Operational Brilliance seeks to transform women’s leadership in Jamaica
THE prevalence of women closing doors of opportunity on other women because of jealousy and other reasons is one reality explored and addressed in Terisa Camille Taylor’s new book, Operational Brilliance, which launched March 29 at Lavish Palms in St Andrew.
“While I do focus primarily on women in my line of work, I have worked extensively with men because they have actually been the ones to give me a lot of the leadership experiences I have received. That is rather unfortunate, because many other women would have seen the opportunity or seen the talents and skills that I had when I was younger but I see a lot of women closing the door on other women who have a lot of talent and skills.
“They sometimes feel intimidated by a woman’s skills. What I talk about in the book is why it is important to collaborate instead of compete as women. It’s not that men don’t do it too, but women do it a lot more and they don’t realise that if you are a wife, a mom and a businesswoman, you are going to need a woman with a whole lot of skills to support you to do what you do and excel. It is just an opportunity to learn, because her time for leadership is coming,” Taylor told
All Woman on Wednesday, adding that in her book, she seeks to address the issue of leaders lacking soft skills and leadership styles that are conducive to performance.
Taylor, who is in her mid-30s, said she is a mom, a professional, and a woman of God. She said she has a hand in many business concepts and ideas. She also has a background in law, international relations, project and programmes management.
As youth ambassador of Jamaica and president of Junior Chamber International, Taylor also has a long history working regionally in volunteer roles to implement policies and projects across the region, and has represented Jamaica on key issues.
“That sparked my love and interest for fixing things that don’t work as they should. I studied law and so I used my law [background] to help to design policies and design frameworks that actually work — not only in a societal context but also in a business. Professionally, I am an operations strategist and a women’s leadership coach and consultant,” she shared.
Taylor said her book, which has nine chapters, should pretty much help woman especially identify their leadership style. The book also makes recommendations on the kind of people organisations should recruit for specific roles so as to make operations profitable.
“We also talk about the emotional intelligence [EQ] required in the business place — that tends to be a problem. Sometimes you look at the IQ of the person but not their EQ. Someone has the skills, talents and technical competencies to do the job but they are very poor managers. They don’t know how to motivate people, respect boundaries, or inspire and they end up destroying the team, even with [a] high skill level.
“I have seen that a lot where a very highly skilled person doesn’t know how to speak to people, doesn’t know when to push and when to pull. The book has nine chapters. The ninth chapter is a bonus chapter which is me just talking from my heart. I am faith-based in my leadership approach. I believe that women were designed to do multiple things, and we can do multiple things well. I do believe that everything has a time and a season, and if we know what the time and season is then we will know what to prioritise in that time and season,” Taylor said.
She shared that she started to write the book last year, after the death of both her parents.
“Last year was very rough for me. I had been taking care of my mother for 10 years and she was unwell and then my mom passed in April last year and then my father suddenly passed as well in October — two days after Hurricane Melissa hit Jamaica.
“It was a very tough year but it catapulted me into writing down some of the things about leadership and so on. I was actually raised by my father, and so a lot of my ideas about children and how business should be done came from him. My heavy grounding in faith is my mom. Her influence was very, very present. Faith has been a very core anchoring principle that can cause leadership to thrive. Whether people believe in Christ or not, the bottom line is that a lot of people who are wealthy are using Christ-based principles and they are thriving,” Taylor said.
Terisa Camille Taylor.
