Leaders and Their Stories

Richard Lowe (00:02.574)
Hello, I'm Richard Lowe and this is Leaders and Their Stories podcast. I'm the writing king and ghost writing guru. And today we're gonna talk about leadership with Ermi. Ermi, why don't you tell us a little about yourself.

Yes, thank you, Richard, for having me. My name is Irmi and I'm coming from Montreal, Canada. I am a woman who wears many hats. I am a self-published author, speaker, mentor, blogger, YouTuber, and I'm currently a full-time employee in the financial sector. But everything else that I mentioned right now are all the things that I do in my free time. I'm also part of two organizations. The first one is called Women in Leadership and the second one is called FAM Influence.

and the job of the two organizations are really to provide the tools to the women in the community to empower them.

Great, that sounds like quite a resume there. So tell me first about your book, you wrote a book.

That's right. I wrote a book. It was still published in 2022. And basically my book, it's a memoir. It's basically about my life in Italy as a cultural kid from a perspective of a South Asian woman where I make a comparison and contrast between my two cultures. my...

Urmi Hossain (01:24.16)
my parents culture, which is the Bengali culture and my culture, my Italian culture, which is the culture that I got because I was born and raised in Italy. So that's what the book is about.

So now you have your Asian culture, South Asian culture, Italian culture and Canadian culture all together stirred up in a big

That's right.

Urmi Hossain (01:49.358)
And this is what comes up.

Well, okay. Okay. I'm sure that it's good. All right. So that's your journey. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your journey in that book.

Yes, so basically I consider myself Italian by birth and Bengali by blood and basically how it all started that when I was born in Italy I was pretty much the first from the community and I was also the oldest one and I went predominantly to a school that was mainly it was mainly populated by Italian people there were not that many immigrant kids so for me

I always felt I was misplaced. That's how I felt. I felt like I was not fitting in, even though no one made me feel otherwise. And basically all my life I had only Italian friends. So there was always that sort of like detachment where, know, I did not feel enough of this. I did not feel enough of Bengali. I did not feel I was Bengali enough, especially when I was going home.

Like they'd say maybe, you know, even though I look like everyone else, I was very much aware that my mentality was very Western. And so there was a lot of conflict in that, in that sense. I always went through this internal struggle from a cultural point of view where I was not able to define myself. And then I think this problem became much bigger when I moved to Canada, when people would ask me the question, okay, where are you from? And this is where I struggled in coming up with an answer because I was like, do I tell them I am Italian? Do I tell them I'm Bengali?

Urmi Hossain (03:26.062)
But no matter what answer I gave them, people would question it because even if I would say like, yeah, I'm Bengali, people would be like, okay, but why do you have such a strong, you know, Italian accent when you speak in English? And if I would say, okay, you know, I'm Italian, then people would look at me and be like, okay, are you serious? Don't look Italian. And so that was the main struggle, I would say. Yeah.

Okay, interesting, interesting. And when did you begin your path to being a leader?

This one, it started, I would say, officially, in 2019. It started when I joined the Toastmasters Club. I don't know if you are familiar with this club, which is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering, not empowering, but helping people to basically empower the leadership skills and to become better speaker.

Yeah, I've been a member for a while.

Okay, there you go. And so I joined Toastmaster in 2019 and this is where the world leader basically just, it was, you just hear the word leader nonstop and even their sentence, you know, their motto is this is where leaders are made. And I would say officially it really started when I became the VP of Education. I did that for two years and then I became the president and that's when I learned that, you know,

Urmi Hossain (04:49.708)
You gain so many leadership skills at Toastmasters that you can also apply in your day-to-day job. And what made me realize is that leadership is not just a title, but it's really about inspiring other people, encouraging other people, serving other people. And often I used to think, there was this misconception that I used to think that leadership is all about titles because that's how you learn it, but it wasn't like that.

Right, so what is leadership?

lit for me

I mean, leadership is really inspiring people and leading, for example.

Okay. Okay. I always think of leadership as basically somebody who gets a group to go in a certain direction. Generally the goals of the organization that they're in. So if your goals organization is to improve profit by 3%, then your goal is say a VP is to get your group going in that direction. And that's basically the root definition of leadership. Now, how you lead is a different question. You lead as

Richard Lowe (05:56.798)
servant leader or do you lead by example? There's all these different ways to lead. that's the way I think of leadership. Now, when you said VP of Education and President, you meant of the Toastmasters, correct?

That's right. Okay. Another Canada.

Not of Canada!

Richard Lowe (06:17.59)
Okay, good. Do you have any aspirations to be in the politics?

Nope.

me neither. was pretty adamant. No. Good. What kind of things did you learn in the leadership of Toastmasters?

Good.

