Leaders need to be groomed

Sri Lanka is experiencing the lack of leadership not only in politics but in all other areas including sports. It happened to the sport that we love most, that had become almost a religion in many parts of South Asia – “the game of cricket”. The sport that gave Sri Lankans the edge over many world cricket-playing nations is now on a fast declining state. We have seen the worst leadership being demonstrated at the recently concluded T 20 World Cup tournament. This poor leadership resulted in Sri Lanka failing in all departments of the game.

Selection for the top position based on past performance is only one aspect of qualifications that should be considered. There are many areas of traits and qualities of an aspirant to be checked to assess whether he/she has the potential to play the role of a leader. Not only in sports this mistake is happening in many other fields too. Team selection is a HR function, and the selectors should have proven HR skills. Selecting someone suitable to perform in a team, especially at national level, is an important and serious task. Selecting a leader is a more serious affair. The selectors must be competent for the role if they are to do a good job.

We had past school cricket coaches in the calibre of Fairley Dalpathado, Gerry Gooneratne, P.W. Perera, W.A.N. Silva, Bertie Wijesinghe, C.H. Gunasekera and the Mendis brothers Lionel and Nelson Mendis etc., moulding the young school boys first to be good citizens of the country and then to perform well in cricket. These type of high calibre gentlemen are hard to find now. These gentlemen have groomed many great cricketing personalities to become role models in their playing days and groomed them to accept leadership at any level whether it is in the field of cricket or elsewhere. Sri Lanka has had cricket leaders of great repute who were internationally well accepted. Just to name a few Michael Tissera, Anura Tennakoon, Bandula Warnapura, Arjuna Ranatunge, Marvan Atapattu, Mahela Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara were leaders who were on par with the best in the international cricket arena. All these leaders had been groomed to take leadership roles at higher levels during their school careers. All these gentlemen had captained their respective school teams at various age groups, and they had undergone early grooming sessions.

Leaders are groomed from school days; many corporate organisations of yesteryear gave preference to people with proven leadership achievements during their school careers when recruiting school leavers for their companies. These organisations had the benefit of absorbing well-groomed leaders during their tender age.

Basic leadership traits have to be inculcated at a very young age in potential future leaders. It was during the early 1980’s that Multi-National Companies in Sri Lanka recruited people direct from schools, where they specifically emphasised for the schools to submit applications of all-round students who had not only excelled in studies but also in co-curricular and extra-curricular activities with proven leadership records. Many sportsmen have performed well in their studies recently. The G.C.E. (Advanced Level) results this year had recorded brilliant performances by some sportsmen, many obtaining ‘A’ passes for the three subjects offered at the G.C.E. (A/L) Exam. Most remarkable was the Nalanda Cricket Captain Sajitha Vithanage obtaining A’ passes in all three subjects in the Bio science stream while captaining the school’s first eleven team and playing the complete cricket season and also scoring a brilliant century at the Big Match against traditional rivals Ananda. These are the type of young leaders the country needs for the future.

In Sri Lanka, individual performances take precedence over the team performance. These individual performances should be rewarded then and there like rewarding the best batsman, man of the match and best bowler at a cricket encounter. etc. The mistake people always make is, just because someone gives a brilliant performance, he is considered for a promotion rather than checking whether he has the potential to perform by leading his team at a different level. People tend to forget that it is the team performance that matters than individual brilliance, when considering a person for a leadership role. The other mistake that people often make is thinking that the good performer cannot be replaced - he/she is so good that no equal replacement can be found. If this is true, the world would not have developed to this extent. No one is indispensable, better performers will emerge. Records are not static, they are there to be broken and they will be broken.

People with potential to play big roles in the future need to be groomed even if their leadership skills had not been developed during their schooldays. There could be many instances even at school levels to overlook some students with potential to play leadership roles due to favouritism or seniority, which have become the criteria for selection. The damage done here to the young ones with potential to play big roles is immense. Also, to identify a person’s potential for leadership, the men in charge must have the knowledge and skill to spot the potential of a person. As these men in charge, are not properly trained they may resort to easy methods like giving their favourites a chance or assigning the role to the most senior person.

These people when assigned the role of leadership, often tend to fail in their new role. They may promote a toxic culture due to their arrogance and ego-centric behaviours. They may not have the vision, and their worlds can be small. This kind of bad leadership is something that can slow down productivity and the organisational progress and affect the morale of the other members of the team. They may engage in micromanagement than looking at the big picture.

It is high time that we identify this problem and take appropriate action to overcome this. Sri Lanka needs a Leadership Development Institute, which was an idea mooted by The Management Club (TMC) Founder President and the President Emeritus Fayaz Saleem some time ago. As there are no dedicated Leaders’ Training Centres, it could be a good idea to venture into. There are many leadership training sessions being conducted in the country without a proper structured program and it is opportune to seriously think about this aspect if we are to develop good leaders for the future.    

(The writer is a founder member, First Chairman of TMC Colombo and a Past President of The Board of Management of TMC.)