Leadership and followership
LAST WEEK was the 60th anniversary of my entry into high school. After “passing” the Common Entrance Examination I won a “free place” to Campion College, and as a 10-year-old took my seat in first form in January 1964. In those days the school year began in January, but in that year it shifted to September, which meant I only spent two terms in first form. I felt sorry for those in fifth form who did their GCE O’ levels with one term less to prepare.
Heading the four-year-old school was its founding headmaster, Jesuit priest Samuel Emmanuel Carter, who later became the first Jamaican Archbishop of Kingston; he remained a close friend until his death. Every year in early January, Campion College stages the Archbishop Samuel Carter Lecture during Founders Week, honouring this great Jamaican. Fr Carter SJ moved on to head the Jesuit community at its sister school, St George’s College (StGC), but his early presence and leadership has stamped his character on my alma mater.
Campion College emphasises character formation in its philosophy of education, and each year a distinguished Jamaican is invited to address the Campion community of present and former staff, students and parents, on some topic surrounding Jamaica’s national development – human and social. Previous speakers have included Deacon Ronald Thwaites, Professor Trevor Munroe, Dr Lloyd Barnett, Professor Errol Miller, Archbishop Howard Gregory, Rev Burchell Taylor and later his son, Professor Michael Taylor, Greg Christie, and myself; the lastnamed three are Campion alumni.
Last week our distinguished speaker was StGC alumnus Howard Mitchell, former president of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica, who was inducted into their Hall of Fame last October. His topic was ‘Leadership Issues in Present-Day Jamaica’, so relevant as we approach local government and general elections.
As we go deeper and deeper into the silly season I hear activists and spinners from both our major political parties – the People’s National Party (PNP) and the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) – wax lyrical on the grand achievements of their tribe over the years, and assert that without a doubt, their party will be runaway victors in the elections due next month.
What else could we expect them to say? The truth? Hardly!
SPOKE THE TRUTH
Howard Mitchell – former PNP and JLP activist, and former chairman of the National Democratic Movement (NDM) – spoke the truth last week! About leadership deficiencies in our beloved country! You are not going to hear anything like that from any political platform in Jamaica! You will only hear from both sides about how great they are!
Howard asks us to consider “The meaning, the value and significance of leadership in the development and successful establishment of a functional society which results in the critical and essential wants and needs of its members to be satisfied and allows them to fulfil their God-given purpose”.
Good leadership, then, is focused on producing a society in which the citizens are able to self-actualise. Good leadership is not focused on the protection of the prerogatives of the leaders, or on self-aggrandisement.
“By their fruits you shall know them”. You have good leadership if they govern a “functional society”. He could have stopped there, but he went on.
In an effort to define good leadership, he quoted management guru Peter Drucker: “Leadership is about followership”, which he went on to interpret.
“The quality of a person’s leadership is only as good as the followership that he or she is able to generate by the lifting of vision to higher sight than the followers would normally see, the raising of his performance to a standard higher than the performance of those around him, and the strengthening of his personality beyond normal limitations. Therefore leadership is that quality that allows someone to influence, direct or command others by virtue of their perception of him and his influence over them.”
The quality of a leader is seen in the quality of those who follow. A good political leader will communicate a higher vision to the followership, who will be inspired to principled performance by the principled performance of the leaders. Corrupt leaders will generate a corrupt followership.
Over the years our green and orange leaders have created garrisons – enclaves of political exclusion – administered by armed political gangs, funded by government contracts and extortion. What kind of followership does that generate? High crime in Jamaica is the wages of political sin. Every political party wishes us to believe that the other side is responsible, and that crime and violence reduces on their watch. The truth is that both sets of political leaders are guilty, and they have been loath to change the way they operate which might sustainably reduce crime and violence.
WE ARE RESPONSIBLE
It also means that the followership – you and I – are responsible for the poor leaders we have. Even if we protest corruption and political malfeasance – as I have done every week in this column for more than 30 years – we have not prostrated ourselves in the streets, nor picketed parliament to demand an end to it.
So Drucker and Mitchell are right: we, the followership, are responsible for the political leadership we have. The private sector funds both political parties, so that they become what the private sector wants them to be.
At Campion last week, Howard said: “The hard truth is that leaders shape societies, and for that to happen leaders must in turn be shaped by society along the design lines that are functional and appropriate for development. Our educational institutions have failed to do that.”
The way forward is for the private sector and civil society to demand a new type of political leadership, to produce a different type of society, the type of Jamaica well-thinking Jamaicans want to see.
The leader of both the PNP and JLP are graduates of Catholic schools; most politicians are graduates of church schools. The churches must up their character-formation game, to produce a private sector and a public sector and a political class that will build “a functional society which results in the critical and essential wants and needs of its members to be satisfied and allows them to fulfil their God-given purpose”. If we are honest, we will have to admit that we have failed!
Limited space does not allow deeper elucidation of Howard’s insightful lecture; I recommend that you watch it on the internet.
Will any of this ever happen without us taking to the streets to demand it?