Sober re­flec­tion and in­tro­spec­tion. Re­al­is­ing our short­com­ings. It is an as­pect of life that can work both ways—pos­i­tive­ly or neg­a­tive­ly. There are times when, in­stead of see­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty for growth and learn­ing, hu­man na­ture and be­hav­iour may cas­cade us down the dark, gloomy road. We be­come over­whelmed by neg­a­tive emo­tion. It’s dark and de­press­ing. None of us are per­fect. It’s hu­man to err.

I re­call in a “Things That Mat­ter” col­umn - not sure which one - I re­ferred to my late moth­er’s non-ne­go­tiable rule–when my sib­lings and I en­gaged in be­hav­iour that didn’t meet her ac­cept­able stan­dard–was “Speak your truth and speak it fast”. And speak­ing the truth, didn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean an es­cape from her “spare the rod and spoil the child” method of dis­ci­pline. Speak­ing the truth wasn’t a way of avoid­ing un­pleas­ant con­se­quences.

Dur­ing the past two weeks of per­son­al tur­moil fol­low­ing the un­ex­pect­ed pass­ing of my younger broth­er, it was a strug­gle to man­age my emo­tions. But painful as it is, I was re­mind­ed of my moth­er’s in­to­na­tion: “Speak your truth and speak it fast re­gard­less of the con­se­quences”.

But then again, the ques­tion is: what’s the truth? And which ver­sion of the truth are we to be­lieve?

In the past two weeks, both in the wider na­tion­al life and sport, we have seen ver­sions of in­di­vid­ual and col­lec­tive truths. Claims and coun­ter­claims. What is the truth? Whose truth is the truth?

In­her­ent in my moth­er’s “speak your truth and speak it fast” re­frain was the at­tribute of ac­cept­ing and tak­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for your ac­tion(s). Her’s was a don’t point fin­gers or blame any­one or any­thing else cul­ture. The choice at the end of the day is yours to make. Tak­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty re­gard­less of the con­se­quences un­der­pins how I ap­proach lead­er­ship, gov­er­nance and strate­gic and per­for­mance man­age­ment.

Sports or­gan­i­sa­tions con­tin­ue to face in­tense pub­lic and me­dia scruti­ny sur­round­ing sport gov­er­nance. Gov­er­nance is the process by which de­ci­sions are made and im­ple­ment­ed. The is­sue of good gov­er­nance in sport is a ma­jor point of con­tention.

A sig­nif­i­cant as­pect, both for Olympic and non-Olympic sports, is the au­ton­o­my of sport. A con­cept prop­a­gat­ed by the In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee (IOC), and is one of the fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of Olymp­ism as set out in the Olympic Char­ter. It is said that the au­ton­o­my of sport prin­ci­ple is in­dica­tive of the sport move­ment’s be­lief that it alone un­der­stands best how to gov­ern and reg­u­late it­self. Gov­er­nance ex­perts as­sert that this be­lief is the main rea­son why there is a re­sis­tance to gov­ern­ment or oth­er out­side in­ter­fer­ence in the gov­er­nance of sport.

Gov­er­nance is not a sim­ple con­ver­sa­tion. Many as­pects may man­i­fest in ei­ther good or poor gov­er­nance. But a mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tion re­quires truth and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as the start­ing point.

In clos­ing, I not­ed news­pa­per re­ports that an­oth­er tal­ent­ed teenage foot­baller, Zwade Al­leyne, a Form Five pupil of the Ari­ma North Sec­ondary School, who al­so plays for Mal­oney Re­al Foot­ballers Acad­e­my, was a vic­tim of gun vi­o­lence, up to the time this col­umn was sub­mit­ted in a crit­i­cal con­di­tion at the Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal.

Yet an­oth­er tal­ent­ed youth with so much to look for­ward to, suf­fer­ing life-chang­ing in­juries at the hands of mis­guid­ed youths.

How do we keep hope alive? How do we in­spire and en­cour­age young men to put down their guns? What are the al­ter­na­tives?

I again re­it­er­ate the im­por­tance of bet­ter gov­er­nance with­in the sport ecosys­tem. Sport pro­vides al­ter­na­tives.

We need a re­set. Too much is at stake.