Opinion: Enjoying what we do

Ngahi Bidois. PHOTO/FILE

I am writing this article in Singapore where I am staying with a friend after speaking at an international conference in Kuching, Malaysia. This trip has helped me reflect on what I do as an international leadership keynote speaker and how much I enjoy what I do. I hope that you enjoy what you do too. I thought I would share a few keys to the enjoyment in our mahi.

He aha te mea nui i tenei ao? He tangata, he tangata, he tangata. One of the highly influential factors in our enjoyment of what we do is the people we work with, he tangata, and I work with a lot of people in my mahi. Whether it is the conference organiser or the client who negotiates the contract with my team and arranges all my speaking engagements, travel, transfers, accommodation, meals and other requirements, the taxi drivers, hotel concierges, or the audio visual guys at a conference who do their best to make me look and sound good. They are all people I enjoy meeting and working with in what I do.

Someone once said that our true success is judged not in how we treat the esteemed powerful people amongst us but by how we treat the least recognised. In amongst all of the people in my mahi there is a special group of people who I particularly enjoy meeting.

They are the volunteers at conferences. For example the conference in Malaysia had over 100 volunteers and I enjoyed meeting and greeting as many of them as possible in between my busy schedule of presentations, meeting the esteemed and powerful and media appointments.

More often than not the volunteers are indigenous people of the land and they are always interested in my ta moko and our Maori culture as we share snippets of each other's cultures in the limited time we have together. Ahakoa he iti, he pounamu.

I believe that a key part of making our mahi more enjoyable is realising that everyone we work with has a contribution to make to our lives as we have a contribution to make to theirs. Ko tatou ko ratou, ko ratou, ko tatou.

I also get to meet other keynote speakers as we share stages and often meals and time together and this trip was no different as I met speakers from around the world.

One of them was Professor Jonathan Jansen who recently stepped down from his Vice Chancellor role at the University of Free State to take up a Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Studies at Stanford University. His words to describe his mahi went something like "a black guy looking after a predominantly white university in South Africa".

Suffice to say my time spent with Professor Jansen was privileged and special. One of the things I have always enjoyed about meeting other speakers is that we share our speaking business secrets to help each other just as magicians will help other magicians by sharing their trade secrets. When people we work with share mahi secrets of success then our mahi certainly becomes a lot more enjoyable.

Consequently one of the other international speakers in Malaysia who I got to spend time with was magician Vinh Giang and a couple of his key messages were if we never risk going too far then how do we know how far we can actually go and the greatest risk of all in life is to risk nothing at all.

One of the other keys in enjoying what I do is taking risks. Every time I do a keynote presentation anywhere in the world I always do something new. I take a risk. It helps me enjoy what I do and I hope taking a risk and doing something new helps you enjoy what you do too. Mahi is not mahi when we enjoy what we do.

Ngahihi o te ra Bidois is from Te Arawa and is an International leadership speaker, author and consultant. His website can be viewed at www.ngahibidois.com