After 2 weeks of technical disruptions our team was keen to reconnect with our 100,000 Cups of Tea community and get the kōrero flowing again. We were also excited to welcome new visitors into our space and share our stories of facilitation and leadership development through our collective experiences.

Onboarding Processes Grounded In Relationships

After a round of whakawhanaungatanga, a new visitor to this space opened up our talanoa with a prompt regarding onboarding processes. They explained an onboarding process that is familiar to many of us who have worked for large organisations -

“I'm real hot on the topic of onboarding at the moment, because I'm seeing lots and lots of people being given the exact same experience, no matter what size the organisation, being lumped with all the information you need to know and then see ya”. She then asked, ‘are there other ways, how do you do it?’

This felt like a timely or aligned question as Walk Together has recently onboarded 20 Māori and Pacific leaders to their 2025 System Navigators program and so, we offered to share from a Walk Together perspective.

One of the Walk Together team shared - “We already knew most of our leaders. We've either worked together or alongside each other. And so it's knowing them as a person [and] onboarding for each person isn't the same, because some people have different onboarding needs, different lifestyles, and it's been really cool to see how we can curate these processes so that it's a better experience for them”.

Another added - “The information wasn't all given up front and dumped, and so it was drip fed. Over the course of eight weeks, and through offering cups of tea and online connections, to share, explore and to ask - Are we a good fit for them?

To tautoko this point another one of our Kaimahi emphasised - “It was about getting our leaders on board and engaged beyond doing the tick box stuff. It was important to figure out together how they can see themselves inside of the journey - that is really crucial”.

One of our regular cuppa attendees echoed similar sentiments around disconnected and box- ticking onboarding processes and from their personal experience described these situations as - “an onboarding system which was very nuts and bolts. You know, here's your computer, here how it turns it on, and they'd probably do five minutes on ‘this is our values’. There's no, ‘why these values mean anything or what your role should be in these values. They might as well say…look, this is our trademark”. They went on to highlight what is often amiss in these status quo processes - “the importance of people” regardless of their future role or status in that organisation.

It is true that for the Walk Together whānau, onboarding our leaders held meaning and intentions beyond blanket processes of filling spots on a leadership program - it has been about embodying connection through growing relationships as the onboarding processes.

Collaborative And Creative Engagement

Following the onboarding process, the next important step was introducing creative engagement tools and activities. We shared a range of engagement strategies that, as one team member described, “bring them out of those dominance spaces and systems and show them creatively different ways.” This creates an opportunity for Walk Together to ask, “What are the core values you’d like to see enacted in this leadership program?” rather than saying, “Here are the values we’ll go by on this journey.”

As one of the team explained, the creative spaces invite participants to “dream big” and ask expansive, open questions like, “What’s the end point looking like? What does the journey look like for you? What’s your vision for your future?” One participant reflected on using the Miro board and said, “I love that engagement. Really, really love the fact that they're adding their post-it notes to say what their part is.” A Walk Together team member responded by saying that, at its core, the Walk Together journey is about “building the journey together.”

Unpacking Power-Sharing - A Walk Together Strategy

One of our guests who has extensive experience as a facilitator and in leadership development herself asked a question regarding power dynamics - “I find pretty consistent working across large organizations is an inability or a lack of confidence, but empowerment to make decisions. How early do you build that into the work that you do with your cohorts as they come through?”.

A Walk Together team member simply answered - “right away”. They explained the current power-sharing model that exists within Walk Together at their governance level and shared that - “we're working in a shared partnership arrangement, meaning that we have equal authority - that can only happen through me delegating that authority over which I've done. So it's about delegating authority, but also that the person [me] in the power role needs to be willing to understand what sharing power looks like without losing authority”. At the heart of the Walk Together kaupapa is connecting and collaborating through a tool called Mutual Ways which guides their mahi both internally and externally.

This cuppa is another brilliant example of a community bringing a topic for our group to unpack and share our stories. Register here and join us every at 11am for another interesting conversation.