lands and commercial interests on the west coast of the north island of New Zealand (in Taranaki). Liana is chair of a Maori post-settlement entity that oversees commercial interests, land holdings and investments in fisheries and housing developments. It’s one of 180 around New Zealand that are responsible for tribal investments.
If you want to learn more about the Waitangi Tribunal settlement process in New Zealand, have a listen to episode five of First Eat or hit the books. Weeping Waters by Malcolm Mulholland and Veronica Tawhai is a good place to start.
Liana explained service leaders are unique in that they lead by serving others. “You know they are in service for us. They can be washing the dishes at the back of the marae [Maori meeting grounds], as well as calling on the Prime Minister,” says Liana.
The power of this fluidity – one minute in the kitchen, the next in dialogue with a country’s leader – is that it presents a stark contrast to the western tradition of male leadership, which has historically been defined by ascendancy to the ascendancy or boardroom. Service leadership takes place up, down and around the proverbial ladder (perhaps even smashing the rungs).
Liana continues: “Woman are incredibly strong. And I'm not talking physically strong, I'm talking mentally strong, and they have a fighting spirit inherent in them. And sometimes, that's the kind of leadership that needs to be taken to counter a western Pākehā or white male kind of leadership to show the stark difference.”
Liana is speaking here specifically about Indigenous women, but I wanted to include this quote because the image of contrasting leadership styles is so evocative. The kitchen – where one cooks for others, washes dishes, ensures others are fed — is so relevant to my life at the moment. While being a mum to my almost five-year-old the kitchen has been my primary space. And it took a while to see it as a space of leadership, because typically power is exercised in static spaces like boardrooms with a central table and chairs. A leader at the head of the table. Conversation that is directed by rules defined long ago.
The kitchen, by contrast, is all about movement and energy. Conversation is buoyed by action - preparing food, making a cup of tea, washing dishes. Does one’s decision making facilities become more refined or diminished in these moments? I think it’s the former. And I’m not alone. In considering what marks women out as inherently good leaders, Chelsea Winstanley told Nakkiah and I it’s “because we already know how to take care of community. And we already know that by being mothers or being aunties and sisters, and we are biologically wired that way, we are community driven for the benefit of all.”
Next time I’m in a position to chair a meeting or assume a leadership role, I might introduce the kitchen discussion. All big decisions must be made during the preparation of a meal, everyone hands in, and then… we eat. Would it work?
You tell me.
Dreaming of green risotto, a garden update for Paid Subscribers
I make green risotto in spring, so the sight of these pea tendrils is appetite inducing. I’m not growing much in the garden anymore, I’ve never quite recovered from the missing months, but peas I can grow. All so I can make this risotto.
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