“We went to Bar­ba­dos and spent 10 hours ba­si­cal­ly look­ing af­ter our­selves when we got there un­til the next flight was a to­tal mess, and peo­ple have to be held ac­count­able in the same way we want to hold oth­er per­sons in of­fices ac­count­able, as every­thing in the coun­try is about ac­count­abil­i­ty now, and we now need to trans­fer that in­to sport for our ath­letes to get the best chance to per­form at the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el, and we need to take sport se­ri­ous­ly.” – Raphael Govia, Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Men’s In­door Hock­ey Coach.

Ac­count­abil­i­ty, or the lack of it. Govia’s com­ments ought not to be tak­en as neg­a­tive or de­struc­tive. Nor should there be a rush—es­pe­cial­ly with­in hock­ey cir­cles—to kill the mes­sen­ger. Things That Mat­ter ac­knowl­edges that in the con­text of good gov­er­nance, ac­count­abil­i­ty is an es­sen­tial fea­ture. It’s al­ways im­por­tant when in lead­er­ship po­si­tions to man­age emo­tion and ego when faced with any form of crit­i­cism, no mat­ter the in­ten­tion be­hind it. The first ques­tion in work­ing through crit­i­cism—is it valid? Is it based on fact or fic­tion?

What led to Govia’s com­ment?

The Trinidad and To­ba­go men’s hock­ey team had a dis­ap­point­ing cam­paign at the FIH In­door World Cup in Porec, Croa­t­ia, fin­ish­ing 12th in the 12-team com­pe­ti­tion.

I call it the democ­ra­cy of com­pet­i­tive sport—the re­sults don’t lie.

A Sep­tem­ber 2024 McK­in­sey and Com­pa­ny ar­ti­cle ti­tled What is Lead­er­ship?

De­fined lead­er­ship as a set of mind­sets and be­hav­iours that aligns peo­ple in a col­lec­tive di­rec­tion, en­ables them to work to­geth­er and ac­com­plish shared goals, and helps them ad­just to chang­ing en­vi­ron­ments.

The ar­ti­cle fur­ther goes on to say that all lead­ers, to a cer­tain de­gree, do the same thing. Whether you’re talk­ing about an ex­ec­u­tive, sports coach, or school­teacher, lead­er­ship is en­abling oth­ers to ac­com­plish some­thing they couldn’t do on their own. Some peo­ple in for­mal lead­er­ship po­si­tions are poor lead­ers, and many good lead­ers have no for­mal au­thor­i­ty. In this sense, lead­er­ship is some­thing you do and not some­thing you are. It is a per­son’s ac­tions, rather than their words or job ti­tle, that in­spire trust and com­mit­ment.

What’s more, lead­er­ship is not some­thing peo­ple are born with. Be­cause good lead­er­ship is of­ten ex­pressed through be­hav­iour rather than per­son­al­i­ty, it is a skill that can be learnt. How? Get­ting to know one­self is a key first step. The most ef­fec­tive lead­ers are high­ly con­scious of their own thoughts and be­liefs and show up with in­tegri­ty as their ful­ly au­then­tic selves.

McK­in­sey and Com­pa­ny are world-renowned man­age­ment con­sul­tants much used by many of the world’s fore­most For­tune 500 com­pa­nies. This is not to sug­gest they are al­ways right or that they al­ways get it right. How­ev­er, they have a proven track record of suc­cess. Their book, The Jour­ney of Lead­er­ship, is a good read.

Ef­fec­tive, in­tegri­ty, au­then­tic, trust, and com­mit­ment are some of the words promi­nent in the McK­in­sey ar­ti­cle ref­er­enced in to­day’s col­umn. Let’s, for the pur­pose of re­flect­ing on Govia’s words call­ing for ac­count­abil­i­ty, make the point that you can­not have ac­count­abil­i­ty if the words promi­nent in the McK­in­sey ar­ti­cle aren’t core, non-ne­go­tiable val­ues.

Re­mem­ber: Don’t kill the mes­sen­ger. Hear and lis­ten to the mes­sage.

Here in Trinidad and To­ba­go, it’s al­ways the play­ers, ath­letes, and coach who car­ry the bur­den of pub­lic and me­dia ac­count­abil­i­ty for poor per­for­mances and re­sults.

Govia isn’t shift­ing the blame; he is sim­ply say­ing sport lead­ers should share the blame.

Ed­i­tor’s note

The vei­ws 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.