Which Team Is Your First Team?
Which Team is your First Team?
A waka doesn't move if everyone's paddling their own stroke. Doesn't matter how strong each paddler is on their own, if you're not calling together, counting together, the waka goes nowhere. Or worse, it goes in circles.
You've probably sat in the room version of that. A cross-team leadership meeting where everyone's technically in the waka together, but really still paddling for their own crew.
Their team. Their budget. Their priorities. All perfectly reasonable on their own, and all quietly working against the thing the room was actually convened to do.
You can usually spot it in the language. "That won't work for my team." "We can't commit to that timeline." Not wrong, necessarily. But said from a seat in the crew you lead, not from inside the crew that's meant to be paddling the whole waka together.
There's a name for this pattern, and it explains a lot about why cross-team meetings stall even when everyone in the room is capable and well-intentioned.
Patrick Lencioni calls this the First Team problem. Every leader sits in two waka: the crew they lead, and the wider crew of leaders they're part of. Whichever one you're actually paddling for shapes almost everything about whether the bigger waka moves as one.
It's easy to assume your strength only lives in the team you built, the one you can shape and direct. But the leadership table is where the decisions with the widest reach actually get made. Not the ones about a single team's patch, the ones that set direction for everyone. Prioritise that crew and you're paddling from the seat with the most leverage in the whole waka, the one place where alignment doesn't just help the room, it sets the course for everything downstream.
Lencioni's point is that if that crew at the table isn't paddling in time, it's not only the room that stalls. Everyone further down the waka feels it too. A leadership team out of sync doesn't just create noise around the table, it becomes the wobble the whole organisation moves with.
You've likely seen what that wobble actually looks like. Decisions made in the room quietly renegotiated the moment people are back with their own crews. Contradictory messages landing on the same staff member in the same week, because the people who sent them were never really paddling together. Energy spent managing the politics between teams instead of the work itself. Trust eroding slowly, not because anyone did anything dramatic, but because everyone could sense the crew at the front wasn't actually rowing as one.
The team you lead will always feel like your first crew. Whether the room full of fellow leaders gets paddled for the same way is usually a conversation with yourself before it's ever a conversation with them.
Because that's really what this comes down to. Before the conversation with the room, there's a quieter one worth having first, with yourself, about which crew you've actually been paddling for.
A few questions worth asking yourself before you call anything to the room:
Am I about to paddle for my patch, or actually paddle with this crew? Both have their place. Worth knowing which one you're doing before you speak, because they call for genuinely different things from you.
What would I call for here if I were counting for the whole waka, not just my own seat in it? Often a genuinely different answer than the first instinct, and usually the more useful one to bring into the room.
Where have I kept stroke for my own team this month, at some cost to the wider crew? Not a confession. Just useful information about where the balance currently sits, so you can choose it deliberately next time rather than by default.
None of this means your own crew matters less. It means the strength you're after doesn't only come from the team you lead. Some of it is sitting around that leadership table already, waiting on you to actually paddle for it.
Which crew have you been paddling for lately, and is that still the right call?
This is the mahi I do with leaders: the conversations that build genuinely high-performing teams, starting with the one around your own table. My calendar is open for 2027.
Let's chat! momentumlearning.ac.nz/contact
The Strength Is In the Weave
The Strength Is In the Weave
A single strand of harakeke snaps easily. Anyone who's tried it knows that. On its own, it was never built to hold much weight.
Woven together, it becomes something else entirely. A kete strong enough to carry what matters. A whāriki that holds a whole room. I've watched harakeke woven a few times over the years, and had a go at it myself, alongside people who taught me to see it properly, and one thing has always stayed with me: the strength was never in any single strand. It was always in the weaving.
That's what a good Professional Learning Group actually is. And it's what sits underneath everything I do: teaching leaders to have the conversations that matter.
This isn't a room to be fixed in. It's a room to learn in. Leaders teaching leaders. New ideas brought in and tested against real experience, through real conversation. A deliberate weaving together of people, each one bringing something the others don't have, made stronger by being woven with others.
The research backs up what the weaving already knows. Johann Hari's work on connection found that genuine connection with others is one of the most powerful things that helps people actually thrive, not merely survive. Not proximity. Not simply being in a room with other people. The real, woven-in kind, where the conversations go deeper because you're known, and you know others in return.
A strand held alone can hold itself up for a while. Woven together, it holds a great deal more, and holds it for a great deal longer.
That's the part genuinely worth celebrating about a room like this.
The bonds that form between leaders who finally don't have to explain the context before they say the real thing. The mindsets that get gently challenged, not because anyone's being difficult, but because a good weave only holds its shape when different strands cross and test each other. The conversations that surface in a room like that, the kind that never quite makes it into a one-to-one, because it needs more than one other strand to bring it out.
A few things worth sitting with:
Who are the strands I'm currently woven with, and how is that serving my learning?
What conversation have I been missing out on by holding this alone?
What would it feel like to be part of something built to hold more than I can hold by myself?
