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Tuesday, July 8, 2025

Maxine Attong, Turning our leaders into visionaries

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2304 days ago
20190317

Sache Alexander

If you were able to meet Max­ine At­tong as a teenage girl, you would prob­a­bly won­der how did this qui­et, re­served and some­what wacky young la­dy grow in­to such a phe­nom­e­nal woman and leader. To­day, Max­ine as we know her, is con­fi­dent, ar­tic­u­late and in­spir­ing to say the least. As a woman who be­lieves in hav­ing dai­ly rou­tines and one that is proud of her prayer life and her strong re­la­tions with her fam­i­ly, Max­ine tells us how through her work over the years she is now able to part­ner with oth­er lead­ers who long to be less op­er­a­tional and more strate­gic so that they can ex­e­cute vi­sion on a dai­ly ba­sis. As an ex­ec­u­tive coach who lever­ages her 20+ years of or­gan­i­sa­tion­al ex­cel­lence to serve the needs of lead­ers, Max­ine helps lead­ers nav­i­gate the dif­fer­ent lev­els of sys­tems with great fo­cus on the in­di­vid­ual, teams and the larg­er or­gan­i­sa­tion as they ex­e­cute their strat­e­gy. Her pro­fes­sion­al ca­reer has been spent in oil and gas and in­sur­ance sec­tors as a busi­ness leader in fi­nance, strate­gist, process im­prove­ment ex­pert and change agent. Since 2000, she has run her pri­vate con­sult­ing prac­tice, and has con­sult­ed with hun­dreds of clients, through­out the Caribbean and with Or­gan­i­sa­tion­al De­vel­op­ment teams in Por­tu­gal, South Africa and Bu­dapest.

Once seen as a shy girl who lived in her head, to­day this phe­nom is the au­thor of two busi­ness books: 1: Change or Die—The Busi­ness Process Im­prove­ment and 2: Lead Your Team to Win. Both doc­u­ment her ex­pe­ri­ences and the­o­ries on lead­er­ship com­mit­ment and em­ploy­ee en­gage­ment. She al­so serves as the pres­i­dent of the Hu­man Re­sources Man­age­ment As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (HRMATT) and is the in­ter­im trea­sur­er for the Girl Guides As­so­ci­a­tion. Max­ine de­signs and fa­cil­i­tates the En­hance U Pro­gramme which trans­fers life skills to teenagers. Her Call to Cre­ativ­i­ty Pro­gramme which em­pow­ers and sup­ports pro­fes­sion­al women on their ca­reer paths is now in its 5th year. This year, she will host her third edi­tion of the Lead Your Team Lead­er­ship Sem­i­nars which shares re­search, the­o­ries and ex­pe­ri­ences on lead­er­ship with lead­ers and se­nior man­agers.

As we con­tin­ue to cel­e­brate women for the month of March in recog­ni­tion of In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day, the XX team met up with Max­ine At­tong to chat with her on her ac­com­plish­ments and to hear a lit­tle of her take on the theme for In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day 2019.

Here’s what she shared with us.

XX: What is the most im­por­tant mes­sage you want to send out to young women think­ing about their ca­reers?

MA: A ca­reer is not a life defin­ing nor per­ma­nent state. As you grow and change and be­come more of whom you are, you are go­ing to see things dif­fer­ent­ly from the younger ver­sion of your­self. Do not be afraid to em­brace the woman that you have be­come. If your cho­sen ca­reer does not fit the grown you, then it’s per­fect­ly ok to em­brace a to­tal­ly whole new ca­reer, that tru­ly rep­re­sents whom you are.

XX: With the In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day theme for 2019 be­ing Bal­ance for Bet­ter, can you tell us what bal­ance in the work­place means to you?

MA: Bal­ance for me starts with the recog­ni­tion that life is a con­tin­u­um. We of­ten talk about life and work as op­po­site ends of the spec­trum where we have the tricky job of keep­ing both sides sta­ble. I think that if we move both pieces to the mid­dle then of course we at­tain bal­ance. My chal­lenge is not to have the var­i­ous as­pects of my life as com­pet­ing is­sues but to bring them in equal fo­cus at any point in time. Build the rou­tine in such a way that each day en­com­pass­es a bit of each. This out­look ex­tends to di­ver­si­ty in the work­place, it’s not about giv­ing women pref­er­ence over men, but hold­ing men and women to­geth­er in an equal play­ing field with the same ac­cess and op­tions.

XX: Do you think that women’s con­fi­dence and self-be­lief play a role in how well they do in male dom­i­nat­ed fields and whether they are able to meet their ca­reer goals?

MA: I think op­por­tu­ni­ty and ac­cess are the key fac­tors for meet­ing ca­reer goals. If giv­en these two fac­tors women will ex­cel. The sta­tis­tics show that in T&To we ex­cel right though uni­ver­si­ty and then what hap­pens? Most young women have a sense of be­ing un­con­quer­able, un­til they run in­to life. The so­cial and cul­tur­al ex­pec­ta­tions, the misog­y­ny and oth­er forms of dis­crim­i­na­tion take the wind out of their sails and they be­gin to doubt their in­vin­ci­bil­i­ty, for some by 30, they have been ex­posed to some form of abuse that re­duces them to rub­ble. Pro­fes­sion­al women face para­dox­i­cal sit­u­a­tions that are tru­ly chal­leng­ing. There is the para­dox of the sec­ond shift - af­ter a full day of work, women are ex­pect­ed to ad­e­quate­ly take care of all house­hold re­lat­ed du­ties. There is the para­dox of the im­poster syn­drome, qual­i­fied women feel fake when giv­en op­por­tu­ni­ties and pro­mo­tions that they have de­served. These and oth­er para­dox­es have psy­cho­log­i­cal im­pacts that make women seem to be less con­fi­dent and lack­ing in self-be­lief. Add to that our cul­tur­al and so­cial taboos that women must be seen and not heard, our im­ages of fem­i­nin­i­ty or lack there­of, the silent ex­pec­ta­tion that fe­males in the work­place must take care of oth­ers and be un­der­stand­ing as well as emo­tion­al­ly ma­ture. For every woman who seems lack­ing in self-con­fi­dence or self-be­lief, it would be in­ter­est­ing to know if they are phys­i­cal­ly tired or frus­trat­ed by their pow­er­less­ness to change things or have giv­en up in the face of misog­y­ny and dis­crim­i­na­tion. The ques­tion should be, “What hap­pened to dim your light?” My ex­pe­ri­ence as a coach tells me that there are log­i­cal ex­pla­na­tions to this ques­tion.

