This article takes a relational approach to Pacific leadership by presenting three layers of discussion. First, we provide findings from our research team members about the relationships between the Pacific community and school leaders' understandings of leadership. We include accounts of how leaders negotiate in context between forms of leadership from different domains. Second, we reflexively probe ideas of relationality, distance and closeness in leadership research by considering researchers' experiences of the research process. Third, we show how Indigenous oracies such as tok stori can provide space and opportunity to rethink leadership as the ethical negotiation of positionality tensions. The overall findings centre relationships as a key concern of leadership practice and research, and discussion of Pacific-origin ideas of leadership, activities where the relational context behind the context is ignored at one's peril.