The Pākehā Project
Leadership Journey
Restorative Leadership for a Changing World
Honouring Te Tiriti in Practice
The Pākehā Project Leadership Journey is our flagship programme for Pākehā leaders who are seeking to live their commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi in meaningful, grounded, and relational ways.
Designed to complement Treaty education and other forms of “learning about” history, tikanga, and te reo Māori, this programme focuses on a different — and often missing — layer of change: how our worldview lives in us, and how it shapes the systems, relationships, and decisions we are part of every day.
Depth
Participants are invited into a deep inquiry into themselves, their own culture and ancestry, and the wider social and organisational systems they inhabit. Together, we explore how the orthodox Western worldview — with its habits of separation, hierarchy, and control — continues to shape leadership, institutions, and responses to complexity, often in ways that undermine Te Tiriti aspirations despite good intentions.
Capacity
This is not a programme about learning the “right things to say or do.”
It is a programme about developing the capacity to be with complexity, discomfort, and difference — without collapsing into defensiveness, paralysis, or over-certainty.
It is about learning to meet the moment with both humility and agency.
Practice
Using creative, experiential, and embodied learning practices, participants move beyond purely intellectual understanding and begin to integrate this work into their lived experience and leadership practice. Attention is given to the emotional and nervous-system dimensions of racism, privilege, power, and trauma, so that leaders are better able to regulate themselves, support others, and stay in relationship when things are hard.
Relationships
The journey places strong emphasis on relationships:
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with self — cultivating groundedness, humility, and self-awareness
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with others — tangata whenua and tangata Tiriti — learning how to show up without appropriation or fragility
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and with the living world — recognising the deep connections between colonisation, extraction, and ecological harm
Prototypes
Participants work with personal and organisational prototypes — small, testable experiments — to explore new ways of leading, deciding, relating, and responding within their own contexts.
Community
Throughout the programme, a strong community of practice is built, offering peer support, accountability, and companionship in work that is often challenging to do alone.
At its heart, the Pākehā Project Leadership Journey is an invitation to ask: What is ours to do, as Pākehā, in this place and time — and what is not?
It is demanding work.
It is also creative, nourishing, and deeply life-giving.
And it is best done together.
The Process
1. Read the info. Book a chat if you'd like.
2. Complete the application form.
3. We'll schedule an interview.
4. We'll let you know the outcome.
We have 50% scholarships available for those for whom costs would otherwise prevent participation. Application for these is included in the form, and selections will be made in March.