Because of the distrust of leadership and management inherited from Jamaica’s exclusionary and exploitative plantation era, today’s leaders must model respect, humility and personal integrity in order to build trust and influence followership — Robert Gregory (past HEART Trust/NTA Executive Director)

If you listen to Robert Gregory long enough, you will hear him use the quotation, “Education makes you trainable, training makes you employable.”

Robert Gregory is the local Jamaican leader that we will review today in the MBA Forum. Let us try to glean some leadership tips and insights from someone who led and inspired the HEART Trust NTA team for 15 years, and oversaw its transformation into Jamaica’s foremost vocational training agency.

Back in the 1980s, Gregory was the managing director of Hofab Manufacturing, and he personally developed that organisation from a three-member team to 650 strong, with an age of 23. He proudly boasts that his young team “won many quality and productivity awards and accolades from our US contracting firm”.

According to Gregory, his main management lessons from this experience is that “when Jamaican workers are properly trained, paid fairly, respectfully supervised and provided with all the required tools and equipment to perform their jobs, the Jamaican worker becomes globally competitive!”

This actually highlights a contentious situation that has been an issue for a while. Many Jamaican managers perceive the Jamaican worker as typically uncooperative and unproductive. However, the same Jamaican migrates to the USA and becomes aggressively competitive, sometimes working two or three jobs and exceeding expectations at them all. What could be the reasons?

I may not be able to say comprehensively what the reasons are, but one thing I know, when Jamaicans migrate to the USA, they are given the tools to be productive, their contribution is respected, and they are motivated to work in several ways. I have an uncle who was working two jobs in New York and one day woke up in the hospital. The doctor commanded that he chose one or the other, but not both. He was too motivated to work.

Robert Gregory is passionate about leadership and about the training and optimising of the productivity of the Jamaican worker. Among his several pursuits after retirement, he continues to articulate his passion by lecturing in Transformational Leadership on the UWI MBA programme. Here are some of his insights on leadership:

To be a good leader, learn to be a good follower

The humility, the diligence, the discipline, the studiousness — all are required to be a good follower and are actually critical characteristics of a good leader. Some of the greatest followers of all time first sat at the feet of a great leader.

Know yourself

According to Bossidy and Charan, “Good leaders learn their specific personal strengths and weaknesses, especially in dealing with other people, then build on the strengths and correct the weaknesses.”

As I have said before in the MBA Forum, and don’t mind saying again — before one can manage others, one must be able to manage oneself. Before you can manage yourself, you must know yourself! As a matter of fact, self-awareness is the first step on the path to emotional intelligence. So in order to grow as a leader/manager, you cannot avoid that hurdle.

Understand the perspective of followers

One amazing phenomenon I see fairly often is that of a person — upon becoming a lecturer — suddenly forgetting everything about what it feels like to be a student. The transition is so acute that it is remarkable. Why is it important? How can you engage a student if you have no idea what it feels like to be on the receiving end of lectures? I remember some time ago when, as a part-time lecturer, I was discussing some final grades for some of my students with a full-time lecturer. She commented: “The number of persons passing is kinda’ high!”

I was really disturbed. She did not like the idea that so many students in my class had passed. That is an issue that we need to deal with. You know the mentality in our education system of “Do it if yu bad nuh!”, whereas the American system is more facilitatory, “You can do it!”. But the other issue is that the lecturer does not have the perspective of a student.

This is similar in leadership. If the leader has no perspective of the follower, then the follower will always be hearing Greek and seeing a muddle when the leader tries to communicate or make decisions pertaining to the followers.

A leader must model respect, humility and personal integrity

If the leader loses the respect of the followers, then all is lost! Did you know that studies show that one of the most valued things that an employee wants from the leader/manager is respect? (Aretha Franklin is not the only one that wants R-E-S-P-E-C-T!)

Let me quote from Porath’s May 2015 Harvard Business Review article, The Leadership Behavior that’s most Important to Employees. “Being treated with respect was more important to employees than recognition and appreciation, communicating an inspiring vision, providing useful feedback — or even opportunities for learning, growth, and development.” This finding was obtained after interviewing more than 20,000 employees. Wow! Could it be that some of us Jamaican managers still have the “Bucky Massa” mentality? Do you realise that the person sweeping your floor deserves respect as much as the senior director at her desk in the air-conditioned office?

Dr Kenroy Wedderburn is a MBA part-time lecturer. Send your e-mails to drkwedderburn@gmail.com.