JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Sunday, July 6, 2025

Del­phi of­fi­cials break si­lence on claims of bizarre ex­ec­u­tive train­ing rit­u­als

‘We don’t talk to the dead’

by

336 days ago
20240804

It’s been eight months since Angélique Parisot-Pot­ter, Massy’s for­mer ex­ec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent of busi­ness in­tegri­ty and group gen­er­al coun­sel, shocked the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and the coun­try, by mak­ing her con­cerns about the com­pa­ny’s ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship pro­gramme pub­lic.

Parisot-Pot­ter claimed the con­glom­er­ate’s lead­er­ship con­sul­tant, Flori­da-based Del­phi Sphere Con­sult­ing, en­gaged in bizarre rit­u­als for ex­ec­u­tives, that their lead­er­ship pro­gramme is a drain of scarce for­eign ex­change and the cou­ple lead­ing the pro­gramme ap­pear to ex­ert dis­pro­por­tion­ate in­flu­ence over Massy’s ex­ec­u­tive team.

Her claims were cre­ative­ly in­ter­pret­ed by the pub­lic which led to pub­lic mock­ery of Massy on so­cial me­dia.

Sub­se­quent­ly, the com­pa­ny’s share price dipped, a slew of ex­ec­u­tives left over the past four months and chair­man Robert Ri­ley sought to make gov­er­nance changes in the con­glom­er­ate.

But what is Del­phi’s deal?

The com­pa­ny’s prin­ci­pals—Paul Dominguez and In­di­ra Dyal-Dominguez tell their sto­ry of what un­fold­ed fol­low­ing the scan­dal in this ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian.

Asha Javeed

Lead Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt

Thrust in­to the na­tion­al spot­light for work pri­mar­i­ly con­duct­ed in pri­vate, Del­phi Sphere Con­sult­ing’s ini­tial re­ac­tion was to stay silent. It was their client’s is­sue, af­ter all.

Massy’s lead­er­ship pro­gramme, for which they were em­ployed at the pub­licly trad­ed re­gion­al con­glom­er­ate for the last ten years through for­mer chief ex­ec­u­tive Ger­vase Warn­er, was be­ing pub­licly scru­ti­nized and in many in­stances, mocked.

It raised ques­tions. But an­swers were not im­me­di­ate­ly forth­com­ing.

Un­til now.

“Do you talk to the dead?”

The an­swer is not so straight­for­ward.

And to date, no one has ad­dressed that par­tic­u­lar claim, not even Warn­er.

“No,” was the im­me­di­ate re­sponse from Dominguez and his wife In­di­ra in an in­ter­view last week but the “no” comes with a “but” be­cause it had to be con­tex­tu­alised Dominguez said. For con­text, it was the fourth phase of a year-long train­ing ex­er­cise which fo­cused on de­vel­op­ing the “in­tu­itive” in the in­di­vid­ual.

“There’s no con­text for speak­ing to the dead. When you deal with en­er­gy, what starts to be­come very re­al for peo­ple in the pro­gramme is that, yes, we have a mind, but there’s an en­er­gy of who we are. Ein­stein proved that when he said you can’t cre­ate en­er­gy or de­stroy it. Well, then what hap­pens? You tap in­to that. You start to take it on and it be­comes re­al, you have a dif­fer­ent re­la­tion­ship with life,” said In­di­ra.

They ex­plained that what they were try­ing to com­mu­ni­cate was how to con­nect to the en­er­gy that ex­ists all around. And some­times, that comes in the spir­it of a loved one.

The cou­ple said it’s an ex­er­cise which lasts a few min­utes in their pro­gramme.

Their teach­ing, they said, fo­cus­es on har­ness­ing the in­di­vid­ual’s strengths, go­ing deep­er in­to per­ceived lim­i­ta­tions, train­ing the mind and nur­tur­ing an in­di­vid­ual’s in­tu­ition in de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

They de­scribed the “bizarre rit­u­als” as med­i­ta­tions.

As for the “dis­pro­por­tion­ate in­flu­ence”, they said part of their train­ing in­clud­ed week­ly calls with Massy ex­ec­u­tives. How­ev­er, they in­sist­ed they don’t dis­cuss com­pa­ny busi­ness but fo­cus on help­ing in­di­vid­u­als re­spond.

