Talanoa and data analysis Individual interviews with the Auckland participants (9) took place in person at their centre or home, in a cafe in South Auckland, or online via ZOOM. The interviews with the Wellington participants (6) took place online via ZOOM. The interviews were carried out during the work day (e.g., non-contact time) or outside of working hours, to suit each person. Our aim in offering flexibility regarding format, time and place was to enable each participant to feel comfortable during their interview. The open sharing that we experienced during the process seemed to suggest they did. To ensure our participants experienced conversations that were aligned with Pasifika Indigenous values (Seiuli, 2016), the interviews reflected open talk or talanoaga, inspired by Vaioleti’s (2006) method of talanoa, where tala means to talk and noa means of any kind and ordinary, with minimal structure in place. While we did base our open conversations around a series of questions, we remained flexible and reiterated to participants they could share what they wished to, during this time. Hence, the duration of interviews varied from 30 minutes to over 2 hours. Using a dual Western-Pasifika approach to reflect our positionality and the multicultural nature of Pasifika-led PEL centres, we conducted talanoa with participants in English, with appropriate use of Pasifika terms for opening and closing. Participants were also invited to respond in the language they were most comfortable with. The main languages used by participants were English and Samoan. All talanoa were transcribed by us with additional suppport from a Samoan translator-transcriber for deeper meaning of the Samoan excerpts, from her perspective. The transcripts were then sent to participants for their edits and verification. Once the interview transcripts were ready for analysis, we read through all of them individually to begin a first layer of thematic coding based on “meanings of leadership” (Braun & Clarke, 2006). We approached this process differently; Louise coded the transcripts manually and Maria coded them using a research data management system (NVivo 12). We felt assured with the reliability of this process when the initial themes we came up with individually, which are shared in this article, were in alignment. We plan to follow this first layer of analysis with a more rigorous thematic analysis to identify key findings of the project overall. Ethical considerations of informed consent, voluntary participation, social and cultural sensitivity, and confidentiality continue to be upheld throughout the project. While the PEL organisation has chosen to be named, pseudonyms replace the real names of each participant for confidentiality. Leadership from a Pasifika lens: initial impressions and reflections We now share our initial impressions and reflections of two themes identified early on that reflect participants’ shared meanings of leadership from a Pasifika lens. These themes are: leadership based on mafutaga (relationships) and teu le va (nurturing the relational space), and leadership as tautua (service). Leadership based on mafutaga and teu le va Many participants emphasised the centrality of mafutaga (relationships) and the va (the relational space between people and all living things) to their leadership. These notions were most apparent in their descriptions of looking after colleagues, aknowledging the strengths of their work, working alongside them, and respecting December 2021 { 19 }
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