A half-million dollar three-year study by Victoria University has shown leaders in Maori and Pakeha-run organisations have significant differences in the way they interact.
Professor Janet Holmes said that office meetings showed up subtly different patterns of interaction in Maori and Pakeha organisations.
"In Maori culture when someone is speaking, there is often a low level of murmuring, indicating not boredom or inattention -- as it might in the Pakeha context -- but rather engagement, as people express their reactions to what the speaker is saying," she said.
"In one Maori organisation, a recently appointed Pakeha complained that staff weren't listening attentively when he presented his report, until a colleague explained to him that Maori rules of speaking prevailed in that particular workplace," she said.
The research by Victoria's Language in the Workplace team research has sparked considerable international interest and the findings will be published next year by Oxford University Press in a book: Leadership, Discourse and Ethnicity.
The team has been working to understand what drives different styles of leadership in the workplace, particularly the language of leadership, according to Prof Holmes, the project director.
Taxpayer funded by a $506,000 Marsden Grant, the project looked at how ethnicity and culture influence people's use of language and patterns of interaction at work, as well as their leadership style, by analysing and comparing the language used by effective Maori and Pakeha leaders in different workplaces.
Four organisations were used as case studies -- two with creative media-type outputs, the other two in knowledge work and negotiation.
One in each industry was defined as having "Maori goals", working for Maori people with tikanga (traditional customs and values) playing a key role in everyday operations.
The researchers recorded and analysed the daily communication processes and strategies used by leaders, and found interesting similarities based on ethnicity and sector.
"Interactions in the two Maori organisations indicated an awareness of the importance of humility, and a tendency to emphasise the group over the individual," said Prof Holmes.
"Maori workplaces also enriched the notion of co-leadership by exploring how `cultural leadership' plays an influential role in these organisations."
