Closing 2025 with the Mirror still raised

AS WE STAND near the close of 2025, it feels like a natural moment to pause, to reflect on whether the changes we have lived through, socially, technologically, and organisationally, are shaping us for the better, or simply reshaping our habits without improving our outcomes.

There was a time when only a few people owned mobile phones. Today, they are no longer just tools we carry; they have become extensions of our person.

Recently, I watched an employee collecting trash with a knapsack on his back, a phone in one hand and litter in the other. On another morning, a traffic police officer stood in the middle of traffic, phone to his ear. Later still, I passed an accident during rush hour.

Traffic was disrupted, and the officer assigned to manage the scene stood several yards away, back turned, focused on his phone.

It made me wonder: How far is too far? At what point does a tool designed to increase efficiency begin to reduce attentiveness?

When something meant to enhance productivity starts impairing focus, leadership must step in, not to punish, but to protect purpose.

What we tolerate publicly eventually becomes policy privately. And when leaders stop managing behaviour, behaviour starts managing the organisation.

Still observing, have you ever stood in Kingstown just after 8:00 a.m. and noticed who is in the ATM line, or walking the streets with breakfast in hand?

Now ask yourself this: if you worked in an organisation where management insisted employees be at work and ready to serve customers at 8:00 a.m., not buying breakfast or standing at an ATM after the workday had begun, would you consider that management a hard taskmaster?

Why is it that some workers leave home before 7:00 a.m. to ensure punctuality, while others leave after the workday has already started and think nothing of it? If customers can arrive on time, employees can too.

And accountability is not cruelty; it is clarity.

Some time ago, someone asked if I knew of anyone hiring. They were enquiring on behalf of someone who no longer wanted to work with their new boss because, as they put it, the boss was “difficult.” I listened for a while, then gently suggested they stay out of it.

Because sometimes “difficult” simply means being asked to show up before customers arrive.

Sometimes it means limiting personal calls during work hours. Sometimes it means treating customers as though they are the ones paying your salary. Sometimes it means being told, “In this organisation, lunch is one hour.”

When a predecessor is too friendly to hold people accountable, manage performance, or model standards, they make every honest leader who follows seem harsh by comparison.

Poor leadership does not disappear when the leader leaves; it lingers in the culture. Kindness without accountability is not leadership, it is abdication.

And here we arrive at a conversation we can no longer avoid. There is a growing disengagement and erosion of morale across many organisations. I once heard a CEO say, “I don’t care about staff morale or employee engagement”.

Those words may have been spoken out of frustration or ignorance, but spoken words have weight.

Any leader who does not understand, or does not care about, the impact of low morale and disengagement on organisational performance is simply in the wrong position.

You cannot disengage people all year and expect excellence in December.

Low morale is rarely an attitude problem; more often, it is a leadership symptom.

And when leaders blame staff for toxicity they themselves create or tolerate, trust erodes quietly, and productivity soon follows.

Too many employees remain in organisations they would rather not be in, not because the work lacks meaning, but because the culture drains it. At the same time, too many leaders reward incompetence, not because of performance, but because of proximity, familiarity, or nepotism. When incompetence is rewarded, excellence eventually packs its bags.

As we close out 2025, leader to leader, here is the invitation: What behaviours have I normalised that undermine performance?

Have I created clarity, or allowed excuses to thrive?

Do my systems reward excellence, or merely tolerate familiarity? And as employees, citizens, and followers, we must also ask: Do I honour the role I am paid to do? Have I mistaken accountability for unfairness? Am I contributing to the culture I complain about?

As we step toward a new year, perhaps the most important question is not what must change around us, but what must change within us.

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