Urmi Hossain (06:37.614)
I many different things. think those masters is really not just a place about public speaking. It's about, you know, organizational skills. It's about critical thinking. It's about being creative. It's about, you know, building connections and communicating with your team. It's really, I felt that when I was

VP of Education, I am untapped some skills that I wasn't aware of, things that I was capable of. And for me, like it was a lot about being creative because I could see that a lot of the times the club was very demotivated, very discouraged. So I had to think of ways on like, know, changing the energy, you know, making sure that the members were motivated. And that's how I became much more creative and I started to introduce things.

here and there, you know, Monday motivation for like, I started to introduce this thing called Monday motivation from Urmi, which was like a short email where I would provide like one tip on how to be, let's say, how to use better your body language or how to use pauses. Like every week there was something new and basically the goal was really to boost up the energy of the club members. So that was one thing I started to do.

The other thing I did was I introduced like, let's say the member of the month where I would like send an email to the club and recognize the work that one of the member did, maybe one person did, I don't know, two to three speeches per month, you know, just to show them recognition, because I feel like as leader you have to do that. And so for me, it was really about creativity, being creative on finding ways to really help your club, which goes back to the

to what you said earlier. And as I was doing this, could see that I was helping with the retention, it was helping with the club itself.

Richard Lowe (08:43.308)
and it must have been tough during the pandemic.

Very tough, very tough. Indeed, the club that I was part of for four years, it no longer exists because it was just hard. People were really not motivated. And then we came to the conclusion that we had to really just close it.

Interesting. Yeah, that probably happened to a lot of organizations. Pandemic was very difficult time for a lot of people. Difficult in multiple ways here in the States. Basically, money was given to people to help them survive. And that can have a demotivating effect on getting people to actually work. I know a lot of younger people who at the time, given all the various handouts, they were able to you know, pay the rent and make a decent living without doing any work at all.

So I asked them, what are you doing? And they said, well, we're just playing video games and stuff. it's like, well, you use this time to, cause they had a year on that program, use this time to invest in yourself, go to school or something, you know, they didn't.

Also, here's the thing, I know a lot of clubs just closed down during the pandemic. But public speaking, yes, there is an etiquette when it comes to speaking on videos and stuff like that, but you get most out of it when you're speaking in person. And so I think a lot of people did not see that kind of value. And that was the issue. And I think there was also the Zoom fatigue just staring at the computer the whole day. And then you're sitting

Urmi Hossain (10:21.226)
done again for another hour or two for a meeting. I mean, it was nice. It's always nice to be part of a Toastmaster meeting. You get to learn so much, but I think you get so much more value when you're meeting in person. Like me, for instance, yesterday I attended an in-person meeting and it was so productive. I had so much fun and you get to connect and meet with other people. So there is pros and cons, you know, like you still have to be good at speaking in front of a camera for sure.

But I think you get most of it when you meet in person, you know.

Well, I'm on zoom almost 12 hours a day sometimes. it does, there is zoom fatigue. Yeah. Yeah. There's zoom fatigue. I jumped from meeting to meeting, network group to network group, do these podcasts. do a couple other kind of network groups, like a writing critique group and things. And, but I tend to be an introvert. So doing it from my house is fine with me. Extroverted people, they want to get out with people. Introverted people are like, God, I gotta go out with people.

That's it. That's it. That's it. But that's it. So because I'm an extrovert, I like to be more like in person around people, connect with people. So I prefer that way. I mean, I think that Zoom is okay. It's just you have to find the right fit, I would say.

Yeah. Yeah. It does have the same fatigue, headaches. When you're writing, you can have this fixed stare to the screen and that tends to hypnotize you. So when you're writing, it tends to produce writer's block. So you'll, you'll be writing and typing and typing and typing, and then you'll find you can't do anything. One of the reasons is one reason is you've been staring at the screen too long. How do you fix that? Take a walk. It's real simple, but you have to recognize it first.

Urmi Hossain (12:09.166)
Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Right. Exactly. Or you can do, let's say, I don't know, 10 minutes of yoga meditation. Right. Just for the sake of disconnecting from from the screen. Yes. Right.

Right, right, yes, I go play with the cat sometimes, I got a cat.

So there you go, the pets help.

Well, she's demanding like, you know, any woman, right? No, and or man. She's very demanding. Give me, give me attention. Give me attention. Hey, and then she'll knock something over. Just to get my attention and break it. And she's like, see, I told you, give me attention.

huh, huh, yeah.

Richard Lowe (12:47.67)
You that's just the way it is in the world, I guess. Yeah. Leading from behind a zoom screen is an interesting thing. I remember several groups and trying to lead them remotely can be challenging. You're not there with the person. You're not there to hover over them and give them advice and stuff. You're there more as like a ghost almost.

And it doesn't help, especially when you're leading from a zoom screen, if the person that you're trying to lead, or let's say you have a group of people, they don't have their camera on and you're not sure what they're doing. And you're not quite sure. Even if they have the camera on you, you're not quite sure if they're following. It's much harder. It's so much harder. We're not like as humans, we're not meant to just have zoom calls with no.

connections and it's the truth.

Imagine cave women and cave men sitting in front of a zoom screen trying to communicate with the tribe next door. Probably wouldn't work. Thousands of thousands of years ago. Yeah.

