I must con­fess that though I have served in se­nior po­si­tions in the me­dia, at the com­mu­ni­ty lev­el, and with­in pro­fes­sion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions, I am not nat­u­ral­ly in­clined to grav­i­tate to­ward lec­tures and events fo­cus­ing on lead­er­ship de­vel­op­ment and prac­tice.

No fan­ci­ful mod­ernistic MBA stuff or post-mortem adu­la­tion for me. For I have found that the con­ver­sa­tions these things of­ten gen­er­ate tend to omit im­por­tant fea­tures of how our so­ci­eties ac­tu­al­ly work.

Iron­i­cal­ly enough, it was for­mer Ja­maica prime min­is­ter PJ Pat­ter­son who re­marked at a Bo­cas Lit Fest pan­el on the week­end, that it is dif­fi­cult to dis­tin­guish the ac­com­plish­ments of Caribbean politi­cians, with­out at the same time ex­am­in­ing the role of se­nior pub­lic ser­vants.

Ky­ron Reg­is’s su­perb re­portage on the event in Mon­day’s edi­tion of this news­pa­per cap­tures this dy­nam­ic of Pat­ter­son’s eval­u­a­tion of Caribbean lead­er­ship—sam­ples of which are found in abun­dance in the for­mer PM’s au­to­bi­o­graph­i­cal My Po­lit­i­cal Jour­ney.

Of­fice­hold­ers, you see, are not nec­es­sar­i­ly anal­o­gous to the nom­i­nal sta­tus of “lead­ers.” We see it every day. Many com­men­ta­tors have made the point about the po­lice com­mis­sion­er. It’s a point to be made about politi­cians, as well.

Now, I am not about to go all MBA on you, but my point is that in the Caribbean (and I sup­pose else­where) there has been a ten­den­cy to as­sign to politi­cians, pro­fes­sion­als, aca­d­e­mics, re­li­gious heads, and oth­er elite groups, the au­to­mat­ic man­tle of “lead­er­ship.”

This is so when, in fact, their most im­por­tant de­vel­op­men­tal func­tions have to do with pro­vid­ing a fa­cil­i­tat­ing en­vi­ron­ment for “grass­roots” lead­er­ship—to use an­oth­er term I al­so do not like, but which cap­tures the essence of where I’m go­ing with this.

In these pan­dem­ic days, this has come in­to view far more stark­ly than it has in the past. Busi­ness lead­er­ship, for in­stance, has large­ly emerged from our small and mi­cro-en­ter­prise sec­tor in terms of its abil­i­ty to read­i­ly adapt to brand new con­di­tions.

There is the mask-mak­ing in­dus­try that sprung up overnight with out­stand­ing re­sults. The “curb-side” de­liv­er­ies of fruit and veg­eta­bles. The emer­gence of on­line sales plat­forms em­ploy­ing ba­sic, every­day so­cial me­dia chan­nels.

En­ter­tain­ers have filled im­por­tant voids with mu­sic, po­et­ry and dance. There was no min­istry of cul­ture. No min­istry of food pro­duc­tion. No min­istry of in­dus­try. Just reg­u­lar folks do­ing their thing. Pro­vid­ing “lead­er­ship.”

Teach­ers, nurs­es, doc­tors, jour­nal­ists, garbage col­lec­tors, su­per­mar­ket at­ten­dants, farm­ers, fish­er­folk, street food pro­duc­ers, small en­tre­pre­neurs, tai­lors, peo­ple sim­ply do­ing what they do. Re­spond­ing cre­ative­ly and imag­i­na­tive­ly to un­prece­dent­ed times.

Okay, so this can al­so be viewed as a func­tion of a so­ci­ety that has been de­signed and re-de­signed by peo­ple in po­lit­i­cal con­trol. It might al­so cor­re­spond­ing­ly be a func­tion of the state as “tire­less moth­er” —that con­tentious ide­o­log­i­cal de­scrip­tor.

I am not sure. The uni­ver­si­ty folks have prob­a­bly stud­ied this to death. But all I wish to place on the ta­ble is the view that po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship and of­fice do not nec­es­sar­i­ly equate “lead­er­ship.”

Mr Pat­ter­son, for in­stance, presided over the gov­ern­ment of Ja­maica be­tween 1992 and 2006 as a sworn in­te­gra­tionist. There is no doubt about this. My ques­tion to him on Sat­ur­day was: How come, in 2018, the (Bruce) Gold­ing Re­port un­veiled fun­da­men­tal, per­va­sive, mul­ti-sec­toral ques­tions sur­round­ing his coun­try’s em­brace of the Cari­com project? There was no time for an an­swer.

Then there was God­frey Smith on the Grena­da Rev­o­lu­tion and his paean to the lead­er­ship of Mau­rice Bish­op. I have on­ly read the pub­lished ex­tracts, but Smith’s favourable ver­dict on Bish­op would have had to ig­nore the ex­cess­es of a failed ex­per­i­ment. It could not have been all every­body else’s fault. Not even Bernard Coard’s.

I al­so asked Alis­sa Trotz about rec­on­cil­ing the late, icon­ic Andaiye’s views on po­lit­i­cal and so­cial trans­for­ma­tion based on her ear­ly en­gage­ment as a thought-leader with­in the Work­ing Peo­ples Al­liance (WPA) of Guyana—an or­gan­i­sa­tion from which she would lat­er break. This, in the con­text of the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s rapid de­scent in­to vir­tu­al ir­rel­e­vance in the face of its par­tic­i­pa­tion in the em­bat­tled and un­for­tu­nate AP­NU+AFC rul­ing coali­tion of 2015-2020.

This re­gion needs to look again at “lead­er­ship” and think long and hard about what we mean by it. Who, in fact, is there to lead our ad­vance out of trou­bled wa­ters. What are the de­sired pos­i­tive out­comes.

I sus­pect we are look­ing in the wrong di­rec­tion, and at the wrong set of peo­ple.