An eye for an eye will on­ly make the whole world go blind - Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi.

The at­tri­bu­tion of the quote has it­self gar­nered de­bate as to if Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi ac­tu­al­ly said it. But what isn't de­bat­ed is the in­tent of the mes­sage as it re­flects what is be­lieved to be Gand­hi's phi­los­o­phy. A phi­los­o­phy that shaped his life's work.

How can we get bet­ter de­ci­sion-mak­ing? How can we im­prove the de­ci­sions sports lead­ers make?

Gand­hi's quote popped in­to my head on the week­end as I re­flect­ed on the num­ber of con­ver­sa­tions peo­ple had with me in re­cent days as they ut­tered their con­cerns about the state of sports in Trinidad and To­ba­go. It's al­ways a com­plex con­ver­sa­tion that de­mands pa­tience and a will­ing­ness to lis­ten. There are a lot of hurt­ing peo­ple. As much as we need joy in our lives and a sense of calm­ness, there is an ur­gency with which peo­ple are search­ing for an­swers and so­lu­tions. But, and it's a big but, their per­son­al views and ex­pe­ri­ences cloud- un­der­stand­ably so their con­text, per­spec­tive and there­fore their con­clu­sions and so­lu­tions.

As an ex­am­ple, one can on­ly won­der about what would have mo­ti­vat­ed Desmond Haynes to treat Dar­ren Bra­vo as he did. When one con­sid­ers the way Haynes was treat­ed by the very same West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) now called Crick­et West In­dies (CWI). Why did he not use his very own ex­pe­ri­ence to cre­ate a dif­fer­ent ap­proach as he car­ries out his task as chair of the CWI se­lec­tion pan­el?

The sad re­al­i­ty is that af­ter the ini­tial ex­pres­sions of out­rage. The ship will sail on and Dar­ren will be­come an­oth­er foot­note. We don't learn. We keep re­peat­ing the same mis­takes over and over. Sub­ject­ing an­oth­er gen­er­a­tion of sports­men and sports­women to the same thing over and over. Mind you, it's not just sports­men and women, it's al­so coach­es and of­fi­cials.

It's as if every­one has a score to set­tle and a grudge to ad­dress. Names and faces may change but the grudge must be set­tled. An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth.

It's in this con­text I re­flect­ed on Gand­hi. Lead­ers must take care that their de­ci­sion-mak­ing is not sub­con­scious­ly im­pact­ed by their need to set­tle a score be the trans­gres­sion re­al or imag­ined.

Not say­ing it's easy as we are hu­man be­ings af­ter all. But if we are, to be hon­est, a lot of de­ci­sions made by sports lead­ers can be con­fus­ing to the neu­tral on-look­er or com­men­ta­tor. "It just doesn't make sense" tends to be the gen­er­al com­ment.

We need more sports de­ci­sions that make sense. It's not sim­ply about gov­er­nance and lead­er­ship skills alone. It has to do with a be­lief sys­tem. What do you re­al­ly be­lieve?

Talk­ing about gov­er­nance, trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty just don't seem to "hit home". It's as if it doesn't make one io­ta of dif­fer­ence. It comes down to what do you re­al­ly be­lieve.

What do you be­lieve is a ques­tion I ask all the time when ad­dress­ing is­sues? It would amaze many if they on­ly know how ir­ra­tional the an­swer may sound. I use ir­ra­tional in the con­text of a par­tic­u­lar prob­lem or con­cern.

What do you be­lieve is the root cause of the is­sue? What do you be­lieve is deeply per­son­al about this is­sue? Why is it per­son­al­ly im­por­tant to set­tle this mat­ter or not set­tle it?

Re­mem­ber an eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.

In this, the sea­son of good­will, give some thought to how can we im­prove your con­tri­bu­tion to­wards the sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment of sports. What do you be­lieve and why do you be­lieve?