Choose your leaders wisely
Young Jamaicans encouraged to select heads with sound values
Published:Saturday | November 9, 2024 | 12:09 AMSashana Small/Staff Reporter
Renowned businessman Howard Mitchell is encouraging young Jamaicans to actively participate in the democratic process and exercise their duty to choose leaders who will accurately represent them and their ideas.
“Do not back away from your responsibility to select who leads and to influence what they stand for. You fail in this regard at your own peril and the peril of those who come after you,” he said.
Mitchell was speaking to student leaders at the second annual Leadership & Values Conversation Summit hosted by TEACH Caribbean and The Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ) at The Jamaica Pegasus hotel yesterday.
The initiative aims to inspire and equip young leaders with the tools and perspectives needed to make a positive impact in society.
Stressing that leadership is a shared responsibility, Mitchell, who is also the chair of the values and attitudes committee at the PSOJ, noted that finding a common ground is easier when there are shared values and norms.
“Both leaders and followers, if they are going to be sustainable, if they are going to be operating within a sustainable organisation, must be guided by a set of principles, a set of beliefs, a set of standards, that provide reliable and predictable lanes, channels within which the group and the leader have their way,” he said.
An absence of this, he said, results in lack of progress.
A good leader, according to Mitchell, puts people first by recognising the humanity of all of his/her followers “not just a select group or a particular set wearing a particular colour or being a particular culture”.
“Leadership must. Successful leadership must work to amalgamate different views into consensus or else energy and productivity is wasted,” he said.
“The isolation and differential treatment of the basic rights of some humans among a group of others sows the seeds of division and destruction.”
A ‘STRONG DRINK’
Mitchell stressed that a leader is also someone who practises tactical empathy, prioritises trust, and is able to recognise changes in trends and pivot to incorporate them in their value system or to “ruthlessly divert and modify them if they are destructive to the common good, or sustainability of the good”.
A successful leader is also authentic, someone who is genuine and credible, Mitchell stated.
“We have so many examples amongst us of leaders who will tell you anything in order to get to lead you, because the power of leadership on people is a ‘strong drink’, it goes directly to the head, it is addictive and it makes us want more and more every day, and to do anything to keep it,” he said.
Meanwhile, permanent secretary in the Ministry of Education, Dr Kasan Troupe, charged the student leaders to instruct their peers on the importance of education and of adhering to school regulations.
“We want you to contribute positively to the ethos of your school, we want your peers to come to you and say ‘this is how we feel’,” she said.
She also urged the students to remain patriotic to Jamaica.
“Jamaica is depending on you. We want a guaranteed future to retire and feel safe in our country. Not for you to run away and brain drain, but for you to stay and build this country, because others have done it for you,” Troupe said.