Dawn Richards

T&T al­most lost its cre­ative mind last week when youth­ful in­flu­encer IShowSpeed vis­it­ed our shores to kick off his Caribbean tour. Pro­mot­ed heav­i­ly on so­cial me­dia to a youth­ful de­mo­graph­ic, the vis­it sparked a mas­sive re­ac­tion among lo­cal fans. It was fan­dom at its peak. His itin­er­ary in­clud­ed cul­tur­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant stops, where he sam­pled our food, in­ter­act­ed with Car­ni­val char­ac­ters, played the na­tion­al in­stru­ment, vis­it­ed sites of in­ter­est and even joined a crick­et match at the Queen’s Park Oval.

His le­gion of fans did not dis­ap­point. They turned out in their thou­sands to ex­press their ado­ra­tion for this glob­al phe­nom, cre­at­ing traf­fic grid­lock across the cap­i­tal city and the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah. His ge­nius lies in high-oc­tane livestream­ing that im­mers­es fans in the en­er­gy of the mo­ment. His stage is any con­ti­nent or coun­try he’s in at the time.

There is an on­go­ing de­bate around the wins as­so­ci­at­ed with his vis­it. Some ob­servers be­lieve the spoils were un­even­ly split. Un­doubt­ed­ly, IShowSpeed boost­ed his fol­low­ing through spec­ta­cle, hype and crowd en­gage­ment. The ques­tion re­mains, “How did T&T ben­e­fit?” The ju­ry is still out on whether the vis­it will trans­late in­to tourism cur­ren­cy, down­stream des­ti­na­tion ap­peal or con­vert­ible glob­al ex­po­sure. My in­ter­est is not in the rev­enue or tourism pipeline that could have been cre­at­ed. It lies in the lead­er­ship lessons to be drawn from this spec­ta­cle.

Lead­ers must see them­selves as pos­i­tive in­flu­encers. Mas­ter­ing in­flu­ence be­gins with in­di­vid­u­als tak­ing the wheel of their lives and cre­at­ing clar­i­ty around their life vi­sion. This process binds one’s pur­pose, zone of ge­nius and over­ar­ch­ing goals. It is of­ten a slow jour­ney, marked by stops, starts and painful lessons. A suc­cess­ful out­come, though, is a leader with charis­ma, char­ac­ter and at times chutz­pah, who earns trust and ad­mi­ra­tion. This is brand build­ing at its finest.

In to­day’s dig­i­tal age, lead­ers should con­sid­er build­ing them­selves in­to high-en­er­gy, hu­man brands with glob­al ap­peal. In a world with­out bor­ders, a leader’s brand must have reach, pen­e­tra­tion and im­pact be­yond the work­place. In­vest­ing ef­fort in so­cial me­dia to grow brand pres­ence is no longer van­i­ty. It is now an in­te­gral part of cu­rat­ing one’s glob­al in­flu­ence.

When lead­ers in­vest in brand build­ing, they cre­ate com­mu­ni­ties of like-mind­ed coun­ter­parts. Soon enough, cross-bor­der com­mu­ni­ties form and gen­er­ate rails for rev­enue op­por­tu­ni­ties, if the leader has en­tre­pre­neur­ial lean­ings, or for em­ploy­ment re­lo­ca­tion op­por­tu­ni­ties to new places. For lead­ers who de­sire to play in a sand­box with­out bound­aries, au­dac­i­ty is es­sen­tial. There must be a will­ing­ness to en­gi­neer change and to chal­lenge the lim­its of hu­man ef­fort with­in the work­place. It is about cre­at­ing en­vi­ron­ments where peo­ple step in­to the un­known, for­ti­fied by the be­lief that im­pos­si­ble sim­ply means “not yet achieved.”

IShowSpeed has not built a glob­al fol­low­ing in the mil­lions by be­ing scat­tered in his fo­cus. Fo­cused ef­fort pays off in re­alised val­ue, man­u­fac­tured op­por­tu­ni­ty and mo­men­tum. Lead­ers who opt for align­ment of the mov­ing parts that keep the busi­ness hum­ming are vot­ing to not squan­der the pre­cious en­er­gy that dri­ves mo­men­tum. On the oth­er hand, far too many lead­ers al­low the chips to fall where they may when it comes to work­place is­sues. The price for this lev­el of neg­li­gence is com­pla­cen­cy, tox­ic fa­tigue, cul­tur­al de­cay and sys­temic dys­func­tion.

One ma­jor lead­er­ship les­son is that work­place com­mu­ni­ties must be re­con­fig­ured to al­low in­di­vid­u­als to har­monise per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al pur­suits. We live in an age of un­bri­dled cre­ative in­tel­li­gence. Every sec­ond in­di­vid­ual is a con­tent cre­ator. Soon enough, dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy will en­able cre­ators to de­vote them­selves full-time to their pas­sion projects. IShowSpeed ap­pears to be liv­ing this dream. He be­longs to a gen­er­a­tion that’s choos­ing pur­pose and pas­sion to dri­ve mean­ing in their lives, not drudgery.

His vis­it to T&T, whilst con­sis­tent with his high en­er­gy, high en­gage­ment of peo­ple and cul­ture, re­sult­ed in an un­re­alised op­por­tu­ni­ty for the coun­try. On his end, brand mo­men­tum flour­ished. To­day’s lead­ers face an ur­gent man­date. To be­come ar­chi­tects of great­ness who dri­ve brand mo­men­tum for them­selves, their em­ploy­ee com­mu­ni­ties and their busi­ness com­mu­ni­ties.

The tools, busi­ness mod­els and work­force ap­petite ex­ist. All that is re­quired to ig­nite great­ness, as IShowSpeed has shown, is de­sire.