At its peak, Del­phi trained most Massy ex­ec­u­tives in an or­gan­i­sa­tion that em­ploys more than 12,000 peo­ple in near­ly 60 com­pa­nies across the re­gion and is list­ed on two re­gion­al stock ex­changes.

In their view, the Massy lead­er­ship is a suc­cess­ful ex­am­ple of their lead­er­ship pro­gramme in ac­tion.

Massy halt­ed the Del­phi pro­gramme fol­low­ing Parisot-Pot­ter’s al­le­ga­tions in Jan­u­ary.

In her 13-page let­ter, Parisot-Pot­ter made ad­di­tion­al al­le­ga­tions against Del­phi, say­ing that dur­ing train­ing they claimed to con­trol the weath­er and cure can­cer.

Parisot-Pot­ter said she be­lieved it was the prin­ci­ples of Del­phi and oth­er se­nior man­age­ment who raised is­sues about her role in the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

“Ger­vase cit­ed pre­vi­ous at­tempts at ‘coach­ing’ and ‘train­ing’ as un­suc­cess­ful means to shape me in­to the in­di­vid­ual he en­vi­sioned for the role; that it hadn’t worked and that ‘it’ had to end. And that the ‘how’ of how I wrote things even af­ter things had been ‘de­cid­ed’ and ‘agreed’ was the prob­lem,” she said, adding that she was sub­ject­ed to ver­bal abuse from the Del­phi con­sul­tant.

“Rather than ad­dress­ing the ev­i­dent mis­con­duct, Ger­vase shift­ed the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to me to rec­on­cile with Paul and told me to even lever­age the in­ci­dent for in­tro­spec­tion. Such con­duct is un­equiv­o­cal­ly un­ac­cept­able, with­out jus­ti­fi­ca­tion and un­war­rant­ed un­der any cir­cum­stances.”

Parisot-Pot­ter’s claim that she was ver­bal­ly abused by Dominguez was borne out in Massy’s three-month in­ves­ti­ga­tion by Ker­wyn Gar­cia SC.

Gar­cia said that Parisot-Pot­ter was “ver­bal­ly abused” by Dominguez dur­ing the first con­fer­ence of the pro­gramme in 2022 and that she “jus­ti­fi­ably felt hu­mil­i­at­ed by such abuse.”

In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view on Jan­u­ary 7 with Guardian Me­dia, Parisot-Pot­ter said she did the ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship train­ing in 2022 and con­clud­ed in 2023.

“I was told by the CEO (Warn­er) that, quote-un­quote, I could not move for­ward with Massy un­less I did Del­phi,” she said.

Parisot-Pot­ter is a Catholic and be­lieves in God. How­ev­er, that be­lief sys­tem did not con­strain her from ac­cept­ing the Del­phi guid­ance which she said fo­cused on en­er­gy train­ing. Her is­sue, she told Guardian Me­dia on Jan­u­ary 7, was the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the cou­ple run­ning the pro­gramme and what she de­scribed as their “mum­bo-jum­bo” lan­guage of learn­ing.

“I had to do the pro­gramme. I did not have a choice. I was clear­ly and re­peat­ed­ly told that it was a con­di­tion for con­tin­ued em­ploy­ment and op­por­tu­ni­ty for se­nior mem­bers of the ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment team I can­not move for­ward with Massy with­out do­ing this pro­gramme.

“The Del­phi ex­pe­ri­ence was and is a se­ri­ous mat­ter in its vi­o­la­tions of my re­li­gious be­liefs and the be­liefs of oth­ers, but Del­phi in it­self was not the prob­lem. Del­phi is symp­to­matic of the re­al is­sues,” she had said.

Del­phi’s dilem­ma

Dominguez said they were first alert­ed to the al­le­ga­tions when they got calls from the me­dia.

“Massy did not reach out to us. There were peo­ple, our friends, who sent us the ar­ti­cles,” In­di­ra said.

Why did you stay qui­et?

