I spent a rewarding (and mostly very sunny) two days on Waiheke Island last week with a leadership team. The team is usually spread out over the main cities and rarely, if ever, physically gets together.

There were some initial jokes about the circle of chairs in the room and, as I try to do, there were no slides, no notes, only a loose agenda, and lots of talking.

By the time the two days drew to a close the team had taken over. I deliberately stepped back, allowing the team to develop their own plans for the future.

Everyone spoke, there were no silos and I’m hoping a big forward step has been taken in how this team operates and their combined leadership.

When facilitating you need to try and notice when people in a group aren’t connected which can be challenging as it’s easy to mistake activity for colleagueship.

Facilitation is about bringing out the best in others and ensuring that all parties are connected and working for a common purpose. When you see it in that way it’s easy to see that leadership is really a lot about facilitation.

On the Thursday evening at Waiheke, Winston Peters announced his coalition government. In his own words he did it without a conversation with one of the two parties he will be in Government with.

That’s either genius – some new form of leadership yet untried – or something else which will require a new form of facilitation involving a shared purpose where bits of the team don’t actually engage.

I’m pretty sure it’s not genius! Setting up a new team requires ground rules, communication, a common purpose, and the open sharing of aspirations and issues.

The team that met at Waiheke exhibited and committed to all these things. The new government might need some time out soon to do the work they should have done prior. Maybe Raoul Island might be a place to start!

Stephen