Leadership Lessons from Around The World - First Landing: Fiji

A World Full of Wonders?

Asiveni’s bright smile beamed as he welcomed us into the cool breezeway of the Radisson Blu Hotel in Fiji. In the distance, the chants of “BULA!,” the native Fijian greeting, sounded across the Pacific Ocean’s breaking turquoise waves. After spending a few weeks in Virginia, Maryland, California, and Hawaii, we had arrived at the first international stop of our family’s gap year around the world. Along with my wife, 18-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son, we decided during the pandemic, like many, that life was becoming too short to sit at home.

After much discussion about what we could do as a family to address this growing restlessness we decided that we needed a shared experience that would fundamentally give us all a deeper appreciation of the world that had become increasingly fractured and isolated. So it was with this intention that we launched the idea of a family gap year that started last month (August 2023), a few months after my daughter graduated from high school.

I will not go into all the planning and behind the scenes preparation that made it possible to organize this significant undertaking, 99.9% of which has been managed by my better half. Instead, my desire in this forum is to share stories that inspire and continue to deepen my understanding of the human spirit, diverse cultures and leadership lessons that appear in the most unassuming ways around the world.

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The Secret of the Whale’s Tooth

As I spoke at length to my new friend Asiveni (or Asi as he called himself), a native Fijian who is one of the emerging leaders in the growing hospitality & tourism industry, I gained a deeper appreciation for a powerful Fijian symbol – the Tabua (pronounced Tam-bueh) or Whale’s Tooth.

Asi explains that the Tabua is a Fijian cultural symbol that is a gift given from one family or tribe to another during important events such as weddings, funerals and even business dealings. The larger the Tabua (often measuring the size of a person’s arm), the higher the sign of respect. However, Tabuas cannot just be bought on the open market. They are instead earned and granted by family and tribe members through the demonstration of three core Fijian principles of love, respect, and humility. When someone demonstrates these qualities through his or her actions, families then provide that person a Tabua, often passing them down from generation to generation. I ask Asi if these same principles of love, respect and humility apply to how businesses and organizations are run, and he gives me another bright smile as if to say, “of course, how could it be any other way?”

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What’s so funny about love, respect, and humility?

When we juxtapose this Fijian philosophy of love, respect, and humility with more modern leadership approaches of power, strength, and intellectual superiority, we are left to ask ourselves what type of a leader are we currently and what type of leader do we want to be? As an executive advisor and leadership coach, I work with senior leaders who have been extremely successful in their careers and, in many instances, have reached the top of their professions. However, many of these successful leaders still struggle with reconciling their internal conflicts between their personal values and the acted upon values of their organizations.?

Leaders fundamentally want a deeper connection with their colleagues, customers, and superiors. However, the underlying tension or lack of knowing how to effectively do so leads them to fall back into the old habits of managing by fear, focusing on weaknesses, or exerting positional power to achieve their goals and objectives, as many organizations still reward outcomes at the expense of tolerable behaviors. As a result, it is the employees or key stakeholders who most acutely experience the positive or negative leadership behaviors.

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Asiveni In Action

As I reflected on Asi’s wisdom, I also observed his specific behaviors that are a reminder of how a few simple actions can bring about great impact to those on the receiving end:

1.???? Love – Asi demonstrated love by taking joy in every interaction he had. Each time we saw him he was engaged in helping a guest, answering questions, or just chatting with his colleagues, but always with a loving smile on his face, generating a feeling that was contagious to who came into contact with him. ?

2.???? Respect – Asi showed respect by truly seeking to understand who we were on a personal level. Because he was so genuine, we never felt like it was forced or done for some ulterior motive. He asked us questions about ourselves, shared his own personal stories, and did everything in his power to help us understand the nuances of Fijian culture, so that we would maintain our own respect when visiting the local villages and temples.?

3.???? Humility – Asi’s most endearing actions were the ones he did not take. When he was not sure of an answer, he would honestly tell us he did not know and then seek to find out the correct information. When we praised or thanked him, he bashfully looked down, uncomfortable in our praise and attention.

These actions represent the underlying principles of what it takes to reach a level worthy of receiving a Fijian Tabua and ultimately boil down to one fundamental truth that Asiveni understood at his core. That is that leadership is not about what the leader wants or the position they hold, but it is about how to bring out the best in others and how others are made to feel as a result. In the end, Asi’s impact was summarized beautifully by his own general manager who, when asked of her thoughts on working with him, succinctly said, “Asi is my right and left hand…I could not do my job without him – he is the real boss!”

If more leaders stopped and asked the question “what have I done today to earn my Tabua” by practicing love, respect, and humility, I am sure we would see the same bright smile begin to beam from the people and organizations they lead that I have seen from the people in Fiji this past week.