Anusha David spotlights the hottest styles and statements in and around Sri Lanka – from political leaders to celebrity CEOs, masters of the game to fashion icons and stars of the silver screen and stage. Here are society’s leaders talking about the determination, vision, smarts, competence and professionalism. Today, she speaks to Bertram Paul and Ramesh Schafter.
The Global Leadership Summit - A World Class Leadership Programme, will be held in Sri Lanka on November 7. Started 20 years ago in the USA to train church leaders, the GLS today is a global movement impacting 260,000 leaders across 105 countries and 350 cities, spanning the church, business, government, education and nonprofit sectors.
The brainchild of Bill Hybels, Founder and Senior Pastor, Willow Creek Community Church, with a membership of 25,000 in Illinois, USA and author of over 20 books including Simplify, Courageous Leadership and Leadership Axioms, the Global Leadership Summit brings together a team of international leaders from the business world and Christian Ministry to share lessons in leadership.
The programme has been run for the past 5 years in Sri Lanka and 2015 will be its 6th year of operation. The event this year will be held at the Galadari Hotel on November 7 (this Saturday) with the expected participation of 300 Business Leaders from the local Corporate Sector. Featured today are one of the local facilitators for the event, Ramesh Schafter, Executive Director at Janashakthi Insurance and host Bertram Paul, General Manager - Sales at Chevron Lubricants.
Bertram holds a Master’s degree in Business Administration from the Postgraduate Institute of Management of the University of Sri Jayawardenapura, is an Associate Member of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants – UK, a Fellow Member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing UK and is also a Chartered Marketer. Bertram is the recipient of an “Achievers Award” from the Postgraduate Institute of Management (University of Sri Jayawardenapura) for services rendered to business and the community.
Ramesh is a Director of Janashakthi Insurance PLC and a fellow member and Former Council Member of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants Sri Lanka and an Associate member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing. Ramesh is a versatile personality who has over 20 years experience in Finance and Marketing. He has served on the Boards of several public listed and unlisted companies as well as being the incumbent President of Habitat for Humanity Sri Lanka, an NGO engaged in providing housing for low income families.
In light of the association with the Christian Ministry, is GLS trying to spread Christian values in big businesses?
BP : You will find that what is happening today - both in companies as well as what is being taught in business schools - is that there is a great deal of emphasis being placed on ethical business, good governance, leadership styles such as ‘servant leadership’, and if you trace it down to the root of where this all originates, a lot of it actually stems from biblical principles. We are not trying to spread Christian principles per se; it is more a way of doing good in order to do well. These are the principles that we are trying to bring about through GLS, both in terms of the secular speakers as well as the few pastors we have who will share their leadership principles.
RS : Today’s world is all about social responsibility, governance, transparency and ethical business and those principles are deeply rooted in religious principles irrespective of which religion you belong to. Yes, Christian values have greatly influenced the Western world, although they are not always practiced, and this is an attempt to rediscover some of these values and translate them into leadership principles that can work in the long term.
Has GLS ever considered developing an inter-religious platform?
BP : Not really. GLS originally started off in the US to train religious leaders, particularly Christian pastors who don’t get exposed to management gurus, but along the way because of the quality of the content, where they had speakers of the caliber of Jim Collins, Jack Welch, Carly Fiorina, Michael Porter and so on, they found that over 50% of the participants were from the business world - the secular world as it were. So in Sri Lanka how we rolled it out is we have actually gone into different segments. This particular programme is targeted only at the business segment and corporate leaders. We have separate programmes targeted at Christian leaders and pastors.
RS : GLS is more of a non-religious platform although initiated by a church. Many of the speakers are atheists or non-Christian. The values that they would have to subscribe to in terms of ethics would have to lean towards or co-relate to Christianity, it cannot conflict with Christianity, because it wouldn’t make sense to have two speakers subscribing to opposing values. But no they have not (referring to the inter-religious aspect). It is primarily initiated in the US, which is largely a Christian nation, though they do have other religions. However, I don’t think they would leave out non-Christians, they have people who are non-Christians, but they are not representing another religion and they do have a cross section represented among the speakers.
Do you believe a place of business should be secular?
RS : My personal position is “yes”, but each of us who is in business, in leadership, brings to that table a bias and that bias would be based on upbringing - be it religious, academic or any other influence in our lives as children. But I believe strongly that a place of business should have room for strong ethics, but it should be secular. My own company is entirely secular. We do not allow religion to come into any of the decisions and it is certainly not a part of the recruitment process and even at company functions we leave religion out. It is a means of uniting everyone and not causing any dissension. Business should stick to business.
Shouldn’t religion and business be kept apart?
