The kahikatea is Aotearoa's tallest native tree, and its secret is underground: kahikatea grow in groups, their roots interwoven, holding each other up in storms. When Rangitāne o Manawatū gifted Palmerston North City Council the name E Tū Kahikatea, the programme had its organising idea before its first module.
The challenge
The Council had built three frameworks that all pointed at the same lever: its Leadership Capability Framework, its Employee Experience Strategy, and a new performance approach built on conversations that matter. Each depended on the capability of the Council's 120 people leaders, and research backs the instinct, with managers accounting for as much as 70 percent of the variance in team engagement.
Chief Executive Waid Crockett added one condition that shaped everything: all 120 leaders would go through together. A staggered rollout risked a two-speed organisation, where early cohorts advanced ahead of everyone else. One wave meant shared momentum, a shared language, and no leader left waiting their turn.
What we did
Following a competitive procurement, Capability Group co-designed a five-module journey grounded in bi-cultural foundations, te ao Māori and the cultural context of the Manawatū, built on the EQ-i 2.0 model of emotional intelligence.
Leaders are having conversations with their teams in meaningful ways that I hadn't seen before. People are actively listening to the things that matter most to their people.
The outcome
The first cohort rated the programme 9.3 out of 10, with 98 percent finding it inclusive across tier and function and 95 percent of graduates reporting sustained behaviour change. Team members noticed too: direct reports described leaders who ask more open questions, listen more, and solve less.
The Council's own engagement survey provided independent evidence. The item on performance conversations rose 7 percent year on year, measured across the whole organisation, so it reflects the experience of the people being led, not the leaders themselves. One participant summed up the delivery in three words: high quality, relevant and mana enhancing.
An eighth cohort is planned so E Tū Kahikatea becomes the onboarding pathway for every new leader, and the programme's models are being woven into the Council's wider learning so the language keeps travelling.
What transfers to other councils
Two lessons travel well. A cultural foundation gifted by mana whenua is structurally different from one borrowed, and it earns a respect no imported framework can. And the one wave approach is harder to run but builds adoption speed a sequential rollout cannot match, because every leader learns the same language at the same time.
