For­mer Guardian Me­dia Ltd man­ag­ing di­rec­tor and chair­man, Gren­fell Kissoon, died peace­ful­ly at his home on Wednes­day night—just one week be­fore his 80th birth­day.

Kissoon has since re­ceived an out­pour­ing of love, with for­mer col­leagues re­mem­ber­ing him fond­ly for his em­ploy­ee-cen­tred man­age­r­i­al style.

In the 1990s, Kissoon over­saw the merg­er of Trinidad Broad­cast­ing Com­pa­ny, which com­prised Ra­dio 730 AM, 105.1 FM, 95.1 FM, and 106.1 FM and Trinidad Pub­lish­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd, the then par­ent com­pa­ny of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Guardian news­pa­per. In 2005, he al­so spear­head­ed the cre­ation of CNC3. All of these com­pa­nies now fall un­der the GML ban­ner.

Of his 35-year-long re­sume of man­age­ment ex­pe­ri­ence, 28 years were spent at ANSA McAL.

Al­though he dis­played ex­cep­tion­al busi­ness acu­men, Kissoon’s for­mer col­leagues yes­ter­day re­called that his most dis­tin­guish­ing qual­i­ty was his em­ploy­ee-cen­tred ap­proach to man­age­ment.

Lead­ing the trib­utes yes­ter­day was cur­rent GML man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Dr Kar­ri­an Hep­burn Mal­colm, who al­so ac­knowl­edged Kissoon’s role in shap­ing the lo­cal me­dia land­scape, say­ing: “We wish to ex­tend our deep­est con­do­lences to the be­reaved fam­i­ly. Our thoughts and prayers are with you.”

Su­san Clement, who was his ad­min­is­tra­tive as­sis­tant for al­most 20 years, re­mem­bered Kissoon’s abil­i­ty to am­i­ca­bly al­lay em­ploy­ee con­cerns, no mat­ter how ag­gra­vat­ed they may be.

“I nev­er heard him shout­ing at any mem­ber of staff ... he ac­tu­al­ly tried to mo­ti­vate staff mem­bers,” she said.

“Some staff mem­bers tried to go in­to his of­fice dis­grun­tled about salaries, dis­grun­tled about dif­fer­ent things and when they came out of his of­fice, they had a smile on their faces! So, he was good at mo­ti­vat­ing peo­ple.”

For­mer GML man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Bran­don Khan, worked close­ly with Kissoon be­fore he even­tu­al­ly took up the sub­stan­tive role. For him, his pre­de­ces­sor’s style had to be em­u­lat­ed.

“He was in­vest­ed in the de­vel­op­ment and the suc­cess of his em­ploy­ees. I think that’s what made him such a great man­ag­er, be­cause he un­der­stood the im­por­tance of be­ing in­vest­ed in re­la­tion­ships, in grow­ing your em­ploy­ees and your man­age­ment team,” Khan said.

“I saw that first-hand and in my course of man­age­ment, I learnt from that and I tried to em­u­late that be­cause I found that it was such a fine mod­el to adopt and I saw it work.”

Cur­rent GML deputy man­ag­ing ed­i­tor, Samp­son Nan­ton, was among the first hired un­der Kissoon when CNC3 was be­ing launched.

“Dur­ing the for­ma­tive years, he and I had many dis­cus­sions on the vi­sion of the sta­tion and it was amaz­ing the way he put staff as a ma­jor part of his fo­cus for the sta­tion. I grew to re­spect him great­ly for this,” Nan­ton said.

In 2022, Kissoon pub­lished his first book, ti­tled, “The Peo­ple Fac­tor in En­ter­prise Man­age­ment: Prac­tices and Be­hav­iours for Cre­at­ing an In­spired and Mo­ti­vat­ed Work­force—Get­ting the Best from Peo­ple”, giv­ing an in­sight in­to his man­age­ment style.

But Guardian Me­dia was not the on­ly me­dia house he led. Kissoon was the gen­er­al man­ag­er of state-owned Trinidad and To­ba­go Tele­vi­sion (TTT) and among sev­er­al hostages dur­ing the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup. Even in this tu­mul­tuous time, for­mer TTT an­chor Gideon Hanoomans­ingh said Kissoon’s care for em­ploy­ees was ev­i­dent.

“He would al­ways say to us, have faith in God and every­thing would be al­right. He was al­ways a very con­sol­ing voice dur­ing those six hor­ren­dous days,” he said.

Kissoon’s fu­ner­al is on Sun­day from 1 pm at the St Charles Pres­by­ter­ian Church, Ca­roni Sa­van­nah Road, Ch­agua­nas.