In From Grit to Glory, I use my stories to tell the readers
how I have managed to rise out of the Jamaican ghetto of Shaolin to senior
managerial positions in international engineering companies. However, not very
long before I sat in a boardroom or led a large team, I was taught by Shaolin
the basics of survival, leadership, and community. The things that I learnt
there, were not taught in the books; it was embedded in the day-to-day
activities. My personality has been formed in a setting characterized by
strength and solidarity, which has continued to shape my character to this day.
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Shaolin was an extraordinary place, a place that was
misunderstood by the outsiders. It was also a childhood of poverty, cramped
houses and low opportunities but strength, creativity and togetherness. The
struggles were genuine and the struggles were incessant yet they developed a
culture of people knowing how to make it through with ingenuity and support to
one another.
To survive in Shaolin one should be able to adapt. We were
not well equipped hence we used what we had to improvise. I was taught to think
on my feet and use few resources to solve problems as a child. A lesson into
resource management and strategic planning was the selling of boxes drinks or
farming callaloo, something as simple as that. Focus, hard work, and being
capable of recovering after being beaten back was what was necessary to survive
in such an environment.
Another skill that Shaolin taught me even before I knew it
is leadership. Leadership was not a matter of position or honor but it was a
matter of service, accountability and power. People were relying on me when I
started my little businesses selling bag juice and June plums. My friends and
classmates demanded a certain degree of consistency and quality. Even my
teenage barber company had an aspect of leadership; I had to manage time, treat
the clients with respect and have them trust me. To be a leader in Shaolin was
to demonstrate to people that you were dependable even when you had nothing
much to spare.
Shaolin as a community had a significant influence on my
values. People were supportive to each other despite the misery. Families used
to eat together, neighbors were in need of one another and children were raised
with the glaring gaze of a whole community. I also experienced acts of kindness
that demonstrated to me the value of unity. This group identity shaped my
perception of group work and collaboration at the workplace. In the University
of the West indies or my subsequent work in American engineering firms I
realized that success does not happen to a person, it is constructed through
teamwork, appreciation and mutual mission.
Among the greatest teachings of Shaolin was that in the hard
times. I observed that people were laid off, got sick or were poor, yet they
never gave up. That hope even when there was a bad situation influenced the way
I dealt with my personal problems- particularly when my motorbike crashed and
changed my life. The mental and physical toughness that I had developed in
Shaolin assisted me to overcome the painful healing time.
The presence of Shaolin did not just stop in my childhood
and it also became a part of my journey in the world. The flexibility I had
acquired in growing up became my best asset when I relocated to Jamaica to
Trinidad and finally to London and the United States. Every new environment was
associated with its problems: culture shock, discrimination, financial strain,
and confusion. Yet the survival instincts and leadership qualities I acquired
at the ghetto were able to adapt me, and I carried on and ultimately, I made it
to the heights of engineering career. These early experiences assisted me in my
style of team management, solving problems and being sophisticated in that I
remained down to earth irrespective of how high up I went.
Being raised in Shaolin taught the writer that hardship can
never make a person, it will only equip him. It taught me that a leader should
serve and community is the basis of resilience. The experiences that I had
acquired in that small, neglected neighborhood helped to take me through my
most difficult moments and the most successful ones.
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