“Massy was in the mid­dle of this thing. And they were the high­light of it. And out of re­spect for all the ex­ec­u­tives that we’ve spo­ken with and talked to and done the pro­gramme with, we agreed that we would wait and let them fin­ish their in­ves­ti­ga­tion,” said Dominguez.

“You’ve got this big ‘talk­ing to the dead’ and ‘white light’ in all of Trinidad and you can’t say any­thing in­to that be­cause no one is lis­ten­ing to any­thing. Every­body is high­ly re­ac­tive,” he added.

Del­phi’s ses­sion was record­ed by Parisot-Pot­ter and sub­mit­ted to the Massy board along with a 13-page let­ter which out­lined al­le­ga­tions against Massy.

For Del­phi, it breached their con­fi­den­tial­i­ty.

In the past few months, Parisot-Pot­ter has post­ed the record­ings on sev­er­al so­cial me­dia plat­forms.

In seek­ing re­lief, Del­phi has com­plained about their copy­right and had the ma­te­r­i­al tak­en down in some in­stances. They are al­so pur­su­ing le­gal ac­tion against Parisot-Pot­ter.

In re­sponse, Parisot-Pot­ter told the Sun­day Guardian that “my Face­book ac­count was in­ex­plic­a­bly delet­ed a few months ago for copy­right claims I pre­sume were made by Del­phi.”

In their view, they were col­lat­er­al dam­age in Parisot-Pot­ter’s charges against Massy.

“I’m un­clear about the al­le­ga­tions of an agen­da or col­lat­er­al dam­age. Per­haps Del­phi does not un­der­stand share­hold­ers’ rights in this ju­ris­dic­tion” Parisot-Pot­ter re­spond­ed.

The cou­ple said they spent hours be­ing in­ter­viewed by in­ves­ti­ga­tor Ker­wyn Gar­cia SC.

In his re­port, Gar­cia said that “the ev­i­dence does not es­tab­lish that Mrs Parisot-Pot­ter was pe­nalised for ful­fill­ing her role as Gen­er­al Coun­sel or for not sup­port­ing or for re­ject­ing the Del­phi pro­gramme or its pre­sen­ters and that the ev­i­dence does not es­tab­lish that the Del­phi pro­gramme, whether by its con­tents of by its pre­sen­ters, pos­es any dan­ger to the op­er­a­tions of Massy.

The re­port al­so stat­ed that Massy ex­ec­u­tives are free to se­lect ex­ec­u­tive train­ing of their choice.

“Some Massy ex­ec­u­tives have felt the pro­gramme to be im­mense­ly help­ful. Oth­ers, in­clud­ing Mrs Parisot-Pot­ter, have not,” the re­port said.

Dominguez said there was one find­ing he dis­agreed with (his ver­bal abuse of Parisot-Pot­ter), but the find­ings “found us vin­di­cat­ed.”

The cou­ple opt­ed to speak now be­cause of the rep­u­ta­tion­al dam­age which has af­fect­ed their busi­ness.

“The dam­age is so huge. It is such a defama­tion and a vi­o­la­tion of who we are,” he said.

“It’s killed off about 80 per cent of our busi­ness which is sig­nif­i­cant. In fact, there was an en­gage­ment that was sup­posed to start in Ju­ly. That’s been post­poned. Right now, the on­ly work we’re do­ing is up here in the States un­til we get some­thing re­paired down there,” said Dominguez.

But In­di­ra holds a dif­fer­ent view.

“There’s no re­pair­ing or any­thing, what oc­curred is what oc­curred. We want to re­al­ly es­tab­lish who we are, be­cause of the lev­el of vi­o­la­tion of what has been said and the on­go­ing dis­tor­tion of our work for me, it’s re­al­ly an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­al­ly speak who we are. I’m just about re­al­ly set­ting the record clear,” she said.

“We’ll take it to what­ev­er de­gree we need un­til we can get this si­lenced.”

On whether they feel their pro­gramme has been de­val­ued in the process, In­di­ra re­spond­ed: “Ab­solute­ly not. I am not de­val­ued. I know who I am. I know what I’m about. I think there’s an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­al­ly el­e­vate how peo­ple think and see life. I don’t feel it has de­val­ued me and my work.

