Shay Wright is of Te Rarawa, Ngāpuhi and Taranaki descent, and he grew up in the rural Far North. He has gone on to develop global connections with leaders through his role as a previous Obama Foundation leader, through the Forbes Asia ‘30 Under 30’ list of Social Entrepreneurs, and as an Edmund Hillary Fellow.
Shay’s contribution to leadership focuses on excellence in governance, particularly within Māori and community organisations. His work with these entities around Aotearoa enables them to be more effective and more impactful.
While studying commerce and law at the University of Auckland, his passion for business and entrepreneurship, and his desire to bring about economic empowerment, led Shay to join business growth centre The Icehouse where he set up and led their Māori unit. It was during this time that he identified a real need for governance training and support for many iwi and Māori organisations.
In response to these challenges, Shay co-founded Te Whare Hukahuka in 2015, developing a range of programmes to empower existing Māori leaders and train the next generation.
“What I noticed when engaging with iwi and Māori organisations was that there was a great deal of rhetoric around succession planning, but I didn’t see many entities investing in succession planning and ensuring a robust transition to the next generation of leaders. Many trustees were in their role as a trustee until they passed away.”
In response to these challenges, Shay set up the Ka Eke Poutama programme to train the next generation of Māori leaders.
“The lack of succession planning is an interesting theme, particularly within Māori entities that tend to work on an intergenerational time frame, but sometimes don’t have clear strategic direction and plans to set out what the priorities are and to ensure sustainability.”
Shay says questions that governors should be asking themselves include, how long they plan to be in this role, what do they want to achieve by the time they leave, and how do they know when it’s time for them to pass on to someone new? These answers need to be shared more widely with fellow board members. “It’s interesting how many times all board members will give the same timeframe for their retirement, meaning the board could lose all trustees at the same time and be left with no institutional knowledge. That is an example of a succession oversight.”
Just as important from a leadership perspective, Shay says boards need to be looking at ways to engage with younger people and to give them the skills, confidence and pathways to move into governance roles.
One of the techniques that Shay uses most often to better understand and immerse himself in a board is listening with humility or Āta rongo. The idea here is that the more we can deeply listen to what others are saying, without cueing our own response, and the more we tap into observing our surroundings, the less reactive we become, and we are able to pick up on the energetics that are at play.
“Listening makes us better learners and better leaders. It enables us to connect, and it facilitates greater trust, openness and a willingness to grow. This is important for boards who are wanting to be courageous and yet face different views around the table and a need to arrive at collective decisions.
“It is also important that all interactions and decisions consider people’s mana and respect and enhance it, rather than just ignore or diminish it.”
Other techniques Shay and his team use to create a comfortable and nurturing environment for young people include:
- Backing and supporting young people
- Connecting them to like-minded people
- Co-designing programmes with young people, so they are fun and relevant
- Evaluating their growth over time to shine a light on their progress
- Embedding real case studies into the learning
- Creating real pathways for young people to go on to
- Gamifying the learning
- Using a mixed mode of delivery
- Bringing in networks to expose young people to a more diverse weave of people who can help them.
Te Whare Hukahuka
Our Story: We are a group of Māori social entrepreneurs passionate about using innovation to positively impact the lives of indigenous people.
Over the past six years, Te Whare Hukahuka has launched cutting-edge initiatives, built a great team, won awards, worked with hundreds of Māori leaders and made connections with other indigenous groups.
We proudly challenge the status quo and demonstrate new and effective ways to have social and financial impact.
We work at grassroots and strategic levels to coordinate the system of support that Māori organisations need throughout the life cycle of business.
Māori sit at the bottom 80% of all wellbeing indicators, and many traditional ways of working with indigenous people are not working.
Indigenous knowledge holds a number of answers to the world’s problems and can be drawn on to create social impact. With our indigenous leadership we can show that our enterprises can be owned and managed by our communities, they can be financially successful, can create positive social outcomes, be respectful of our environment and enhance our culture.