Nickie Muir: Actions speak louder than hyped hyperbole

Buddhi Wilcox. Photo / Michael Cunningham

There's a quiet kind of leadership that really does move worlds.

It's not the blow-hard, bully-boy hustle of the style favoured by CEOs around the world who have only just realised their time has come ... and well and truly gone.

This is different. It's the kind that sees a problem and just goes about fixing it. Quietly. With respect for how the problem may have been caused in the first place. Without judgment and without banners. These are the kind of leaders who will never use phrases such as "solutions focused, moving on, or commercially sensitive".

They don't need to because they don't move on - they dig in, they hold the line and work until things get better. They don't need to focus on solutions because they wake up every morning and work alongside the problems every day ... until things get better ... until things change.

There is no sensitivity around anything they do because everything is commercially transparent . There is a screaming absence of PR men and communication strategists in their wake. They often talk quietly and practise the ancient art of just listening, just listening.

This is the kind of leadership kids notice and start walking in the steps of. It's the commitment to a solution in the constant getting up every morning and attending to it like a gardener does a much loved garden. The constancy that makes a job a vocation and the hard and the menial, sacred. It never shouts from the inside of a loud-hailer but rather whispers: "The door is open, come in if you can lend a hand." It rarely wears a suit. Money won't move it yet is accepted without humility. It's just the right thing to do. It needs no managers - it's informed by knowing the right thing and then simply doing it. It restores faith. Whatever flavour of faith yours is.

Payment sits in a bowl on the counter. Some coins, a note, some buttons from some old jeans. Buddhi Wilcox laughs at the buttons. "If that's what you've got, that's what you give here. I'm not really interested in the denominations but it helps when the town's business people drop a $20 in there after they've enjoyed lunch."

Buddhi Wilcox has been feeding those who are struggling to make it from one week to the next in Whangarei for more than two years. And he feeds the kids. Over a thousand of them - every school week in low decile schools in the area. Truancy goes down on the days Buddhi and his team show up. There's no manifesto. No billboards. Just hard graft and a lot of love.

About the only time you'll see violence about to erupt is if the best bread in New Zealand runs out on a Saturday morning, other than that Buddhi and his Food for Life team is a real story of peace, love and pastries for the kids that a lot of towns would envy. Vote for Buddhi on TSB Pride of New Zealand website to support what he does.