Transformational leadership

Nov 30, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths by GHK Lall

(Kaieteur News) – Transformational leadership, what is it?  What does it look and feel like?  Transformation occurs when subtle deceptions fade, when outright falsehoods yield to the power of leadership truths.  Genuine truths that detest the frauds worked by prior leaders on trusting Guyanese.  In other words, transformational leadership, though much more, is of those who stand for what Guyanese have never had before.  Fairness.  Justness.  Steadfastness to honesty.  More than speaking it, but living it.  Then there is no call for the slyness and shiftiness that have characterized leadership standards and postures in today’s Guyana.

When oil came to these shores, the world came as houseguests of Guyanese.  I thought that a different, high, standard would prevail.  Leadership dodges and bristling is no longer a local matter, but now an international spectacle, with no continent unrepresented.  Clearly, I had it wrong.  The power of oil money only made matters worse, monstrous.  Though there is much, it is not enough for hustlers and those who use them as fronts, condone them.  Condone, not current.  And when they have to be protected, that part of the program.

What is transformational about this leadership that is happening before all Guyanese?  Nothing is.  Many Guyanese love it; few can stay far from it.  The latter say a prayer: Lord, let me not be that way.  How to describe the leadership ethos that dominates Guyanese life?  It is peculiar, fancy, crude, and the accepted norm.  There is delight in play acting and attaching the brand of transformational leadership to that practice.  Leadership play acting with misinformation, misrepresentation, that grabs the national imagination, is its standing condition.  How does a country run on misinformation, political depredations, from coast-to-coast, dawn to dusk?

One prince of the realm highlighted railed against misinformation and disinformation.  When it was whispered to him that his own folks were the leading practitioners of misinformation and disinformation, enthusiasms slowed.  Silence on misinformation and disinformation, given who the primary agents are.  This was well known, but it’s the play acting that has become so addictive.  Say anything for the sake of saying something, and hoping that citizens forget, move on.

Transformational leadership entered the stratosphere when morals and civics lessons became centerpieces of local lectures.  Good, I say.  Very good.  But a hiccup came, wouldn’t go away.  Not so good when that permanent secretary disappeared off the radar.  Perhaps, the Guyanese people could be made to understand why that super public servant was exempted from morals and civics boundaries drawn.  Question One: what were the standards and practices of leadership morals/ethics that led to exclusion from sanctions, exemption from a Federal Grand Jury indictment?  Likely, a set of govt-to-govt. arrangements that encapsulated not what is moral, but what is immoral and insidious.  But that’s a vital segment of the play acting that enchants Guyanese.  Say one thing (teach morals and civics), but then carry on like an escort service.  There’s a word that suits the situation perfectly, but is a little ruff on the ears for some, so escort service is chosen.

The essences of Guyana’s transformational leadership are: a) say something, anything, that sounds inspiring publicly, but live the opposite privately; b) say something that gains traction, and not care how pathetic one looks, when the weight of circumstances is against; and c) protect what’s immoral and unethical and call it democracy, not worry about holding the devil by the foot.  When the abusive becomes hallmarks of leadership, those are indeed transformational, but to where -sunlight (the best ventilator), or the underworld’s darkness?  Men curse to bluff their way out of tight corners.  It means that curses are all they have.  Truth deserted them.  When leaders reach the stage of not caring that the world looks at them and sees creatures tiptoeing around tough issues, then what is that: transformational leadership?  Or, a Red Plague that now infects so much of Guyana?

I heard civics recommended.  Excellent!  That government official’s name must feature as a case study.  Trust betrayed.  So that Guyanese can appreciate how Guyana’s champions rearrange situations to their benefit.  View how they sound distorted, look ragged.  It is water running downhill unimpeded in pontifications about morals and civics.  The water dispensed is dirty.  Morals and civics waters polluted by tainted politics and those that huff and puff about these attributes.  Leadership that personifies strong morals and devotion to the best of civics do not hide from disturbing developments; nor blaze with rage. Don’t pretend at honesty.  Leadership lives by facing head-on citizens, critics, skeptics.  They speak to truth.  When deceptions reign, this kind of transformation fools few.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.) 

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• GHK Lall, houseguests, leadership, transformational

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