Aspiring Leaders’ Forum ~ Day 3

24 July 2010

Breakfast guest speaker Nick Tuitasi

Nick left the Polic Force in 2007, where he has served as an Officer for 25 years, and was based in Mt. Roskill for the later part of his career; he worked with communities and established community initiative programmes which later became 29 similar projects based around New Zealand. His achievements arose from being motivated by the belief that it takes a whole community to help raise the learning capacity and values of young people. He is currently the manager of the Auckland Pacific Youth Development Strategy
• “I’m not interested in power, I’m interested in influence”
• Sometimes you don’t recognise opportunity because it’s wrapped in overalls, allowing emotions to cloud your judgement can contribute to the inability to recognise opportunities
• Achieving results includes hard work in the process
• Being a leader is only a label, when someone needs help, always try your best to help them
• Don’t allow pride to overcome yourself
• Reputation is more important than wealth. it can take a long time to build reputation, but seconds to destroy it.
• Reputation is like a clean whiteboard, it takes only one black dot to dirty it. Thus, it only takes one bad event to ruin your reputation. The main point being, people only see the negativity in people, so be careful.
• Failing is just part of the process to success, see them as opportunities
• Perseverance is part of the key to success, never let failures and adversities knock you down for good
• Always try your best so you can reach your full potential
• At the end of the day, you’re not judged by what qualification you possess, but by the pure heart that you have served the community with and what you have achieved
• Family is everything, it is not worth having achievement without a functioning family.
• Andy
• Nick Tuitasi, the guest speaker at breakfast brought in a humourous start to the day. Non would have anticipated the humour to come from a police officer of more than 25 years. Mr. Tuitasi inspired his audience with his enthusiasm for helping disadvantaged adolescents in the community. From his speech, people learnt that faith plays a major and positive role in life, in conjunction with thoughtful actions and passions, one can achieve great things. The theme of serving the community was reinvented later in the afternoon, but in a practical way. Helping out with Wellington SPCA, we learnt the vitalness of their role in the community and how much they contribute to it. This also led us to realise that a functional community requires a lot of people to contribute it, and echoes Mr. Tuitasi’s words in the morning about the rewarding experience of making communities a better place.
• Sheng Han
• After listening to Nick Tuitasi the Samoan ex NZ police officer, he shared his values with us. I evaluated myself whether I held the values Nick had. He went out of his way to teach young offending children through non conventional means, which got him in trouble with the law. So even when he was asked by his superior to defend himself by lying, he declined and decided to be truthful. His integrity was inspirational to me. Participating in the community service was a rewarding experience, our team was responsible for cleaning the storerooms and stocktaking the food items of the Salvation Army Food bank. Just seeing the smile of the director of the branch was enough of a reward than anyone could ever ask for.
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After breakfast, the delegates attended various seminars of each participant’s choosing.
Guest speaker 1: Murphy Su’a (famous international cricket player for New Zealand)
• Perseverance and patience, must have to make the journey to success
• Life journeys are full of mistakes, that’s how we learn and grow
• Live your dreams, be passionate, work hard for your dreams, there will be challenges and it comes down to how you deal with it
• Nothing’s impossible, nothing’s a challenge
• Don’t let anything stop you achieving what you want to achieve
Business panel: Panellists John Sax, Jim Veitch and Richard Nauck. (well known entrepreneurs of New Zealand from various fields.
• Follow your passions, don’t waste life doing things that you do not enjoy
• Character is what predominantly people look to when recruiting, life experience/education is more important than education/qualification majority of the time. By knowing the character of a person, one can gain insight to the attitudes, values, and ability to form social relationships
• Honesty, integrity and basic life skills and qualities are what employers look for past the qualification
• Failures are necessary
• Respect people no matter what position they are
• Pursuit with passion.
• Trust the people you have, let them free roam to get the best result.
• Understand yourself.
• No such thing as failure, only feedback.
• Failure is only when you don’t get up when you’re knocked down.
• Wisdom
• Gratitude
• Lots of people who has the knowledge, but what matters is people who jumps in and give it a go.
• When the passion starts to wane, get out.
• Hungry for knowledge
• Support on mountain top, support in valleys.
• Only those who share your passion follows you.
• Care brings people together.
Shenghan feels that we have a lot to learn from these entrepreneurs, who have really persisted in what they believe and never gave up in the face of failure or obstacles. We can see that those who never give up and are unstoppable by others succeed.
Nicola Bell – Saarchi & Saarchi
• Respect any and everyone.
• Competitive without compromise ethics.
• Instincts as emotional impulses.
• Curiosity to other people’s opinions.
• Be optimistic, dream big.
• When you are with your family, BE with them (turn off phones, don’t think about business. Live in the moment)
After the seminars, the delegates were posted to community service projects around the local area in their small groups. The purpose of this is to allow delegates to practice what they have learnt, that is, servant leadership. It was also the chance for delegates to see firsthand the benefits of serving others.
Jeremy Tan
I really respect postmen after experiencing the community service dealing with handing out flyers for SPCA. Reason behind this was because handing out flyers to each post box requires a deep amount of tolerance and patience especially in Wellington due to the regions of hills. The regions of hills makes it more tiering to deliver the flyers as the hills were often quite steep to walk. If lacking tolerance and patience, the process of delivering flyers may cause to have a negative and stressful mind. Postmen often have tolerance and patience with their process as they have learn how to handle with handing out flyers to the post box without making a fuss. I need to be more tolerance and have more patience in my life in order to archive a smooth and steady process.
Shenghan thought that the biggest reward of serving others is seeing them so happy when they receive the help.

To celebrate a wonderful Forum, the organisers took the delegates to Silverstream retreat for dinner and a Barn Dance. The fun filled night was a chance for delegates to socialise and form solid friendships. Everyone joined in the group dances as music from the early 20th Century was played.