XX: How much has risk-tak­ing con­tributed to your ca­reer de­vel­op­ment?

I smiled when I saw this. I have been de­scribed as a risk tak­er. I don’t know what risks, I make de­ci­sions and have no angst over it. Every de­ci­sion I make I am ful­ly com­mit­ted to, un­til it no longer works and then, I make an­oth­er one. Risk ex­ists for the be­hold­er, the peo­ple who are look­ing in at me, who are not see­ing or un­der­stand­ing the log­ic of my de­ci­sions and say­ing why did you leave that job or that com­pa­ny? Why are you chang­ing ca­reers? Why are you spend­ing mon­ey on this? For ex­am­ple, the risks as­so­ci­at­ed with host­ing the third an­nu­al Lead­er­ship Sem­i­nar – Para­dox of Lead­er­ship on April 4 are of­ten point­ed out to me. Yet, three years ago, I made the de­ci­sion to host these sem­i­nars be­cause I am com­mit­ted to lead­er­ship de­vel­op­ment in the Caribbean. I am part of a glob­al Gestalt Or­gan­i­sa­tion­al De­vel­op­ment com­mu­ni­ty, whose mem­bers share a sim­i­lar vi­sion of our role in so­ci­ety. I de­cid­ed that each year I will col­lab­o­rate with one of my glob­al col­leagues to of­fer some new re­frame of lead­er­ship so that my Caribbean peers and col­leagues can hone their lead­er­ship tal­ents. This year Guardian Life of the Caribbean has joined my ef­forts by of­fer­ing its Atri­um for the Lead­er­ship sem­i­nar themed the Para­dox of Lead­er­ship. My ca­reer has changed lots of times, open­ing up new worlds, op­por­tu­ni­ties, learn­ings and new com­mu­ni­ties, and I know that I am not done yet. Some day in the fu­ture I will make an­oth­er de­ci­sion and off I will go again.

XX: Can you tell us about a fe­male role mod­el who has in­spired you over your ca­reer?

My mom is that role mod­el. She left her fam­i­ly and her home in Guayagua­yare and moved to “town” be­cause she had four girls to ed­u­cate. She heard hor­ri­ble things about girl chil­dren and the low ex­pec­ta­tions that so­ci­ety sets for them and she ig­nored all of that. My mom learned to dri­ve when she was over 40 and to this day she is the fastest dri­ver in the fam­i­ly – yes even faster than my nephews. She went back to school when I was a teenag­er and fin­ished her Bach­e­lors, even when her friends were say­ing why you are both­er­ing? She taught me the first prin­ci­ple of be­ing a woman – i.e. you al­ways have a choice. She does not be­lieve that age is a lim­it­ing fac­tor she says “Start what you want to start, re­gard­less of your age be­cause guess what? Three years will pass and you will ei­ther have done it or not.”

XX: How im­por­tant is it for women to lift each oth­er up and what does that mean to you?

The best com­pli­ment that I can re­ceive is from an­oth­er woman, whether it is about how I look or some­thing that I have done. I re­al­ly val­ue these com­ments. I hear be­yond the words, I hear: I see you, I know how hard it is, you are show­ing up, and we are in this to­geth­er. It is im­per­a­tive for us to cel­e­brate and recog­nise each oth­er, to seek and of­fer coun­sel to each oth­er and most im­por­tant­ly to hold the space for oth­ers. We have to of­fer ac­cess and op­por­tu­ni­ty to oth­er women and warn each oth­er of pit­falls. Tell each oth­er about op­por­tu­ni­ties for pro­mo­tion, tell oth­ers what needs to be done to make the grade, nom­i­nate some­one to a board po­si­tion, share with them how to net­work. These are the main rea­sons why I start­ed the Call to Cre­ativ­i­ty pro­grams; to sup­port pro­fes­sion­al women and share with them the tools that I have learnt along the way. It is one way that I get to lift oth­er women up. It peeves me to hear that women are our own worst en­e­my. I don’t be­lieve it. I be­lieve that some women fought so hard and were treat­ed so bad­ly on their way up the lad­der that they don’t know how to be­have dif­fer­ent­ly (we of­ten do what we know) and some are al­so mor­tal­ly afraid of help­ing oth­ers up (if she fails then what will that say about me?). Thank­ful­ly, this sit­u­a­tion is chang­ing.

If you’re in­ter­est­ed in at­tend­ing Max­ine’s up­com­ing 3rd An­nu­al Sem­i­nar to be host­ed on April 4th 2019 which fea­tures the theme “The Para­dox of Lead­er­ship”, you can reg­is­ter via email at myvir­tu­alof­ficett@gmail.com. Speak­ers in­clude Ms. Ju­dith Gail (US), Mr. Ker­ri­g­an Roach (Bar­ba­dos) and Ms. Max­ine At­tong.


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