If you're ready to be woven into a room like that, the Leaders PLG is built to be exactly this. Whether it's 1:1 coaching or being part of a 2027 PLG group, my calendar is open for 2027 and I'd love to talk it through with you. You can find out more here:momentumlearning.ac.nz/conversations-for-leaders
Arohanui
Mary-Anne 😊
From Doing It For Them To Helping Them Do It
From Doing It For Them To Helping Them Do It
You know the moment. Someone brings you a problem, and it's genuinely faster for you to just solve it than to walk them through solving it themselves.
So you do. Every time. Because it's kind, and it's fast, and it feels like leadership.
One of the biggest shifts I see leaders make isn't about working harder. It's about moving from doing the work for people to building their capability to do it themselves.
Solving it for someone feels like leadership. Building their capacity to solve it themselves actually is.
The hard part is that enabling someone takes longer in the moment than just fixing it yourself. But every time you hand the thinking back, you're building someone who needs you a little less next time, which is the entire point.
A few questions worth trying next time someone brings you a problem:
"What do you think the first step could be?" Puts the thinking back where it belongs before you've had a chance to take it over.
"What's already worked for you in a similar situation?" Reminds them they usually already have more of the answer than they think.
"What would you try if you knew I'd back whatever you decided?" Removes the fear of getting it wrong, which is often the real thing stopping them from trying.
Where this week could you ask instead of answer?
Have a great week
Mary-Anne 😊
Switched On, Not Connected
Switched On, Not Connected
We've been trying to get our sound system properly connected lately. Turntable, soundbar, phone, all of it meant to work together, and half the time it doesn't. Turn one thing on, and something else drops out. Everything's technically switched on, and none of it's actually talking to each other yet.
You have to go slowly. Check each connection before you turn the volume up. Skip that step and you get noise, or silence, or half the sound missing, and you can spend ages trying to fix a problem that was never really about the speakers at all.
Conversations work the same way. You can be technically switched on, present, nodding along, and still not actually be connected to what the other person is saying. Especially when part of you is already forming your answer before they've finished.
Responding fast can feel like being helpful. Getting properly connected first actually is.
It's harder on a full day, when there's no spare minute to give. But answer before you're actually connected, and you end up responding to a signal that never quite came through properly, then wondering later why the whole thing didn't land.
A few things worth checking before you turn the volume up:
"Am I actually connected to what they're saying, or just switched on?"
"What assumption am I making right now that I haven't actually checked?"
"Am I listening to understand, or am I listening to respond?"
Next time someone's telling you something that matters, what would it look like to get properly connected before you say a word?
Get connected this week
Mary-Anne 😊
Before Everyone Leaves the Room
Before Everyone Leaves the Room
You know that feeling at the end of a great meeting? Everyone’s nodding, the energy is high, and you walk out thinking, “Awesome, we’ve actually got a plan.”
Then two weeks pass, and somehow, half of it hasn't happened.
It’s easy to wonder what went wrong, but the truth is simple: the "yes" in the room was completely real. What changed was everything that happened after everyone left.
We’ve all been on both sides of this. You leave a session fully planning to get to work. But then you open your laptop, dive into your inbox, and reality hits. Your calendar is packed, three urgent things land on your desk, and suddenly that new idea is competing with twenty other things you were already trying to juggle.
Saying "yes" in the moment is easy because we all want to be helpful and move things forward. But the actual crunch happens later (alone at your desk), where it's a lot harder to adjust the plan.
The gap between agreeing to something and actually doing it isn't about bad intentions: it's just real life getting in the way. When we don't make space at the end of a meeting to talk about how it actually fits into the day-to-day, the practical challenges stay hidden.
The good news? You can create that space before anyone even stands up to leave.
If you're running the meeting, you can invite the real picture. And if you're the one sitting at the table nodding while secretly wondering how on earth you're going to fit this in, you have full permission to speak up.
Here are a few ways to bring real life into the room before everyone scatters:
1. Talk about priorities
If you’re running the meeting: “To make room for this, is there anything on our current list we should shift or hold off on?”
Doing something new takes focus away from something else. Talking about priorities upfront keeps people from quietly feeling overwhelmed later.If you’re sitting in the chair: “I’m excited to take this on! Where would you like me to place this alongside my current priorities?”
2. Check the timing together
If you’re running the meeting: “On a scale of 1 to 10, how comfortable do we feel with this timeline alongside current workloads?”
This lets people give honest input without feeling like they're killing the momentum. A lower number isn't a problem: it just gives you a chance to adjust together.If you’re sitting in the chair: “I want to make sure we set this up for success. Can we double-check the timeline so we have enough runway to do it right?”
3. Clear the path
If you’re running the meeting: “What’s one thing I can help smooth out or clear away to make this easier for you?”
This turns you into a true partner who's actively backing them up.If you’re sitting in the chair: “I’m ready to run with this! To get started, I’ll just need a quick intro to [Person] or approval on [Thing].”