Leaders with a gift to inspire

Such an occasion unfolded this week at the Hotel de France when the Jersey International Business School, supported by this newspaper, hosted its second annual forum. The theme was leadership through ‘perilous times’ and, in their separate ways, the six principal speakers were remarkably well-equipped to offer their views on the subject.

All the contributions were of exceptionally high quality, but it has to be said that, through sheer force of personality as well as background, two speakers were the show-stoppers – adventurer, author, former soldier and explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes and the founder and editor-in-chief of the Big Issue, John Bird.

The audience at the forum – many of them prominent business people, though there was a strong contingent from Island sixth forms – could hardly have failed to be enthralled by Sir Ranulph’s colourful, gently humorous and astounding account of his activities as counter-insurgency officer in Oman, at the North and South Poles and at the summit of Everest.

If leadership was his subject, he is surely the embodiment of a leader.

John Bird also revealed that he has had a life with a difference. Born in poverty, he misspent much of his youth, earning a living through crime and tasting the hospitality of Her Majesty in youth offenders’ custody and in prison. But he turned everything around, and in 1991 managed, with the help of others, to found the Big Issue, the street paper now sold from Totnes to Tokyo.

Mr Bird is also a leader, but his idea of leadership is offering others a realistic opportunity to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

Lavishing praise on Sir Ranulph and John Bird might deflect the limelight from the other speakers, but they, too, acquitted themselves very well indeed.

NoNonsense Consulting director Andrea Robottom deftly applied the lessons of white-water rafting to the business world, entrepreneur Dr Malek Ladki talked about the foundations of his success as a child during the Lebanese civil war, JIBS director Stephen Platt examined the mysteries of ‘black swan’ events, and newly elected Treasury Minister Philip Ozouf offered an upbeat but realistic assessment of Jersey’s future prospects. All in all, the JIBS forum was not to be missed.