Leading by not being part of something?

I realise that this is a bit of an odd way to launch into a blog about leadership, but it's one of the things on my mind.

One of the tasks that we've been set as part of the Everyday Leadership programme with JumpShift I'm part of is to run a small group project that fits into our current day-to-day role. A couple of colleagues and I arranged to meet and discuss initiating a project that would help develop Maori leadership within the institution, possibly with a focus on working across the three units we are managers in.

As we talked it became clear (mainly because of the examples that they used, and the hoped for outcomes that they described) that what my colleagues were really wanting was a leadership development forum for Maori women.

This left me in what I found to be a really interesting (and I mean that seriously, not as a euphemism) position. Being neither Maori nor a woman it was a situation that I was going to be hard pressed to participate in, and one which I couldn't immediately see being able to contribute to in any meaningful way. My options seemed to be either to push for an alternative project that might suit my needs better but be less what was needed by my colleagues, or to bow out and leave them to it.

One of my original reasons for wanting to be involved in the Maori leadership development project was as a way of supporting Maori students in the School of Media Arts, in particular through our school kaiawhina. In reflecting on the potential outcomes of the project that my colleagues will run I can see this leadership development happening, and I suspect that the best I can do in the situation is to step aside and encourage them to move ahead with it.

I hope that this is a demonstration of some sort of leadership, although I've read and heard less about leading by simply getting out of the way than about leadership as taking action!