The substance behind the practice.

From hierarchy to convergence.

For years, leadership has been pictured as a pyramid. Core principles at the top, cascading down. Tidy. Familiar. Western-centric.

Indigenous thinking is the original systems thinking. Whanaungatanga is the connective tissue — the thing that holds everything together. When you start there, hierarchy stops making sense. Convergence does.

Tiriti-dynamic leadership treats different streams of knowledge as equals. Mātauranga Māori. Pasifika knowledge of community, faith and service. Western leadership theory with its evidence base. At points of convergence, they meet. Something deeper emerges.

Five interconnected concepts at the core.

The Te Pūtake framework — published in the Journal of Social Marketing — sits five Māori concepts at the organising core of the mahi. Not a checklist. The kupu you keep coming back to when the work gets hard.

How influence actually moves.

Western social marketing names three levels of influence — upstream, midstream, downstream. Useful, but flat. We've reframed them through concepts that reflect a Māori worldview.

The braided river.

He awa whiria — the braided river — describes how different streams of knowledge work together. Mātauranga Māori. Western frameworks. Pasifika knowledge. Asian knowledge. They flow alongside each other as equals. They pool. They separate. They rejoin.

He Awa Whiria as a formal framework was created in 2011 by the late Professor Angus Macfarlane — a pioneering educational and psychological researcher — alongside Associate Professor Sonja Macfarlane. We use it here with acknowledgement and gratitude. Moe mai rā, e te rangatira.

None of them is fixed. None of them is correct on its own.

For leadership, this means we don't reject Western frameworks. We don't reject data and evidence. We don't reject what works in management practice. We hold it alongside relational and Indigenous knowledge, and we let the right stream lead at the right moment.

Partnership as a working practice.

Te Tiriti o Waitangi isn't only the founding constitutional document of Aotearoa. It's a working model for how two parties can be in genuine partnership — preserving the mana motuhake of each, while creating something neither could create alone.

For leaders, that's more useful than most management theory. It applies to how you work with iwi and hapū. It applies to how you work with your team. It applies to how your board operates, how your executive holds power, how decisions get made.

Tiriti-dynamic leadership takes Te Tiriti seriously — as a practical guide to partnership, not a karakia at the start of a hui.

This kaupapa didn't appear from nowhere. It sits on the shoulders of researchers, practitioners, and hapori who've been building this thinking for years. We acknowledge that whakapapa openly.

• 2011The late Professor Angus Macfarlane, alongside Associate Professor Sonja Macfarlane, creates the He Awa Whiria (Braided Rivers) framework. Our kaupapa rests on this foundational mahi.
• 2019–Te Hiringa Hauora's foundational mahi on Tiriti-dynamic health promotion — the conceptual base this practice grew from.
• 2022The SWEET² framework — co-authored by Tim during his time at Bay of Plenty District Health Board — is taken up by health providers across Aotearoa. Early proof that Tiriti-grounded practice could spread.
• 2023Hemisphere and Big River Creative form their formal rangapū — putting the kaupapa into agency practice.
• 2025Tim Antric and Te Awanui Reeder publish Tiriti-Dynamic Social Marketing: A Framework for Transformative Practice in Aotearoa New Zealand in the Journal of Social Marketing.
• 2025Brooke Hayward (lead author), Patricia Vermillion Peirce, Tim Antric and Te Awanui Reeder publish Whānau first: a culturally responsive evaluation of the F.A.S.T. stroke campaign in Aotearoa New Zealand — extending the framework into evaluation practice.
• 2025Kōrero with Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori and Hui E! Community Aotearoa to test the practice across sectors.
• 2026Presented at the Australian Association of Social Marketing — the framework crosses into the international community of practice.
• 2026–This site. The kaupapa now extended to leadership practice.