Bri­an Lewis

One of the ma­jor rea­sons com­pe­tent, tal­ent­ed and skilled peo­ple who can make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence refuse to vol­un­teer as sport lead­ers is their per­cep­tion of un­nec­es­sary con­tention, con­fu­sion and un­fair crit­i­cism.

Why fear crit­i­cism? Why do so many peo­ple al­low them­selves to be trau­ma­tised by crit­i­cism? Crit­i­cism is noth­ing more than a re­quest for feed­back. No mean­ing­ful ob­jec­tive can be at­tained with­out crit­i­cism–just as fail­ure is nec­es­sary to achieve sus­tain­able suc­cess so too is crit­i­cism a ne­ces­si­ty. There is con­struc­tive crit­i­cism that is in­tend­ed to fos­ter im­prove­ment. Then there is de­struc­tive or ma­li­cious crit­i­cism that has no pos­i­tive in­ten­tion. Whichev­er way it's in­tend­ed.

Not every­one will agree with a po­si­tion that a leader will take and that's fair enough. Not every idea or method that a leader may adopt is cor­rect or sen­si­ble.

Even if no sin­cere ef­fort is made to as­cer­tain the cor­rect in­for­ma­tion, no crit­i­cism should be wast­ed as every crit­i­cism presents an op­por­tu­ni­ty. Every leader should fall in love with crit­i­cism and lis­ten more to crit­i­cism than they lis­ten to com­pli­ments. Crit­i­cism should be wel­comed and em­braced–some peo­ple don't have the courage or they may be in­tro­vert­ed and there­fore will not pick up the phone, e-mail or call you di­rect­ly to ask ques­tions. In­stead they hide their de­sire for feed­back in the form of gos­sip, mis­in­for­ma­tion or hearsay.

Re­gard­less of the form or fash­ion, it's an in­di­vid­ual's right to their opin­ion or to ask a ques­tion how and in the man­ner they see fit. As dif­fi­cult as it may be, the best course of ac­tion for any one in a lead­er­ship po­si­tion is not to take crit­i­cism per­son­al. Al­ways re­mem­ber a crit­i­cism is some­one's opin­ion and not nec­es­sar­i­ly a state­ment of fact.

It is un­re­al­is­tic to ex­pect that every sin­gle per­son will agree or sup­port a point of view, de­ci­sion or ob­jec­tive a leader may ar­tic­u­late.

There are many views and opin­ions in T&T about sports, the state of sports and how best to move sport for­ward. There are dif­fer­ent per­cep­tions, per­spec­tives and ex­pec­ta­tions. As an in­di­vid­ual a leader will have his/her own style and ap­proach to ad­dress­ing dif­fer­ent is­sues and their own unique way of com­mu­ni­cat­ing.

As much as buy in from all stake­hold­ers is an ide­al, don't ex­pect or an­tic­i­pate that every­one will be in agree­ment. What is im­por­tant is that the grass­roots struc­ture–clubs should be at the cen­tre of sport de­vel­op­ment. With­out a strong club in­fra­struc­ture it will be near im­pos­si­ble for the var­i­ous sports to sus­tain­ably de­vel­op. It's im­por­tant there­fore for na­tion­al sport or­gan­i­sa­tions to pay se­ri­ous at­ten­tion to the needs and con­cerns of their clubs.

Re­gard­less of the op­pos­ing points of view the chal­lenge for na­tion­al sport or­gan­i­sa­tions is to strike a bal­ance be­tween sus­tain­ably de­vel­op­ing their grass­roots in­fra­struc­ture–their clubs, while at the same time sup­port­ing their elite lev­el and high per­for­mance as­pi­ra­tions. There are no easy an­swers or choic­es and as such no de­ci­sion will en­joy uni­ver­sal ac­cla­ma­tion. In­tegri­ty in sport, hon­esty, ac­count­abil­i­ty, fair­ness, trans­paren­cy, good gov­er­nance and eth­i­cal con­duct should be non-ne­go­tiable. No leader should be afraid to be called to ac­count on the non-ne­go­tiable el­e­ments even if the call is dis­guised as harsh, un­fair or de­struc­tive crit­i­cism.

Clar­i­ty of thought, fo­cus and pur­pose pro­vide the best re­sponse to the re­quest for feed­back dis­guised as crit­i­cism. Fear of crit­i­cism there­fore should not be an ob­sta­cle or bar­ri­er to avoid mak­ing a de­ci­sion or hold­ing one­self pub­licly ac­count­able. My ad­vice to any leader is wel­come, em­brace, en­joy, love and trea­sure crit­i­cism.

Sport is an emo­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence, sport en­thu­si­asts, fans and par­tic­i­pants are pas­sion­ate. They have strong views and feel­ings and opin­ions. Be thank­ful. God bless. Let go let go Let God.

Bri­an Lewis is the pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Olympic Com­mit­tee. The views ex­pressed are not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of the TTOC. For more in­for­ma­tion about the Olympic move­ment vis­it www.ttoc.org.