Jamaica continues to suffer from ineffective leadership. Several strategies have been proposed but little will substantively change in the long term if we do not address the issue of how we think about and practise leadership, whether at national or community levels, or by younger, rather than older leaders.

This is a significant finding from recent research carried out on the “Ideologies of Leadership in Urban Communities in Kingston”, with lessons not only for Jamaica, but for the entire Caribbean. Also of significance in the Caribbean, is the inseparable relationship that exists between local-level and national-level leadership concepts and practices.

It is important therefore, to take the time to reflect on some core leadership issues, that in the end will support sustainable change. This article seeks to make clear one such core issue for consideration.

Traditional notions of Caribbean leadership

During the research, an extensive review of leadership in the Caribbean was done, and although empirically deficient, it has nevertheless illustrated that the various styles and practices that emerged over time were primarily authoritarian, so that all actors have understood leadership this way. The authoritarian style uses position, power, authority and promise of rewards rather than a belief in or using a participatory democratic or collaborative approach to problem solving and nation building. In this tradition, speaking out for the masses has been important – using the street and popular-style talk to draw in the crowds. Caribbean leaders have shown a preference in being seen as popular, and as heroes to their crowds (Singham 1968). The traditional leadership developed patron and client relationships (Stone 1980), had political linkages, and this was understood by both leaders and followers, and used by them in pursuance of their various goals. In sum, Caribbean leadership has been populist, pseudo-heroic, patron-oriented and authoritarian.

The emergence of this type and style of leadership must be seen within the embedded context of the Caribbean. Relations of power are entrenched in the Caribbean inheritances, and lived knowledge and understanding about relations of power came about through the socio-cultural structures that obtained – first slavery, and then colonialism. Important elements of those structures was the development and entrenchment of particular styles and types of relational power as linked to colour and class, and parallel practices of conformity and subversion as a means of survival, especially at the mass level.

The immediate pre-Independence and post-colonial periods did little to change overt relations of power and how people thought about and practised leadership. All actors continued to have a common understanding about authority and power relations as practised. Within this ideology, it was implicitly understood by all that with leadership came the responsibility to provide for followers, which was in fact a continuation of the embedded clientelist relationships. Therefore, within the context of a legitimised provider ideology, the powerful were only in control to the extent that the powerless were satisfied that benefits flowed to them, that a consensual mutual reciprocity obtained.

An urban Kingston view of leadership

During the research, extensive reviews of the historical and current leadership and power structures in the selected sample communities was done, and community participants, both leaders and followers, have provided a clear view of how leadership is thought of and how it ought to be practised. The graphic below provides a quick view of how community leadership has changed over the years, from the perspective of inner-city community members – leaders and followers alike.

The graphic clearly illustrates that the history of leadership in these communities has moved over time from one of gentleman leadership to a more brutal manifestation. Along this continuum has been the pervasive force of political leadership as a key underpinning and influencing variable on the various forms of historical and existent leadership. There is no doubt that the national and local levels are inextricably mixed.

Community leadership, links to national leadership

The following graphic provides a quick summary of how leadership is thought of and practised by leaders – formal, informal, benign, less benign, as well as how it is seen by followers, which brings clarity to the notion of a hero-provider leadership model. Community leadership is modelled on the national example and is clearly conceptualised within the provider model with a strong emphasis on the concept of care giving or “looking after” as being an integral component of that model.

Emphasised most strongly were the themes of provider, planner, problem solver and power and access to resources.

Power and egoism

The existing leadership ideology is one of provider and recipient with sub-texts of the hero and an aggressive dependency followership stance, legitimised through access and control of economic resources and intimately linked into the political structures. It must be clearly understood that the ideology that underlies the hero-provider model is about power, a power rooted in a sustained egoism of the national level leadership of the country, which has become far too preoccupied with the self-serving interests of party and individual agendas above nation.

This preoccupation has produced not only the hero-provider thug, but instilled a strong belief in followers of a dependency praxis that is at once aggressive and compliant. It has been built on the mythical and egocentric notion of a leader as saviour, and one who consistently looks after the needs and wants of their followers – but not in a nurturing, supportive way that would lead to independence. Rather, it has been a way that seeks always to serve self-interest and maintain the status quo and power equilibrium of the leadership, and reinforce an egoistic image. This ideology has seeped into the consciousness of the nation in general, and has become the normative, accepted, expected and defended way of being for leaders and followers.

Therefore, as it exists, this ideology is not equal to the work of transformation at either the community or national levels. The work of a transformational-style leadership requires a different ideology. It requires people at all levels to think of and understand leadership to be a collaborative social activity that produces useful solutions that will benefit the majority. It requires sub-texts of facilitation rather than heroics and provision, and self-responsibility and pro-activity as opposed to aggressive dependency. However, ideologies do not change overnight, thus cannot be easily adjusted.

What destroys the ideology is the destruction or transformation of the group or the disappearance of the purposes to which it was originally wedded. (Harris 1968.)

Deborah Duperly-Pinks, PhD, is an independent social development consultant and specialist in governance and civil society.

ddpinks@cwjamaica.com