Two days ago some­one was telling me that the re­cent­ly re­leased Bob Mar­ley- One Love movie was non­sense and that they wouldn’t be wast­ing their time go­ing to see it. My re­ply was- you haven’t seen it as yet? So how do you know it’s a waste of time?

The re­ply came quick­ly back: Plus the fam­i­ly (Bob Mar­ley) didn’t have any part to play in it and was to­tal­ly against it. Where did you read that I asked: On so­cial me­dia came the con­fi­dent re­tort. My sim­ple re­ply there­after was okay. Thus end­ing what I con­sid­ered a back-and-forth des­tined to go nowhere pro­duc­tive.

Gen­er­al­ly, once peo­ple’s minds are made up it’s dif­fi­cult to con­vince them oth­er­wise, es­pe­cial­ly when they are con­fi­dent in their source of in­for­ma­tion- es­pe­cial­ly so­cial me­dia in­for­ma­tion de­rived from gos­sip or who say?

With­in re­cent months and with in­creas­ing fre­quen­cy in the past weeks, I was ap­proached to con­sid­er agree­ing to be on a slate for the up­com­ing T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) elec­tion. As such I have lis­tened to ex­ceed­ing­ly strong views and feel­ings about the state of T&T foot­ball and what are the so­lu­tions for ad­dress­ing the prob­lems. Ar­riv­ing at de­ci­sions that have a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact – good, bad or in­dif­fer­ent – re­quires care­ful thought based on facts and ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion that en­hances an un­der­stand­ing of the en­vi­ron­ment in which an or­gan­i­sa­tion op­er­ates.

What do you be­lieve and stand for? When con­tem­plat­ing de­ci­sions in re­spect of lead­er­ship as dis­tinct from man­age­ment one must first man­age your ego and be your own most stri­dent crit­ic. It’s not a ques­tion of con­fi­dence or lack there­of, it’s about look­ing at a sit­u­a­tion or giv­en set of cir­cum­stances and ask­ing, can I make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence? Can my lead­er­ship style, val­ues, prin­ci­ples and vi­sion align with what an or­gan­i­sa­tion may need at a par­tic­u­lar point in time?

Sport gov­er­nance in T&T is evolv­ing. There was a time when the ori­en­ta­tion of sport in T&T was very much dri­ven by so­cial fac­tors and the re­al­i­ty that peo­ple who played a par­tic­u­lar sport were most com­fort­able with peo­ple who not on­ly looked like them but shared a com­mon pas­sion and en­thu­si­asm.

As sport has be­come more com­plex it re­quires dif­fer­ent skill sets and styles in­clud­ing the abil­i­ty to man­age con­flicts and di­ver­si­ty. Many who claim to want change seek not gen­uine change but ex­change. In oth­er words, they want a chance to not just sit at but con­trol the head ta­ble. Let me clar­i­fy, this is not to say that want­i­ng to win con­trol, au­thor­i­ty and pow­er is in and of it­self bad but, it takes more than sit­ting on the throne. Change and trans­for­ma­tion are not sim­ple or easy ob­jec­tives.

The gov­er­nance struc­ture of glob­al sports which in­cludes FI­FA is a com­plex net­work that re­quires the abil­i­ty to man­age and mit­i­gate risks. These risks in­clude find­ing so­lu­tions that are able to cir­cum­vent the chal­lenges of dys­func­tion when deal­ing with mul­ti­ple stake­hold­ers. Un­der­stand­ing the stake­hold­er map is a crit­i­cal suc­cess fac­tor.

So one may well ask what’s the rel­e­vance of so­cial me­dia mis­in­for­ma­tion and gos­sip to the up­com­ing TTFA elec­tion? The an­swer: those who see win­ning an elec­tion at all and any cost will have no qualms in weapon­is­ing mis­in­for­ma­tion, half-truths and spec­u­la­tive gos­sip to achieve that cov­et­ed win and dis­tort democ­ra­cy and a free and fair elec­tion.

Wednes­day is the dead­line for can­di­da­tures for the nine Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee po­si­tions to be sub­mit­ted to the TTFA sec­re­tari­at.

Ed­i­tor’s note:

The views ex­pressed in the pre­ced­ing ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion in which he is a stake­hold­er.