The young people’s response to the Flow-sponsored First Annual John C. Maxwell Live2Lead Conference held at the Shore Club Resort Ballroom in Providenciales, Saturday, February 26, was so forceful that the telecommunications company is chomping at the bit to host another round of the event in 2023.
Darron Hilaire, Head of Brand Marketing for FlowTCI, told NewslineTCI that the turnout, as well as the participation, was so epic that they are working to have Maxwell on the ground, to make his presentation live next year.
“We wanted to see if this would be something that people would respond to, and now we have the statistics to make sure that that happens on a much larger scale,” he said. “So, we are probably going to outgrow this conference next year, with COVID protocols provided.”
He said the conference was the first of its kind in the TCI, and that the event was augmented by the certified local John C. Maxwell trainers.
“It is the first time we are bringing a conference like this to the Turks and Caicos, and luckily, we also have at least four or five John Maxwell Team Members that are in the room…that also makes up some of our ambassadors for the company,” he outlined.
He said staging the event was triggered by the realization that there was a dearth of leadership in the Turks and Caicos Islands, and so Live 2 Lead was held to assist in bridging that chasm.
“We believe in values, and we believe in the value of people. And so, we realized that we are in a leadership crisis, and we needed leadership strategies to be able to respond to the crisis that we are in.
“And it is no surprise that the world has demanded more from our leaders within the last two years. We thought the pandemic was the last of it, now there are more things happening in the world, and it is going to require leadership, it is going to require inspiration, it is going to require wisdom.
“And so, instead of just investing that in our (Flow) team (alone), we want to share that with many leaders as much as possible,” Hilaire added.
He said the event attracted more than 100, and more than 500 online.
“The response just shows how hungry people are, how much leaders needed to recharge and get into that space, just to tackle the demands that are coming at them, but to also just to have a space for leaders to share ideas, to learn together and to be with each other, and to feed off of that energy, to put back into their workplace, into their community,” he said.
He argued that if the Turks and Caicos Islands is to realize its true potential, young people would have to be equipped because soon, they would be the ones controlling the reins of government and business.
“We talk about them as future leaders, but they are working today…they are thinking about leadership, and if we don’t give them the fundamentals of leadership, we are going to continue to reproduce the same thing.
“And so, we wanted to give ahead of that, and we wanted to invest in our young people also and make them a part of the conversation.
“I think this notion that people have that young people want hand-outs, I don’t think that’s true…I think they want inspiration. And for a lack of inspiration and compelling leadership, we are seeing them go astray and sort of clinging to other things,” Hilaire added.
He noted further: “But I think if we could create a compelling vision for leadership, and compelling leaders that connect with them and inspire them in a powerful way, they would want to follow them and want to grow up to be that and take up space in this country as well.”
Maxwell, who spoke on two of the 21 laws of leadership, highlighted the law of legacy, determining the type of legacy one wants to leave behind, and the one sentence people will remember you by.
Hilaire pointed out that a fluid environment was created that attendees would have their own takeaways, saying it conference was not held to make any form of determinants to its audience.
“We didn’t want to say, ‘this is what you get, and this is what you should get. We left it open, and the panel would just let it flow as we have conversations with the young people. But everyone would take away something different.
“Hopefully, we would see some of that across social media as people begin to talk in their own spaces, and hopefully we will see a larger audience next year when we do this again, same place, and hopefully, with John on the ground…that is the expectation,” he said.
Among the attendees were Deputy Governor Her Excellency Anya Williams and Ministry of Infrastructure and Planning Hon. Akierra Misick.