Michelle Loubon

Vis­it­ing Toron­to-based lead­er­ship speak­er Robin Shar­ma says the "mil­i­taris­tic mod­el" should be re­placed by every per­son mak­ing a con­tri­bu­tion. Shar­ma made it clear you don't need a ti­tle to be a leader.He was speak­ing at Hilton Trinidad, St Ann's yes­ter­day on the the theme Lead With­out A Ti­tle. Among those present were Founder of Grow­ing Lead­ers SallyAnn Del­la Casa, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Tim Gopeesingh, St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus prin­ci­pal Prof Clement Sankat and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Chan­dresh Shar­ma as well as a cross sec­tion of pro­fes­sion­als and man­agers.Deputy Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor Guardian Me­dia Ltd Bran­don Khan and act­ing Ed­i­tor In Chief Guardian Me­dia An­tho­ny Wil­son al­so at­tend­ed the event.

Pri­or to Shar­ma's pre­sen­ta­tion, a video show­cased chil­dren and their am­bi­tions which ranged from be­ing pres­i­dent to teacher.Shar­ma said: "The old mod­el has to be you are a min­is­ter. You have to have a ti­tle to lead. That came from the army. It is mil­i­taris­tic...ob­so­lete. Every per­son in the or­gan­i­sa­tion must serve as the CEO of their own job. They must be pre­pared to make im­pact."In the in­ter­ac­tive seg­ment, Shar­ma in­vit­ed par­tic­i­pants to en­gage in a bit of in­tro­spec­tion in the "age of dra­mat­ic dis­trac­tion." He asked: "How much of these did you re­alise? How many lives did you touch? How many peo­ple did you show that you tru­ly cared?"Shar­ma cit­ed the im­pact of an el­der­ly wash­er­woman, Os­oela Mc Car­ty who re­ceived awards from pres­i­dents. Al­though she died at 91, at 87 she en­list­ed the help of a uni­ver­si­ty so African-Amer­i­can stu­dents could get a ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion.

"She was able to touch peo­ple," he said.Shar­ma spoke about chutz­pah (He­brew for tak­ing risks). In the quest for suc­cess, he said: "Don't think about the risks you didn't take. Projects you could have done "Get to the next lev­el. Don't be afraid to do it."Shar­ma not­ed that cou­pled with T&T's pe­tro­le­um and nat­ur­al re­sources, the po­ten­tial locked with­in its peo­ple would en­sure it played a ma­jor role on the glob­al stage.

Casa calls for re­form for T&T NGOs

Casa said if the leg­is­la­tion and beau­reau­cra­cy al­lowed NGOs to func­tion with­out too much of a wait­ing pe­ri­od, it would at­tract young peo­ple and vol­un­teers. She said: "Cur­rent­ly the NGOs (in T&T) you have to wait a year. Some peo­ple are wait­ing four to five years. "In the Unit­ed States, you are an up and run­ning NGO in 30 days. These hur­dles pre­vent young peo­ple from get­ting in­volved. You will al­ways have those who take ad­van­tage, but that's why they get au­dit­ed all the time."Casa said if the de­lay was short­ened, youths would have a greater in­ter­est.She said: "You will find a lot of young peo­ple com­ing in­to the NGOs and treat­ing it like For­tune 500 com­pa­nies ver­sus hav­ing a hob­by." The sem­i­nar con­tin­ues to­mor­row at Hilton Trinidad, St Ann's, from 11 am to 4 pm