THE Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) conducted a leadership seminar for members of the Private Sector, at the Pegasus Hotel, in Kingston, Georgetown, yesterday.

In opening remarks, GCCI President Clinton Urling said his organisation believes in capacity building to ensure that the Private Sector is not static but rather more dynamic and expansive.
He said leaders should be committed to empowering their employees to make their organisations better, as well as to compete not only domestically, but on a global level, for those larger companies.
Mr. Urling said leadership is more about the vision of the organisation and it is a very important topic, as it is the vehicle that drives ideas and change.
He said, when the Chamber conducts surveys of its membership and the wider Private Sector, the number one constraint to doing business is finding and keeping good employees and training.
Urling related that, from those surveys, they determine which seminars will be interesting to the Private Sector and that is why they organise them along those lines.
According to him, over the past eight months the Chamber has conducted approximately eight seminars, with a number of others being planned for the coming months, including on oil and gas and one on personnel management.
Very impressed
He said that, as with previous seminars, he is very impressed to see the turnout at this one on leadership.
In his presentation, Professor Miguel Carillo, of the University of the West Indies (UWI), remarked that great leaders are those capable of changing the way people see life, which is profoundly rooted in what is called tribal leadership.
He said there are five tribes ‘my life sucks’, ‘life sucks’, ‘I am great, but you are not’, ‘we are great’ and ‘life is great’.
Carillo said you know that you have a great leader in front of you, if that leader is able to change the way you see the world.
He also observed that great leaders become great because of something that happened in their lives that make them see the world differently than others, such as a tragic accident or the way they were raised.
Additionally, he said that unity in diversity is very important, as diversity makes a culture strong but what makes it stronger is the capacity to build bridges and find that those differences are what complement each other.
Also making a presentation, Managing Director of Videomega Productions, Ms. Cathy Hughes said that becoming a great leader is a consistent and continuous process of abandoning ego, listening, advising, nurturing, planning, building and achieving.
She posited that the acronym ‘LEAD’stands for Listen, Example, Act decisively and Delegate.
Productive whole
Listening is very important, as the advice that you receive will inform your decisions and, when you listen to those around you, you will be able to make decisions that will move your organisation together as productive whole.
She related that the second aspect of the acronym- example means that you should lead by example, as how you operate will determine how your subordinates do.
Hughes added that, to be successful, there must be no task in your organisation that you are not prepared to do for yourself or for your company.
The third aspect of the acronym, act decisively means that, after you have thought long and hard and made a decision, put your all into it, she said.
The fourth aspect of the acronym, delegate means that a leader should always understand that he/she cannot do it all by himself/herself and must delegate and delegate with confidence.
Participants at the seminar included representatives from Roraima Airways, Grace Kennedy Remittance Services (GKRS), Unicomer and the Women’s Entrepreneurship Network (WENET).
Sponsorship was by Japarts, Austin’s Book Store, Bank of Nova Scotia, Guyana Telephone & Telegraph Company  (GT&T) and Silvie’s General