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Māori Leadership

From 2006-2008, the Language in the Workplace team received a Marsden grant from the Royal Society of New Zealand to investigate the language of effective leadership in Māori and Pākehā organizations. The research investigates what effective Māori leaders do that might be overlooked when their communication styles are viewed through a mainstream lens, especially those linguistic and discourse features valued in Māori work contexts by Māori employees. An analysis of two pairs of workplaces matched for industry and size - where one of each pair is identified as a Māori business  -  was used to investigate the relationships between ethnicity, (im)politeness, gender, humour and leadership.

The research  team has devoted considerable effort to developing an ethically appropriate methodology,  taking account of tikanga Māori (a Māori platform for correctness). A wider interdisciplinary team including Māori advisors and researchers encouraged the development of data collection techniques and  processes  which were appropriate for conducting New Zealand indigenous research.  To give just one example, the team found that when collecting information in the Pākehā workplaces they were expected to be as unobtrusive as possible -  ideally they should be ‘seen and not heard.’  By contrast in a Māori setting  it transpired that absolute inclusion is not only invited, but expected and the researchers were expected to be seen, to be heard and to be involved.

Leadership and Co-leadership
Ethnicity
Acknowledgements
Publications

Leadership and Co-leadership

Leadership

For many people, effective leaders are typically Pākehā.  Our research challenges this stereotype, maintaining that when examined through a mainstream management lens, effective (and highly valued) Māori leadership skills may be overlooked. The LWP team have examined the similarities and differences between leadership styles of Māori and Pākehā and how leaders achieve effective communication amongst their colleagues. An analysis of meeting openings  and the  ways in which humour  patterns, suggest that what is perceived as appropriate behaviour in one organizational context might not  be considered acceptable  behaviour  in another.

Ethnicity

Research into ethnicity and the workplace has identified similarities and differences in effective communication between the two workplace settings under investigation (i.e. Māori and Pākehā), identifying how and in which contexts each leader performs both transactional (business-oriented) and relational (people-oriented) tasks. Aspects such as humour, gender roles and (im)politeness provide a basis for which comparisons can be made.

Interactions in the two Māori organisations indicated an awareness of the importance of humility and a tendency to emphasise the group over the individual. Māori leaders tended to tell stories about how they learned from their mistakes, rather than the kind of “hero” stories often heard in Pākehā workplaces. And when something needed to be improved, or someone had made an error, the Māori leaders were more likely to talk about the issue as a general one, even discussing it with humour where possible, rather than pointing the finger at an individual.

(Im)politeness

Why isn’t it impolite to talk to someone else whilst a presentation is being delivered? In our data we found evidence of the pivotal role Tikanga Māori plays  in shaping the interaction in Māori businesses, regardless of the language being spoken.  The analysis identified a number of overt differences  in the ways in which meetings are conducted. Of particular note is a low-level murmuring from the audience during Māori performances that is not observed as impolite – a norm which contrasts with Pākehā interaction patterns. Quiet murmuring is seen in the Māori workplace as a sign of engagement, appreciation and acceptance , whereas in a Pākehā organisation, it is typically regarded as an indication of inattention.

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our extreme gratitude to the many workplaces and participants who have worked with us in this project for allowing us access to their interactions. We also thank the many research assistants who have painstakingly collected and transcribed many hours of data for us. This cross-cultural research is funded by a Marsden Grant from the Royal Society of New Zealand.

Publications

Holmes, Janet 2007. Humour and the construction of Māori leadership at work. Leadership3, 1, 5- 27.

Holmes, Janet, Meredith Marra and Stephanie Schnurr 2008. Impoliteness and ethnicity: Māori and Pākehā discourse in New Zealand workplaces. Journal of Politeness Research 4,2: 193-219.

Kell, Susan Meredith Marra, Janet Holmes and Bernadette Vine 2007. Ethnic differences in the dynamics of women’s work meetings, Multilingua 26, 4: 309-331.

Marra, Meredith and Janet Holmes 2008. Constructing ethnicity in New Zealand workplace stories. Text & Talk 28, 3: 397-420.

Schnurr, Stephanie, Meredith Marra and Janet Holmes 2007. Being (im)polite in New Zealand workplaces: Māori and Pākehā leaders. Journal of Pragmatics 39: 712-729.

Vine, Bernadette, Janet Holmes, Meredith Marra, Dale Pfeifer and Brad Jackson 2008. Exploring co-leadership talk through Interactional Sociolinguistics. Leadership 4, 3: 339-360.

Holmes, Janet, Bernadette Vine and Meredith Marra 2009. Māori men at work: leadership, discourse and ethnic identity. Intercultural Pragmatics 6-3 (2009), 345–366.

Marra, Meredith 2008. Recording and analyzing talk across cultures. In Helen Spencer-Oatey (ed.) Culturally Speaking: Culture, Communication and Politeness (2nd ed). Continuum. 304-321.

Marra, Meredith and Janet Holmes 2007. Humour across cultures: Joking in the multicultural workplace. In Helga Kotthoff and Helen Spencer-Oatey (eds.), Handbook of Intercultural Communication (HAL 7) Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 153-172.