Con­tin­ues on page 6

I con­tin­ue to do what I’m do­ing. I’m bring­ing this out to the mass­es on a glob­al lev­el. And that’s my work. That’s who I am.”

They be­lieve by set­ting the record straight, that peo­ple will ac­cept their work in the Caribbean.

Do you be­lieve it’s enough?

“I trust en­er­gy. And I know, you see if you put some­thing out there, that is truth, I be­lieve it vi­brates much loud­er than the low­er vi­bra­tion space. I think that this is an op­por­tu­ni­ty to el­e­vate the en­er­gy in which peo­ple are,” they said.

Back­ground

In April, af­ter a three-month probe, Massy said that the “over­whelm­ing ma­jor­i­ty” of al­le­ga­tions con­tained in the 13-page doc­u­ment sub­mit­ted by Parisot-Pot­ter “have not been made out.”

Parisot-Pot­ter did not par­tic­i­pate in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion be­cause she re­fused to sign a re­quest­ed non-dis­clo­sure agree­ment (NDA).

Massy said it would al­so re­view its com­pa­ny’s gov­er­nance sys­tems, in par­tic­u­lar the bonus sys­tem for its ex­ec­u­tives.

The re­port re­vealed that Massy was re­struc­tur­ing its op­er­a­tions and that Parisot-Pot­ter’s job as group coun­sel was made re­dun­dant last year. As a re­sult, she was in ne­go­ti­a­tions to ex­it the com­pa­ny for $100 mil­lion as well as a seat on Massy’s board.

It said that in 2019, Massy de­cid­ed to re-or­gan­ise its op­er­a­tions in ac­cor­dance with the Port­fo­lio Mod­el which re­sult­ed in “ir­rec­on­cil­able dif­fer­ences” be­tween Parisot-Pot­ter and the com­pa­ny.

“Those dif­fer­ences were a ma­jor fac­tor in the de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of the em­ploy­ment re­la­tion­ship be­tween Massy and Mrs Parisot-Pot­ter. Fol­low­ing the emer­gence of those dif­fer­ences, Mrs Parisot-Pot­ter vol­un­tar­i­ly en­tered in­to ne­go­ti­a­tions on the terms of a sep­a­ra­tion pack­age for her vol­un­tary ex­it from the com­pa­ny. The par­ties agreed to en­ter me­di­a­tion on the terms of a sep­a­ra­tion pack­age,” the sum­ma­ry said.

“Mrs Parisot-Pot­ter’s state­ment was sub­mit­ted to fa­cil­i­tate con­sid­er­a­tion of that pro­pos­al,” it said.

The ex­ec­u­tive sum­ma­ry said that Parisot-Pot­ter’s let­ter to Massy Hold­ings was made on No­vem­ber 12, 2023.

Gar­cia’s state­ment said that ne­go­ti­a­tions broke down on No­vem­ber 30, 2023, and that her al­le­ga­tions were made (pub­lic) there­after.

On De­cem­ber 18, 2023, at the com­pa­ny’s 100th an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing, Parisot-Pot­ter took to the floor dur­ing the ques­tion and an­swer pe­ri­od and made pub­lic her con­cerns about the con­glom­er­ate’s ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship con­sul­tant, Del­phi.

She told the com­pa­ny’s board of di­rec­tors, chaired by Robert Ri­ley, that she had writ­ten to for­mer chief ex­ec­u­tive Ger­vase Warn­er but re­ceived no com­mu­ni­ca­tion on the mat­ter so she was com­pelled to raise the mat­ter at the AGM.

Two months af­ter her claims, on Feb­ru­ary 8, in a news­pa­per ad­ver­tise­ment, Massy an­nounced that Warn­er would pro­ceed on ear­ly re­tire­ment on his 59th birth­day on April 6, 2024.

He was suc­ceed­ed by David Af­fon­so, who is the same age and is due to re­tire next year.

On March 8, Massy’s vice pres­i­dent of glob­al ex­pan­sion, David O’Brien, an­nounced that he would leave the com­pa­ny on June 8.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored