Summary
In the fourth and final episode of Leadership Vibes, Ella Bates speaks to recent Centennial graduates Asli Kahraman and Kai Little-White about their very different leadership styles, and how they make the most of them.
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Ella Bates
Welcome to episode four of Leadership Vibes, a Centennial podcast that's all about student leadership. This fourth and very last episode in this season is all about our leadership style, what it is, how we experience it, and how to make the very most of it. Our guests today are going to share about their experience that really helped them identify and grow their very own leadership style. So let me introduce today's guest to you. We have Asli Kahraman, who's a recent alumni. She graduated from the Global Business Management Program, and Student Governor on the College's Board of Governors. And in her time here at Centennial, Asli has had many, many hats. She has been a student, a part time and a full time employee. And if that's not all, plus governor on the board outside of Centennial, as well. Asli's also president of a Canadian not for profit organization that's called the Young Professionals for International Business. So do check that out. And we also have Kai Little-White , who is a recent graduate from the Children's Media Post Grad program, a multi hyphenate writer, VP membership for one of Centennials Toastmaster clubs, a podcast creator and contributor. And not only that she's a rebel mom all summed up, Kai refers to herself as a youth media. Know, I'm so excited to welcome you both to our podcast. Welcome. Thank you so much for joining us.
Asli Kahraman
Thanks for hosting us, Ella!
Kai Little-White
Thank you so much for having both of us. And nice to meet you, Asli.
Asli Kahraman
nice to meet you, Kai.
Ella Bates
I love this. It's a networking opportunity, as well as a podcast, how beautiful. But I want to get right in there. Ladies, if you don't mind. To start us off. I really want to know, in your own mind, in your own words and your own experience. How would you define leadership? What is it?
Kai Little-White
How would I define leadership? Thank you for that question. Ella, for me, leadership starts off with this idea of community because you need people to be working together in some sort of team. And for me, Leadership isn't just about telling people what to do, and they must follow. There's this Richard Branson quote about leading cats, not herding sheep. So I have this idea of you have your team. And there's this community and you need to lead them and they have their individual opinions and goals and needs. And you have to figure out what works best for this team and get everybody on the same page working towards a common goal.
Ella Bates
That is so beautiful, Kai, and a no just give me that visual. Every time I look at the word leadership. I'm gonna see cats now. So thank you so much for that.
Kai Little-White
Going all together somehow.
Ella Bates
But you're right. Like, I don't know if either of you have cats, but they are so strongly independent, aren't they, with so different requirements? And I love, what a great quote, thanks so much for sharing that, Kai. And would you say that within that community and within that team, that there's also the self leadership part? How would you define the self leadership because the two different hats, some of the guiding others and getting yourself, so how would you define that for our listeners? Asli, you want to go first?
Asli Kahraman
You can continue
Ella Bates
For me, actually, you know, when you said how do I define leadership, the first thing I thought of was itself and then I was like, you know, I'm going to come outside of myself for a bit. It does require, I think, a lot of mindfulness, a lot of awareness of the self, awareness of the circumstances that you're in, and therefore adjusting and monitoring and managing yourself in relation to your environment. So, it could even be something as simple as just your morning routine, but and how you relate specifically to yourself in terms of things that only seem to affect you, or things that are directly connected to other people, you still have to manage how you present yourself, how you approach the situation and how you achieve those goals. So definitely, I think that leadership does have to start with yourself if you are going to be an effective leader. Love that. Thank you Kai. Asli, do you agree? is self-leadership more important than leading others? Do they go together? What's your thoughts on that?
Asli Kahraman
I definitely agree to be honest. But people come and ask me this, you know, with leadership, political questions. I always say based on my personal experience, I say, you know, the one thing first and foremost, allow me to download my leadership style. I started with developing self awareness. Definitely. Because knowing that about yourself, allows you to understand and connect with others in a better way. And Kai gave a really nice and good description of our definition of leadership. From my angle, I would say not like what is leadership, but what's not leadership for myself, because I've seen in some settings, especially, you know, in the recent decades or so, let's say in my opinion, leadership is a little bit exaggerated, you know, over exaggerated and overrated because all the courses and videos, the books that have been written on the leadership, in my opinion, leadership is a very, very simple thing. I've seen, for instance, I have a 19 year old sister. I've seen when she's talking that she's describing, you know, leadership or being a leader, as if it's, you know, something bigger than us, you know, something beyond us, she can be a leader when she has years and years of work experience and life experience. But you know, from my angle, leadership is not changing the word, you know, it's not something bigger than us. It's in our everyday decisions, actually. So we can be leaders every day, for instance, you see a person who is bullying other person in the bus station, or in your class, if you speak up. And if you stand up against the bullying, you're a leader at that moment, you know, it's very simple, it's in your everyday decisions. So I expect everyone to be, you know, try to be a leader. And as you're saying, leadership is not bossing around, either. You know, not bossing the people. And if you're bossing the people, as with the title team leader, you are not a team leader at all, it's the direct opposite.
Ella Bates
Thank you for saying that. And I think it's really important that we do simplify. And I invite our listeners to do the same thing. You know, if you could really put it into that one sentence, what is leadership to you? Why do we have to attach all this complexity? Or titles or branding to it? It's not necessary. Do you have to be an author to be a leader? No. Do you have to have a badge saying you're a manager? No. Do you have to have a formal role? No, you don't? Do you have to be a certain age? No. Do you have to have so much experience? No, from the very second that you're able to communicate with others, you can guide others. I love the simplicity of that. I say thank you so much for sharing. And that leads us beautifully on to what is my next question you talked about. Leadership isn't telling people what to do, which we know that is, is a leadership style that in some industries works beautifully. And some industries does not work really well. And I know both of you have studied and reflected on leadership so much over the last few years, and quite possibly a lot longer. I'm sure you can tell me those experiences shortly. But by looking at other people's leadership styles, was there one particular style that resonated with you that you've decided that I'm going to kind of adapt that style to how I guide others, how I show up for myself?
Asli Kahraman
Well, I will say, in terms of my leadership style, I can't say for myself, I have, you know, one absolute leadership style, and I execute that leadership style in every group. So I think we're relational second, after working five years as a lawyer, and one year in Canada, as project manager, I've realised in myself that I came to this position or this level that I have different, you know, I can adapt different types of leadership, depending on the different settings, different working environments, different team settings, and everything. Let me give you an example. So I'm not saying you know, I'm perfect. And I can do you know, switch between different leadership styles real easily No, I'm still learning. But I've been in teams where the team knows whatever they are doing. And they have great amount of technical knowledge and great business knowledge. And they've been together for some years, so they know each other. So in that kind of team setting, you can adapt, you know, more like Democratic leadership style, or coaching leadership style. You don't have to teach anything and everything to that team, because they've already been doing this for some time. But I've also been in teams where the team is new members, most of the members are new, they don't know each other, they are young, and etc. In that kind of team setting. I prefer following more of a autocratic leadership style,
Ella Bates
I think we beautifully describe in here actually, is to put a name to it for those out there who wants to look deeper into as she's saying, it's situational leadership, of finding the right style for the right people who you want to guide, who's in front of you right now, let me adopt how there's a situational style to this person, the new people receive this style, these people who absolutely need a process and been told what to do, I will adapt this style. I love that. And situational leadership is something that's came to the forefront, I'd say around 10 to 15 years ago and becoming bigger and bigger and bigger as we become more human focused in the world is really quite a beautiful thing. So I invite you to all our listeners to look deeper into situational leadership. It's a, it's a great style and one that requires work and some deep reflection and have some massive results. How about you, Kai, was there any particular style that you thought? Yes, you know, I can see myself leading like this in the future, adapting it to who I am, my own values. Tell us more? Well, you mentioned the idea of situational leadership made me think of what I was saying about like the team itself, and how it's on two sides, like the part of the situational leadership is in some ways, who are the team and what do they need? Whereas on the other side of I think the same coin is the idea of like, emotional leadership styles of like, what do you need to imbue in yourself? What do you need to project like, what persona do you need, you need to be the coach persona, and the commander persona and the pace it like, you need to figure out which one and that's very you centred. And so that sense of leading yourself that kind of comes in, and I think those two of the situational leadership and those emotional leadership styles kind of play well with each other. I come from a media background. And so I relate everything to production or an actor and from an actor's space, you know, you're thinking, not just what's happening with the other person, but what's happening with you. So even if you're not doing anything, you're thinking about your reaction, and what, what feelings do you have? And that idea of awareness of yourself of like, what's going to be your triggers? Why are you here? Why are you doing these particular things you mentioned? Who might be a role model, or which styles that we saw? I think, because again, I work in, in media production, there is a certain entrepreneurial sense to all of it, like every project is a new creation, you have to sell it. So you're always you know, in sales person mode, like how do you sell yourself as a freelancer, very rarely do you have like, one long term job that you stay in forever. And even if you're in that one long term job, your job in that job is to sell. So you're always in that sales mode. So that entrepreneurial spirit is something that's really important to me of like finding role models who are entrepreneurial, who are starters, who who set the bar, who see something that didn't exist, that was impossible, and then made it possible. So one of the people who I mentioned before was Sir Richard Branson, I had the opportunity to interview him for a series that we were doing and he was the pilot episodes. Okay, let me stop you right there. Kai. Like, this is wow, you interviewed rich Sir Richard Branson, and not just any Richard, Sir Richard Branson. Okay, let me be clear, I personally did not interview. I was a producer and the director. So I had my host who did the actual interview, but I had to do all the background research and possible questions and make all the arrangements and meet him and make sure are you comfortable, sir. So just all of that in preparing it was for a half hour show. So obviously, you went longer. And you met his family, he, Virgin was doing a new route to Jamaica. So as part of their promotion, and they were launching new James Bond film, which he was involved in, so there was all this theatrics around it. And one of the things he had his his top 10 list of for leadership, one of the things was, you know, you always smile for the camera, he's like, do what's good for the brand, you know, and you think about your brand and the thing that you're promoting or you're selling or your, you love as your baby, he just points out, you do what's best for it, you promote it. And so that's why he was also very happy to be involved as it was female creators, this black owned company, and he thought this is a really great initiative, let's support it. But even in that top 10 The thing I meant to mention about sheep, or just even that situational leadership and empowering people, that social change of what people need, do they need more do they need to be uplifted, and and everybody and always trying to challenge them always trying to set the pace I find him and his style, his sort of startup style and encouraging that in the people that work under him is really inspiring. And even if there's a team that's familiar with something, the marketplace is always changing. So how do you then get them into a space and go into that coach mentality, whatever it's needed to get in like, Okay, now it's time to innovate. And the idea of being a virgin in business, that's where the name of the company came from. They were teenagers, and he was always very entrepreneurial. And when they were starting the company, his friends were like, we're virgins, this business thing, we don't know anything, but we're still going to try. And that attitude of being fearless and trying and going into uncharted waters. As I said, being in media, that's what you do every day. So that's, that's me, you know. And for our listeners out there, I wish that you could see the animation coming from the video from Kai right now. And isn't it? But I want you all right now, to just think about that person that inspires you to, you know, like that sparks that fire in your belly. When you think of them as a leader because, Kai, you know, as you're explaining your experience of listening to Richard and you know, being around this, this, you know, this intelligent man is on some beautiful, beautiful things and some crazy, crazy things. I totally invite you to go and read his book at the library. I'm not going to give you the sneak preview of what he's done. He's done some crazy, crazy, adventurous, very, very cool things. I want you all to think about who is that leader? The pulse of fire in your belly and makes you say, yeah, I want to be like them because somebody out there is looking at both of you and all of our listeners right now, as their leader. You put a fire in someone else's belly. I want you to just take a moment and think about that because we forget while we're busy leading other people and being led by these incredible people like Richard Branson, and I'm going to check with you Asli, to who is your Richard Branson, and in just a moment, you are that person to someone else, whether that's a child, or someone in your community, someone who you've coached, a fellow peer, someone from your school experience, someone out there is talking about you in the same way, with the same fire in their belly and their same energy and oh my goodness, I personally do follow Sir Richard Branson, I invite you all to check him out on social media, check out his books. I know that Centennial library has some amazing books, and we actually refer to it in our leadership passport as well. But, Asli, who's your Richard Branson, who is it? Who puts a fire in your belly? We're looking at other leaders?
Asli Kahraman
Oh, that's a great question. And that's a tough question, actually. And I thought about this before, you know, when I was doing some sort of self reflection, I do join autocomplete. So I have some questions that I asked myself, and I wasn't able to come up with one person. And that's the thing about me, you know, when we were discussing about the leadership style, I said, you know, depending on the setting, depending on the team, depending on the work required, I tried to adopt different leadership styles. And it's the same for you know, having a role model. I don't have one role model. I have many. I like Richard Branson, but maybe I don't appreciate his book style. I remember when he was talking that came to my mind one video, I don't remember the name of the title of the video right now. But it shows one day of Richard Branson, it was crazy. Like he had at least like 10, maybe 12 appointments in one day, from morning until night is going from one appointment to another appointment. Like when my phone company to another meeting. I'm like, I love Richard Branson. I love his success. But this is not the lifestyle that I want to have. Like, I want to enjoy the moment,
Ella Bates
I actually would add to that, too, just put that in there. I know, they don't do it as much. But when they were younger, his kids and his family would travel with him. And they wouldn't go have breakfast, you'd go to the appointment, they would come hang out, chill out, they would be at the event, they would go then have lunch. And he would take I think he said something like three months off, to just completely decompress and just hang out with his family, go to his island. So he was all about that work life, like sometimes you need to go hard. And then you need to balance it out and need to have the thing sometimes on a day to day basis, and sometimes in a big long gap to be able to run that marathon. So I get you but one of the reasons why I liked him as well was that sort of holistic view of a leader, not just you know, you're amazing in business, and then you find out about your personal life or something and you're like, oh, but just the fact that it seemed like there was a strategy. And maybe it's not necessarily that one. But there's a strat, there's a conscious need for work life balance. And I think in terms of being a leader, it's like, what kind of leader you said in your community, you know, on a large scale, not just in business, but what kind of parent or a sister or community member, neighbour are you and sort of think about that as a holistic thing. You're right, you can find so many amazing people who can inspire those different aspects of your life. And that's so amazing when you can see that. And what's really great is having all these different leaders, as you're talking about anyone and yourself included, everything's so value driven. Richard Branson values busyness, he values being productive and efficient. And he values process and being back to back, that's not everybody's value. And that's the beauty of creating your own leadership philosophy of which is a whole other episode by the way, check it out. As he gets a denote what are those values and you lead by your own values. It's like you, Asli you know, great reflection, there were certain things that he does just absolutely does not align with who you are and your value system. Yet, there's gonna be, nope, there's no one leader out there who's going to 100% mirror you. There is not. You are going to create the leadership of Asli, the leadership of Kai, the leadership of the listeners, the leadership of Ella by being, looking at these role models and taking little parts of them to create your own, right. That's the beauty of creating your own leadership style. And maybe one day, they'll be formally branded and people will be reading that leadership style of Kai, the leadership style of Asli, Imagine that. It's interesting, isn't it? Let's tell us shift the conversation a little bit to how we approach challenging situations with our own curated leadership style taken from other role models. Let me give you a scenario here. Two people in your environment in a meeting and at work with your friends or their family, two people have completely opposing views. I will be feeling some conflict here. How would you as a leader guide those people out of the conflict and into a more collaborative space, more of a win win? What kind of styles. what kind of conversations are you having in that space?