BP : I think the response to this question would be that in any organization, at the end of the day, you have people – whether it is management or employees – and people are influenced by a whole plethora of things – their background, their cultural influences, religion. They bring this baggage to the table when they come to an organization. In that sense, you cannot divorce people’s beliefs, attitudes and values in the organization. Yes, the organization has its own culture and particularly in multinationals you find that it is a very strong culture, which they try to superimpose over and above the culture of the country, but employees do have that background. So what we are really trying to do – through conferences of this nature – is bring about good values and inculcate them. If you look at people who study philosophy and religion, this has something that they have been looking for in terms of finding out what are these good principles and applying it to our lives no matter which religion or background you belong to. You need to keep religion and business apart, you need to keep religion and government apart – I certainly subscribe to that view – but what I do believe it does is it brings about good values. So that is really the connection, and I think we need to be careful about throwing the baby out with the bath water because there are a lot of things happening out there - in terms of hypocrisy and abuse of the system – but there’s still a lot of good to be found. If we are able to pick that good, whether it is out of religion or any other secular movement, then we should try to do it. That’s exactly what GLS is trying to do; it brings in people from the secular world, it brings in people from the Christian Ministry and it tries to impart those good business practices, which today has been found to make a lot of good business sense.
Do any of your speakers come from any other faiths?
BP : Yes – they do come from different faiths and being from the West there are quite a few atheists. There are quite a few speakers who may be Christian by tag or nominally, but they are certainly not committed Christians. So, yes, GLS is open to speakers of all faiths, as long as there is no conflict with the content.
Has GLS ever covered the teachings of Lord Buddha?
RS : No, it has not. To my knowledge, the last five GL summits – which have been held in Sri Lanka and which I have been associated with – have not. Neither have they conflicted with any religious teachings. But we have had people of other faiths attending GLS and in fact being repeat attendees.
Has religion become a business?
RS : Not at all, but I do believe that religion exhibits many of the common traits of leadership. Over the years there have always been misguided people who have misrepresented different religions for personal gain, but I don’t think you can blame any religion for that. Yes, there are people who misuse the name of religion to do business, but religion has not become a business.
BP : I would pretty much subscribe to what Ramesh has mentioned. Yes, there have been instances where that accusation has been made, but fundamentally I do not think that religion has become a business. There are excellent values that come out of any religion, and I think we need to see the wood from the trees.
What are the most popular current models of leaders and leadership styles?
RS : One thing about leadership that you find is that it is very situational. You cannot have a prescriptive model and a one-size-fits-all type of thing. Autocratic leadership is really seen to be redundant and participative styles are becoming the modern and more preferred models. In the old days, they used to talk about a very tall organization structure, where you would find top management who see themselves way above the middle managers or the frontline. Today, the modern thinking is that the whole model needs to be inverted and because of the emphasis on the customer and the importance of satisfying the customer, modern organizations should see themselves as an inverted pyramid where they actually put the customer on top and those interfacing with the customer – the frontline – to be at the top of the pyramid. In this inverted model, the top management is simply viewed as senior management that supports the middle managers and the frontline to serve the customer. So those are some of the modern concepts that are taking shape. We also spoke about servant leadership, which is basically about coming across as sincere and genuine in terms of caring for your employees. In fact, Horst Schulze, former president and COO of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, talks about the need for your colleagues and employees to see that you are genuine and you care for them, which will make them follow you.
What do you expect to see coming out of GLS?
BP : I would have to draw that from what we have seen happening from other parts of the world, where GLS is actually run in the US and various other cities. We’ve seen people who have followed the conference and been impacted by something that was shared by one of the speakers. It has really brought about the clichéd paradigm shift. They (the participants) have gone back and made a tangible difference in their organizations and in their countries sometimes. So that’s the kind of transformational change we are hoping to see. For example, we’ve seen a person who actually went back to his organization and then he said, looking at the Christian principles of equality, if Jesus looks at everyone equally, what right do I have to consider myself superior over some of my employees? So he changed his whole approach and leadership style, and he became more inclusive, which brought about tremendous change. In other examples, there have been practical examples, where labour turnover has dropped and productivity has increased. These are the tangible changes that ultimately make business sense. So, what we are hoping is that we would see similar changes happening in our organizations and probably in society and government. Speaking of government, last year at GLS, we had a speaker from Uganda, from the Inland Revenue Authority, and she shared how some of the principles she applied there completely changed the whole model. So the Inland Revenue Service of Uganda went from being one of the most corrupt organizations in the country to one of those organizations that was considered excellent in governance. The revenue that they were collecting for the government shot up by several fold. So these are the practical changes that have happened, and what we are hoping is that we will see similar transformational changes happening in Sri Lanka as well.
RS : GLS is not a religious conference. We’re looking at Sri Lanka today with ‘Yahapalanaya’ or ‘good governance’ being the tagline of the government. Is that a religious concept? Yes, they all have roots in religious philosophies but I don’t believe that that itself is a religious concept. So, if good governance or servant leadership is taught at GLS, then I think those are universal concepts that hold true and if implemented properly can only bring happiness and prosperity to all those who enjoy that. I believe GLS will influence leaders and those leaders will, in turn, influence their followers in their sphere of influence because they come into contact with friends, neighbors, employees, partners, business partners etc. I think this can have a communicable effect over a period of time. We’re going into the 6th GLS and the people who come are not the same as the ones who came for the first one. They have been transformed; they are physically the same, but they are not the same leaders. They have been transformed.
Interviewed by Anusha David
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