What Makes a Taniwha So Scary?
Shrek is one of my all-time favourite movies. I love Shrek for his, “No-nonsense, let’s get the job done,” attitude. I adore Donkey for his memorable one-liners like, “I can’t feel my toes! Wait – I don’t have any toes!” Princess Fiona’s character draws me in because her one-true self was not the picture-perfect princess. I also have a significant soft-spot for Dragon, so-much-so that the mental picture I now have when anyone mentions the word dragon is a pink, long-lashed, coy ‘girl-dragon.’
But dragons have not always been so cute. In fact, the dragons of my childhood were scary, fire-breathing monsters,
constantly in danger of being slain by heroic white knights on horseback.
Have you ever stopped to wonder why the dragons were so fierce, and more importantly, what their ferocity was protecting?
Taniwha are the dragon equivalent within te ao Māori. Interestingly, taniwha are depicted as both kaitiaki, (guardians of the land) and ferocious creatures. I have been thinking about the dual depictions of both dragons and taniwha, guardians of a treasure and ferocious protectors, and wondering about how these two roles might be inextricably interwoven. Is it possible that taniwha and dragons are fierce because of the treasures or taonga that they are protecting?
As leaders, we sometimes encounter dragons and taniwha. Some are fierce protectors and some are antagonists fighting
to survive. Many test the limits of our patience and some can cause us to feel afraid. Too often, we focus on the dragon, and pay no mind to the treasure they are protecting or the reason they present as scary.
We often find dragons lurking in the swamps we fear to enter. Swamps are those places we are reluctant to wade into
because we expect the going to be tough — and usually it is! A swamp might be the group of people undermining your
organisation’s plan, an employee not quite up to the mark professionally, a change initiative that is not quite going as
planned. Whatever it is, the best way to entice a dragon out of the swamp is to wade in, but doing so with the intention of
uncovering the treasure they are guarding or the fear they are trying to hide.
Sometimes we are the taniwha, the kaitiaki guarding the treasures we love or hiding an insecurity we feel. When we feel the dragon rising inside of us, we need to pause, take a breath and find the space to confront that which is causing our inner-dragon to rise. We need to treat all dragons and taniwha with empathy. In the unforgettable words of Shrek, “You know Donkey, sometimes things are more than they appear.”