Asli Kahraman
I can go first, it's a funny question for me, because as I said, I was a lawyer for five years before I came to Canada. So conflict resolution was literally my job. And before answering that question, I will have to put this disclaimer out there. First of all, not all conflicts are bad. I've realised in, you know, in different team settings, working with different people in different countries, and so on, I realise most of the people are fearful when it comes to the conflicts. You know, the first thing to keep in mind, in my opinion, there are healthy conflicts, and there are unhealthy conflicts, there are reasonable ones and, let's say, useless ones. So I need to differentiate between the two, I think that's the first step, you know, that you want to know good ground to start, when you think that not all the conflicts are bad, there are healthy ones. And when I say healthy, because I've experienced in my professional life, but also academic life, and also in my personal life, healthy conflicts makes actually the team stronger at the end of the conflict. So it strengthened the trust, or increased the trust and connection between the team members, you know, and this is applicable for any relational setting for our listeners, if they haven't started their professional career yet. So they don't, maybe they can't imagine in your mind what I mean by this, you can think of your, you know, romantic relationship with your partner, the first conflict, that you overcome that conflict, you feel that your connection with your partner is actually stronger, right, I'm sure all of us have experienced this type of situation in your relationship. And it's also an opportunity to improve the maturity level of both parties. If you manage that conflict well, and you return it to be a healthy conflict. It's increased the maturity level of both parties and the relationship as well. So that's my grand start. When I'm faced with a conflict, I think that it's an opportunity to strengthen this thing. So how can I make this conflict a healthy conflict.
Ella Bates
What a beautiful perspective, Asli, and looking at, you know, being objective orientated, and you know, a winners, a growth mindset, that's really beautiful. And I think, for our listeners, that's quite a big takeaway. Conflict is natural, we cannot escape it. We need it to grow, we need it to feed our perspectives, and either build on them or create new ones, because we don't know what we don't know. And until we have these healthy discussions ago, wow, I didn't know that. Thank you for telling me. It's all opportunities. I love that. Kai, what's your take on on conflict, healthy versus unhealthy? And how do you, how do you lead others in that space? As soon as you said it, I think exactly where Asli went is where my mind went, that conflict very, not very often, but very often can be a good thing. It means there's collaboration happening, it means people are comfortable and being open, hopefully, they're being respectful. So yes, like in my mind conflict's not a bad thing, it's, you know, in a creative space, you really do want some of that tension, you want to be able to build on it. But yes, there are times where there are certain things that make the conflict, not necessarily a learning opportunity, as Asli had explained. And I think one of the things that helps, because you mentioned it's a group meeting. So hopefully, this is in terms of my personal style, I try to take the time to get to know each of my team members individually, of course, it's great to have team building activities where everybody's working together, get to know each other, but I need to understand you and where you're coming from. And so when I am present observing that situation where you have two people in conflict, if it was James, and John, that's different than James and Mary, there's going to be a different vibe coming. So to really understand what's happening with these two people. What's the big picture here? Maybe somebody is having cramps that day? Or, you know, they're stressed out about lunch or something else to really have the big picture of what's happening? Why? What kind of conflict is it? Is it healthy conflict, is there some other thing that's making this what could be healthy conflict or easier resolution making it more challenging, and that's a lot of like in the spot, making very fast decisions, using your interpersonal soft skills and being somewhat situational. From there. I think it is a bit situational and like, hopefully encouraging people to share their opinions. Sometimes there are ways that if you in a company that I worked in, we had dry erase walls, so it'd be very easy to ask people to put up all their ideas on a wall and present it and have a discussion about it. Sometimes if it's something that's a that needs to have group consensus then or at least you want to have group weighing. It's very easy to say well present it or, you know, try and convince someone finding different ways to have it discussed and resolved keeping in mind the other factors that might be making it more challenging. And would you agree, Kai, that by you doing that, which by the way, is a great tool? Write it down, listeners write this down, right? When we write things down, would you agree that takes the emotion out of it?
Kai Little-White
Very much so.
Ella Bates
Creates the motion instead of the emotion? Yes. I think it also, when you think about in a space where there is a team, there is a common goal and being able to think about what that common goal is, and what you're working towards, and constantly centering that. So it goes beyond Eagle, I think about it, I related, again, to the media field, or even interactive, and you do things like when you're building a website, you do a wireframe. And that's kind of like just literally pencil paper pen, just to do a sketch of what's happening, you don't go build the whole website, and all of that, or even in script writing, you will do a quick premise or an outline and really short, you know, a paragraph or a page, you don't go write the whole script. So if someone says change something, or there's feedback that you're getting, you don't feel so attached to it, because you've not invested that much, you realise it's at a collaborative state, you realise it's a space to be taking feedback, it's a space to be hearing ideas and knowing that to Ashley's point, that, you know, dissenting ideas can lead to greater creativity, leads to the sum of the parts being greater than the whole. So getting also into that mindset of, you know, being there and open to to communicate, I love that. You both describe that so beautifully. And I think, to kind of start I'm trying to read trying to summarise what you've said. That is that being objective ridden, we're all going towards the same place. Let's get there. Let's be motion orientated, be action orientated, and remove the emotion and, and all of this also applies. In fact, in any group setting, in a family, you're a group of friends, a group of you on a sports team, you know, a group of pals trying to book a vacation somewhere, there's gonna be opposing view, choosing where to go and get takeout or from that night, like, the conflicts from very small to the very big, I love all those ideas. I really do. For essence of time, let me get to my last question here. Because conflict is such a, it's a very big minefield, isn't it in the leadership space, and I'm really glad again, that we brought that situational leadership, know who's in front of you, and you will know how to guide them. Movie Night at my house. That is something that's how to guide them. There is some home leadership right there. Anybody who has had movie night with their family knows that it is something to wrangle. There's always dissenting views, and there's an objective, we're going to watch something, and we're all going to try it enjoy it and each other. So that's it, I think, probably relatable to everybody. Yeah, I love that. I love that. Thank you. Now my final question. To wrap this up? It's a big, deep question. Are you ready for this? If you were to give one sentence one tip for our listeners about how they can start to develop and design, how they're going to lead others? What would be your tip.
Asli Kahraman
I think I already gave my tip that will open your self awareness, or I'm going to combine two things, self awareness and emotional intelligence. So I'm not gonna say anything, you know, concrete, very tangible, not like reading a book, watching some videos on it. But as I said, If you know yourself, and what I mean by that is knowing what you're good at what you're bad at, what's your strength, what's your weaknesses, what's your skills, what's your tendencies, you know, and understand yourself. And it makes it better to understand others and connect with others. When you're in a team setting. If you don't understand yourself and your actions and reactions in, you know, when you're faced with specific challenges, and I say, it's really hard to understand and relate with us. So that's one thing. And the second, as I said, emotional intelligence that will open your emotional intelligence. I've seen many managers and leaders, where they have great amount of knowledge, technical and business knowledge, but they lack emotional intelligence, if you will, a person like that, in my opinion, it's really hard to influence others. And for me, for instance, when I'm in a work setting, and my manager, my leader is lack of emotional intelligence, it makes it hard for me to follow that leader. Emotional Intelligence definitely makes you have a charismatic leadership. As you know, I like to start so for the listeners, like my humble recommendation, let's say start with doing some self reflection, you know, self analysis, maybe maybe take a day off, you know, or week off to sit down, do some meditation, maybe do some journaling, do self reflection, you know, try to develop yourself and then maybe read something, read something about emotional intelligence. If you think that, you know, there is a lot of love for yourself in terms of increasing your emotional intelligence. That would be my two main types.
Ella Bates
Beautiful. Thank you, Kai, what's your tip to our listeners? How are they going to design their own leadership style? Coming from media and that sort of startup culture, know that you're going to be in a constant loop of reflection, action and revision, which looks like being reflective, empathetic, strategic, compassionate, decisive, then reflect some more and repeat. That's my tip. Wow. Beautiful, wise words from Kai and Asli. Guys, thank you so much for joining. It's been my absolute pleasure to have you on the podcast today. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you for our listeners for joining us for this season's finale episode of Leadership Vibes, a Centennial podcast that's all about student leadership. We really hope you've enjoyed the conversation with our students and alumni leaders as much as we have and that you'll join our programs at the Centennial Leadership Academy because we are here to help you grow as a confident, capable and inspiring leader. To listen to any other exciting podcast at Centennial, simply subscribe to the Centennial College podcast on SoundCloud, Apple podcast, Google podcasts and Spotify.