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Inspiring leaders establish rituals to connect their team to its core narrative, using them to reflect, remind, reinforce and reignite their collective identity and purpose.
Large or small, formal or informal, corporate or creative, personal or professional – conscious or not – rituals continue to recreate meaning and have embedded within them the deep values and purpose of the person, the place or the project. Rituals tell your story, involve your people, create a legacy. Rituals make the intangible real.
By enacting a ritual, we embody the belief system of our community and culture. Ritual acts as a psychological process – a transition from one state into another. They take us into a new place of being. A new being of team.
You are but a speck in the moment of time situated between two eternities, the past and the future.
True leaders are stewards of the future. They take responsibility for adding to the legacy.
All believed in the importance of ideas, the power of ideas, all believed that the highest purpose of humanity was to define the nature of truth, beauty, and justice.’ You don’t have to be an All Black, you don’t have to be Māori, to understand that, as a leader, you can carry the ball forward and pass it on to the next generation.
Whakapapa is a primal human idea – somewhere between spiritual and philosophical, psychological and emotional – with great implications for the authentic leader. It implies a stewardship of the past, reflected and reinvigorated through rituals and responsibilities – and a stewardship of the future. It is the kind of leadership that doesn’t just valorize corporate boundaries, or shareholder value, or profit and loss columns, or ego, vanity and individual status. It cares instead about contribution to the lineage of the company and the team, even the planet – and about our contribution as
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‘Example is not the main thing in influencing others,’ said the philosopher Albert Schweitzer. ‘It is the only thing.’
This is our social footprint. Our social footprint is the impact our life has – or can have – on other lives. It begins with character – a deep respect for our deepest values - and it involves a committed enquiry into our life’s purpose. What do we hold most sacred? What’s our purpose here? What can we pass on, teach? What’s our place in the whakapapa?
‘Service to others,’ said Muhammad Ali, ‘is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.’ But it’s about more than rent, it’s about respect: honouring that which we are capable of becoming, being great rather than just good, playing a bigger game, a more expansive game, a more ambitious game.
‘Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.’ Character is forged by the way we respond to the challenges of life and business, by the way we lead our life and teams. If we value life, life values us. If we devalue it, we dishonour ourselves and our one chance at living. This is our time. Leadership is surely the example we set. The way we lead our own life is what makes us a leader. It is what gives us mana.
The First XV: Lessons in Leadership. A rugby team has fifteen players who work together towards a common purpose, to win. These principles work in the same way. Each has a role, each a responsibility, each a position on the field. Combined they are the First XV. I Sweep the Sheds Never be too big to do the small things that need to be done II Go for the Gap When you’re on top of your game, change your game III Play with Purpose Ask ‘Why?’ IV Pass the Ball Leaders create leaders V Create a Learning Environment Leaders are teachers VI No Dickheads Follow the spearhead VII Embrace Expectations
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