Inaugural Great Manager Awards recognizes Sri Lanka’s high performance leaders

Hon. Eran Wickramaratne, State Minister of Finance presents award to Jinesh Hegde, CEO & MD at Bharti Airtel Lanka

Sri Lanka’s most inspiring leadership and management professionals were accoladed at the inaugural Great Manager Awards (2017), held at the Kingsbury Hotel. The Great Manager Awards recognize business leaders committed to a legacy of mentoring and coaching other great managers in their organization, in addition to driving business performance. Hon. Eran Wickramaratne, State Minister of Finance and CMA Sri Lanka President Professor Lakshman Watawala graced the event as Chief Guests. 

The awards are conferred by The Great Manager Awards, a global human resource management consulting body with a focus on improving performance capabilities and business acumen of partner organizations. In Sri Lanka, the launch was led by the Colombo Leadership Academy and People Business, a premier leadership coaching and executive education facility that lists the country’s top corporates as clients. 

The awards were given in three key categories; Senior Business Leader awards, Companies with Great Managers, and the Great Manager Awards 2017. These awards were presented to those who set the benchmark from a pool of nominees who were assessed based on a global research-based model known as R-OPTI. The model evaluates management style, focus on results, execution, people management, building team effectiveness and leadership integrity. The panel of adjudicators from Sri Lanka comprised of Chiranthi Cooray (Chief Human Resources Officer-Hatton National Bank PLC), Jayantha Amarasinghe (Deputy General Manager, Human Resources-Seylan Bank PLC), and Prasad Piyadigama (Organization and Human Resources Director- Siam City Cement Lanka Limited) in addition to the international panel of governors.

Riaz Hassen, CEO & Director at Colombo Leadership Academy presents award to Paduma Subasinghe, Senior Vice President at Browns & Company PLC

In his keynote speech, Hon. Minister Eran Wickramaratne touched upon his own previous experience leading NDB Bank PLC, revealing that he dedicated at least one fifth of his time to human resource management. Minister Eran’s message was simple but powerful; “look after your employees first, and they will look after your company”.

The night’s big winners included Senior Business Leader Award recipients Jit Gunaratne (John Keells Holdings), Kapila Ariyaratne (Seylan Bank PLC), Delrene Seneviratne (Sanasa Development Bank PLC) and Rizvi Zaheed (Hayleys Agriculture Holdings Ltd).

Company with Great Managers recipients Jaykay Marketing Services (Pvt) Ltd, Allianz Insurance (Lanka) Ltd, Brown & Company PLC, and Bharati Airtel (Lanka) Ltd; and the 25 recipients of the Great Manager Award. The latter also included a Millennial Leader Award for outstanding managers below the age of 30. 

Commenting on the successful launch of the Great Manager Awards scheme in Sri Lanka Riaz Hassen, Director and CEO of the Colombo Leadership Academy said, “It was a pleasure to watch some of Sri Lanka’s best business leaders get recognized for their excellent leadership and management skills at the awards. We weren’t looking for managers who have had success with numbers led growth- we were looking for great managers who pursued growth while also fostering an environment for other professionals to become great managers. The Great Manager Awards recognizes that real leadership is about Driving Execution Excellence, Building Team Effectiveness, Personal Leadership Effectiveness, Enhancing People Performance -and so do we. Congratulations to all our winners, and we hope that these awards will inspire other managers to do even better to set their own benchmark and best practices next year.”

The registrations for Great Manager Awards 2018 are now open.