Yesterday, the Maxwell Leadership hosted a webinar titled, ‘How to shift from trained leaders to Transformational Leaders’, where it honoured the president & CEO of Scotia Group Jamaica, Audrey Tugwell-Henry.

Tugwell-Henry, who is also the senior vice-president of Scotiabank’s Caribbean North & Central, shared three key tenets of successful leadership and how she prefers to operate as an authority figure in the business.

1. People-centric Leadership’

Tugwell-Henry pointed out that the human resources are an important asset to any business and that their “investment” into the organisation is essential to its success. Treating people, both inside and outside of the business, well is vital to the sustainability and growth of your organisation.

2. Collective Leadership

She explains that managers at all levels are responsible for their subordinates, and must exercise proper managerial skills in their everyday work life.

3. Leading with the human touch

Leaders must lead with compassion, empathy, understanding and objectivity. She implores leaders to engender a culture of transparency and trust within the business by “balancing our hearts with our brains as when we interact with people”.

“Practising empathy allows leaders to connect with employees,” she advised.

Further recommendations such as listening to team members to help them reach their fullest potential were also listed as imperative qualities in successful leadership.

“Leading with humanity is not about being nice or worse, being considered soft,” Tugwell-Henry clarified to close off her keynote, leaving a message of compassion and consideration for employees. She expressed that these leadership traits tend to trickle down from the top, inspiring morale and overall attitude toward the business and their functions on the team.

Host Erica Mckenzie, of the Maxwell Leadership Certified Team, had both the executive vice-president of Maxwell Christopher Robinson and Michael Pope, an independent certified coach, teacher, trainer and speaker with the Maxwell Leadership Certified Team.

At the start of the session, Robinson asserted that leaders should remain informed by reading books on the subject of leadership. He said, in short, that the books we acquire on leadership should not be kept on the shelf. Indicating that ‘self-help comes from shelf help’. He also pointed out the vital characteristics that a leader needs, in his opinion, to grow. They included:

1. Choosing to grow
2. Choosing to lead well
3. Treating people well

Additionally, Pope delivered a message on a few of the qualities of a transformational leader that he referenced from a John Maxwell leadership book. Among them were: “Trained leaders have knowledge; transformational leaders have wisdom. Trained leaders know the right things to do; transformational leaders do the right things” 

The overarching message was clear to those in attendance by the end of the webinar: Leaders should never lose the human touch and that their human resource is a vital part of their organisation and its success. Tugwell-Henry, Robinson and Pope seem to all agree with this.

“The hardest person to lead is yourself,” Erica McKenzie stressed as she closed off the session.