One evening I needed to purchase some necessities and a couple things to eat. I went to the closest shop I knew would be open at the time, which was BP here in Newmarket, not a cheap place to buy. I brought what I needed and on my way to my car I noticed a Māori man sitting outside to the left of the entrance. He was well dressed and looked around about my age so I asked him if he wanted something to eat. He explained his story to me. He was at the hospital with family and had brought them food and didn’t have enough money to buy his return ticket. He wasn’t allowed to stay at the hospital with his whānau so he wanted to go home. He ran out of time to buy the ticket and he would’ve been short by a few dollars anyway. I gave him the money he needed so that he didn’t have to wait in Auckland until his next pay. He was so thankful.
I didn’t need the money as I would’ve just brought beers or something else. He was in need of it more than me. I felt like it was the tika (right) thing to do. Looking back now I still feel like it was the right thing to do.
There are three basic values in Te Ao Māori or Māori society.
Tika- Learning to do things that are right for yourself, your whānau or hapū and your community,
Pono- Doing things with the right intentions. Something learnt from tikanga Māori whether this be tangihanga, whanaungatanga or even mahi, when you do something that you feel is pono you feel good, feel like you have accomplished something that is right and meaningful,
Aroha- Doing daily things with aroha is the most positive feeling. You always feel happy when you do things out of aroha. Doesn’t matter if it’s mahi, hui or whatever, aroha trumps everything,
I feel that these 3 values help me with my mahi, my whānau and friends. I always try to see the positive in everything that happens around me. If I do notice things that I don’t think are aligning with these values I won’t hesitate to question the intentions.
My strengths I mentioned in my learning plan were connection or connecting with others, Team player and having a good sense of humor.
These strengths will help me connect and make awesome working relationships with my fellow cohort members.
Being a team player will support me by supporting others.
A having a good sense of humor will be beneficial for me in any environment, whether be in a working team or just being around people in general. As mentioned also in my learning plan it will help me to build better relationships and better work productivity (yet to figure this part out though).
Learning to be a better team manager may interrupt my progress during my learning journey as I don't want to fixate on that particular skill. I want it to happen naturally and don't want to annoy fellow cohort members journeys. Reading comprehension is something that is getting better every week hahaha I would say day but that's not true. Lastly but not least starting and finishing something. I feel that during this learning journey it will be different anyway as it will be fun creative stuff we do as a team.
I was in a team where our job was to look after a road closure for our community Christmas parade. The resistance and tension come from locals who were asked to move their vehicles of the main street to make room for the parade floats. Why was there resistance and tension? you may ask
Resistance- Because community members didn't see why they should move their vehicles from the main street, even though they were given lots of notice the day and morning before the parade. STUBBORN is all I want to say.
Tension- Because members of the community were getting angry because we closed the road legally with Police sign off. But they didn't want to drive an extra couple hundred metres down the road to get to the liquor store or whatever, that may have been an exaggeration.
One thing we reflected on was, Why should we do this if this is how we are being treated for doing something for the community, we could have started the road closure earlier, or it was just too hard to please everyone.
We looked at all options
we could have started the road closure earlier,
we could have asked for more help from the Police or the community,
we could have cancelled the Christmas parade.
We ended up running the road closure as normal and the family and children enjoyed their day, it was just a few that nearly ruined it for all.