Caribbean Leadership Project

 The Caribbean Leadership Project (CLP) is a seven-year, $20 million (CAD) Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) funded project designed to strategically strengthen the next generation of Caribbean men and women leaders to contribute more effectively to regional integration and economic growth. This will be accomplished by establishing a project specific to the needs and culture of the Caribbean Region and by fostering regional approaches for the sustainability of leadership development.

The Canada School of Public Service (CSPS) is the executing agency for the Project while the Regional Project Office is located in Barbados hosted by the Caribbean Centre for Development Administration (CARICAD).

The twelve participating countries are Antigua & Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, St. Kitts & Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, Suriname and Trinidad & Tobago. The Project also targets key regional institutions which play a pivotal role in advancing regional integration and economic development.

There are five main pillars to the Caribbean Leadership Project (CLP):

1)   Leadership Development Programme (LDP):  The objective of the LDP is to develop and deliver a multi-module leadership development programme for up to 250 senior officials in the twelve participating countries plus key regional organisations.  The LDP must be: a) designed and delivered in a manner that it is financially self-sufficient after CIDA funding expires; b) reflective of the context, culture and political realities of the Caribbean Region; and c) flexible in design so it can be adapted to both audience and issues of the day. 

2)     Enabling Environment:  Learning doesn’t take place in isolation.  In fact, most learning doesn’t take place in the classroom.  According to the Government of Canada Strategies to Support Assistant Deputy Minister Growth and Development: 70% of development takes place on the job through challenging work assignments and participation in corporate activities; 20% of learning occurs by drawing on the knowledge and feedback of others, coaching and mentoring; and, 10% of development takes place in the classroom.  The sustainability of learning and development is heavily impacted by the context in which the learner works.  

While the large public sector reform projects may address the overall goal of supporting governments to be more accountable and better organized to serve citizens and achieve national development priorities, the CLP will explore the relationship between leadership development and organisational effectiveness, specifically for small developing countries such as in the Caribbean.   Virtually every meeting with senior officials during the leadership learning needs assessment missions concluded with the belief that one cannot divorce leadership development from the context in which leadership is exercised, yet few could articulate what an enabling environment was or how to achieve it.   

Although many governments require learners to conduct post-training workshops to transfer knowledge to colleagues, the concept of an organisation being culturally and structurally optimised to link individual learning and development to demonstrated results in achieving organisational or national priorities is less apparent.   Many governments, developed and developing, struggle with this too, mainly because they try to apply technical solutions to complex, adaptive challenges or they decouple the management of human resources from the “business” of managing government priorities. 

The CLP, using the LDP participants as expert resources, will first seek to understand/define the concept of an enabling environment and then develop a strategy to support a regional approach to assisting participating countries to create an environment that maximizes their and donors investments in learning and capacity development.

3)     Research:  The majority of research on leadership theories and leadership development that is being used to inform or drive current practices in programme design is based on research and best practices from Fortune 500 companies or large national governments in developed countries.  There is very little material that is reflective of the realities faced by small governments, developing countries or small-island developing states.  Using Singapore, Malta and Bahrain as proxies for the realities faced in the Caribbean is a start but it can also be misleading, given there are more differences than commonalities.

In order for the LDP to be relevant in the region and not merely a transplantation of other governments’ programming, the CLP is including a research programme to explore leadership and economic development issues that are specific to the Caribbean context.

4)     Continuous Learning and Development Network: The three pillars noted above will all deliberately build in mechanisms that are designed to reinforce workplace application, and to support public sector leaders in developing self-sustaining approaches to continuous learning in the workplace.  The most natural and viable strategy to support this goal is to facilitate the development of continuous learning networks that can extend well beyond the parameters of the LDP itself.  Continuous learning and development networks proactively support learners as they practice their learning in their workplaces. Learning and development networks maximize the impact of learning by facilitating further exchange about the practical applications of what happens in the classroom (and other formal learning events).

5)     Communities of Practice for Project Resources:  In order for the LDP and Caribbean Centre for Leadership Excellence to be sustainable, it will need to draw upon a trusted set of qualified and skilled resources in the Region to deliver the LDP in the long-term.  While there exist a strong base of “content”-focused resources (such as public policy research, economics, gender, and environment), it is critical for current and on-going delivery of the LDP that there is a regionally representative core group of reputable professionals in the field of leadership programme design, delivery and evaluation and in the field of executive coaching.  Initial research indicates there is a need to support the Region in the development of a strong cadre of leadership design specialists and executive coaches to “evergreen” existing programmes and develop new programmes to meet the Region’s needs.

 The CLP decision-making framework, which establishes how project decisions are is supported by:

• The Project Steering Committee (PSC),  representing stakeholders across the Caribbean Region and Canada, which oversee the broad governance environment and provide strategic direction and policy guidance to the Project Director; and
• The Technical Working Group (TWG) which provides expert advice and feedback to the PSC. The TWG fosters communication, interaction and collaboration to enrich the development and implementation of the CLP through their collective knowledge-base and experience.

The CLP is managed by the Project Management Team (PMT), comprising; the Project Director-Ms. Colleen Rossiter (based in Gatineau, Canada), the Regional Project Manager – Ms. Joan H. Underwood (based in Barbados) and other technical and administrative staff.