Leading in the In-Between

I’ve always known how to read a room.

Long before I had the language for it, I could feel the shift in tone. The tightening of a jaw. The silence before the truth. The moment where a decision had already been made, even if no one had spoken it aloud.

This isn’t something I learned in governance training. It’s something I inherited.

When I was a primary school girl, my sister was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. Suddenly, our world was filled with hospital visits, charts, appointments—language that hadn’t grown up with us. The rhythm of our days changed. And so did the energy in our home.

I remember watching my parents—both deeply capable, loving, and grounded—navigate that change with strength, but also caution. Not because they didn’t understand what was being asked, but because the way it was delivered was unfamiliar. Clinical. Rushed. Focused on procedures when what we also needed was reassurance, clarity, rhythm.

The medical professionals were focused on outcomes—blood sugar, dosages, food plans. But I was watching something else entirely. I learned to notice where tension lived—across my dad’s shoulders, in my mum’s careful silence, in my sister’s brave questions. And slowly, I learned to ask the things others didn’t want to burden anyone with. I learned to speak what others were feeling but couldn’t yet say aloud.

And when I did, I saw something powerful happen: their shoulders softened. The room settled. We breathed again. The mauri changed.

Because those appointments were never just about insulin or food plans. They were about how we got there. Whether each of us felt clear. Whether the shift could be held gently enough to carry us forward together. Whether the mauri of our whānau was given room to move with it.

That was my first lesson in leadership:
To see what others didn’t.
To hold what others couldn’t.
To restore what shouldn’t be lost in the process.

Reading the Unseen

Now, when I sit in a boardroom, or a school committee, or a hapū hui, I carry that same way of seeing.

Reading a room isn’t about positioning—it’s about listening beneath the surface. Most of the work that shapes outcomes happens outside the agenda. It’s in the side glances, the body language, the silence after a challenge. It’s in the way people lean in—or retreat.

This way of leading isn’t unique to me. It’s something many of us carry. Especially those who’ve learned how to walk in multiple worlds. It’s a collective gift. One we don’t always name—but one that holds incredible power.

Where Transformation Begins

People often think transformation happens in the moment someone decides. But I believe it happens just before that—when the room softens, when the tone shifts, when someone finally feels safe enough to say the thing that’s been sitting inside them.

That’s the grey. The space between black and white. The in-between.

And when we can hold that space—with steadiness, humility, and care—that’s when people start to move. That’s when flow is restored.

Leadership as Restoration

Leadership, to me, isn’t about being in charge—it’s about holding the kaupapa steady.

Whether I’m chairing a board, restoring the flow of a river, or working alongside hapū to realign a project, I’m not interested in rushing toward an outcome if the process fractures people along the way. I’m here to protect the rhythm. To hold the tone. To bring us back—again and again—to what matters most.

Leadership is a returning. And I don’t return alone. I move with others, guided by whakapapa, informed by community, held by wairua.

Final Thought

We’re so often taught to chase certainty. But the truth is, most of the transformation we need lives in complexity—in nuance, in rhythm, in the spaces between.

The grey isn’t confusion. It’s potential.
It’s where we remember. Reframe. Restore.

And if you’re quiet enough, still enough, and brave enough to sit there for a while—
you’ll feel the next step long before it’s said out loud.