Kapila Ariyaratne - Director/CEO, Seylan, Hon. Eran Wickramaratne - State Minister of Finance, Riaz Hassen – CEO, Colombo Leadership Academy,Nihal Welikala – Treasurer, The International Union for Conservation of Nature and ChiranthiCooray, Chief Human Resource Officer of Hatton National Bankat the last Great Manager Awards

In response to the success of the launch edition of the ‘Great Manager Awards’ three years ago, the Colombo Leadership Academy is on the look-out to recognize the country’s best corporate leadership yet again. Effective leaders are not just crucial to the highest level of an organisation, they also play a pivotal role in inspiring employees to focus their individual competencies towards achieving the goals of the company. The Colombo Leadership Academy (CLA) is a dedicated leadership coaching and executive education facility founded with the aim to produce the next generation of exemplary leaders. Applying a curriculum of experiential learning through simulations coached by a faculty of industry experts, senior managerial level participants are, as a result, equipped with all the core the competencies necessary to create high performance business outcomes.

The awards are conferred under the title The Great Manager Awards, a global human resource management consulting body committed to improving the performance capabilities and business acumen of partner organizations. This collaboration with CLA, alongside its other strategic partnerships with Leadership Circle USA, Hofstede Insights and People Business, has led to the creation of what is now poised to become a landmark feature in the corporate calendar. The Great Manager Award was founded with the aim to identify what it is that makes a manager truly great, how each organisation’s manager is placed against that of an industry peer, and how it is that great managers are nurtured leading to the development of a leadership ecosystem in the organization.
Nominations for the CLA Leadership Awards Program will be accepted for three categories: Companies with Great Managers, Companies with Great Culture and the Great Manager Award. Awardees will be shortlisted and then, through a stringent interviewing process, decided upon by an illustrious advisory panel comprising of both local as well as international industry titans. 

Hon. Eran Wickramaratne -State Minister of Finance at the last Great Manager Awards

All registered participants and subsequent nominees will be selected based on a global research-based model, R-OPTI. The R-OPTI model of defining a Great Manager is established on extensive research supported by methodical analysis of the five constructs: Driving Results & Execution, Aligning Organization Vision, Enhancing People Performance, Building Team Effectiveness and Sustaining Individual Credibility.

“When we launched the event in Sri Lanka threeyears ago, we received a substantial number of applications to choose from -a sign that Sri Lanka does intrinsically have a culture of nurturing great managers,” said Riaz Hassen, CEO of the Colombo Leadership Academy. “We are expecting more nominees this year, and through these awards hope to develop a corporate society where it becomes evident that a company’s success is proportionate to great leadership and managerial prowess.”

On an individual level, the Great Manager Awards serves as an opportunity for each company to learn of its own managerial and leadership effectiveness quotient and assess itself when placed against the best in the country, identifying overall strengths and areas of development for the managerial pool within the company. In this there is also an opportunity to evolve higher engagement levels through building stronger managers and strengthen the manager community in the industry. The awards also serve the greater purpose of assessing the eco system of nurturing great managers and best practices amongst a wide spectrum of organizations in the country as a whole.