Thank you.

Urmi Hossain (13:57.25)
But here's the thing, especially as a leader, I think that if you are, let's say, at the top of an organization and you're running an organization with people, it's so much harder to also lead through a Zoom screen because when you get together, you have collaboration and you ignite ideas and creativity, that there is that spark that comes that you get when you're together. And one thing that we do, for instance, like we don't, like I work

pretty much in from the office. And when we do meetings, for instance, we step away from the office and we go to a completely different, let's say office, which is much nicer. And we can realize that it brings out a different side of us. Like we're much more motivated. think it helps to have different ideas to implement, which is good on a long term, you know, like don't get that from it at Zoom screen, because sometimes some people, they don't feel like talking, maybe they're shy, you know, so it really depends.

It's harder, I think.

I think it is harder. I, I'm a ghost writer and I have, um, a lot of clients and occasionally one of them will come visit me and we'll go off to a hotel room or something and rent the hotel for, for a few days and then do an in-person meetings. And it's amazing how much we can accomplish in a weekend as opposed to, you know, over, over a zoom screen. It actually changes the dynamic quite a bit. It's very, I've only had a couple of clients do that. It was very, very successful.

So, you know, yeah. They were very interesting sessions because we could see each other flailing around to talk and yell at each other sometimes, you know, sometimes. And then eat and calm down the nerves and then we'd have a brainstorm, you know, was all, it was all pretty good.

Urmi Hossain (15:28.568)
said, Yes.

Urmi Hossain (15:44.942)
Exactly, it's the whole brainstorming part that you get and then you feel much more re-energized after the sessions. That's how I like to describe them.

Right. Well, very good. So these women's groups that you lead, what are they and what are they about?

So the first one is called Women in Leadership and it's based in Canada. So basically it's a bigger organization based in Canada. So you have Women in Leadership Canada and then within the organization there are different chapters across the whole country. So you have one in Montreal, you have one in Toronto, Victoria, Vancouver and so forth. So I volunteer for the one in Victoria, even though I'm based in Montreal, so I do it virtually.

I'm the social media lead. So basically what I do, I run the Instagram account. also do Instagram Lives where I invite coaches who can be, let's say, coaches about leadership, communication, public speaking, LinkedIn, it depends. And basically we have, you know, this Instagram Lives. And then as an organization itself, basically,

We have a leadership development program that people can enroll to. We also have a mentorship program. And then each chapter does also its own thing. Let's say they have like a happy hour and a networking session for the women. Or then let's say maybe they have, I don't know, let's say a yoga session where every woman, like all the women get together. But the reason why I joined this organization is because they really believe in this power of leadership and their goal is.

Urmi Hossain (17:23.564)
The goal is to have more women in leadership positions. So because I resonated a lot with that, this is why I'm part of the organization.

Interesting, interesting. Yeah, I was talking to a person last night and he talking, he's talking about the B-52 bomber that we use now. And he said that a lot of these bombers are crewed entirely by women. And it's very interesting that it's the dynamic has switched where they're not male. The bomber like that probably, I think has 12 people or something, maybe 15. And a lot of them have just full women crewed.

And that was interesting to me that they could have that.

Yeah. Yeah, it's

It's interesting to see how things are shifting and moving around. But at the same time, I do think there is a long way ahead because I have spoken to different women from different parts of the industry and everyone seems to be saying that they work in a very male-dominated industry where it's hard to, you know, climb up the corporate ladder and it's hard to be a leader because of how

Urmi Hossain (18:38.574)
we are perceived as a woman and I can relate to it. And unfortunately it's just how it is, how the society is. It's like no one's fault, it's just that it has always been like that. But we try to instill confidence in this woman to not give up and to always continue and go for what they want, especially if they wanna be in a leadership position. So yeah.

say that's true of actually anybody like Gen Z's entering the workplace here and they're facing a lot of obstacles. young, they got a mountain of debt from student loans. They probably took the wrong courses in the college because a literary arts degree is not going to help them a bit in finding a job. So they get out in the workforce and they have to still live with their parents.

So they're facing a lot of the same stigma, maybe even, maybe even more than a woman in the workplace because they've got all these things in the way.

That's right, I do agree that for Gen Z is much harder. And I can see it, I can see it around the people that I interact with. In a way, I do feel like they're very much, I don't know if it's the right word, like shadowed, I think they're very much protected, pampered by their parents and I don't think it helps them. I don't think, like I feel like myself, I'm millennial, so I feel like I...

I can, every time I speak with the Gen Z, can already see the, you know, how different we are. Very different and very different. I think Gen Zs are in a way are not even taught to be independent or to think independently. I think the pandemic did not make it easier for them, you know, like some of them graduated during the pandemic, some of them had to look for a job during the pandemic, some of them started university in pandemic, you know, things.

Urmi Hossain (20:40.332)
changed and they see things differently and the world has changed you know like even the workforce has changed like they like you know many years are you many years ago you could not work from home you know but now it's part of your normal routine so change and it's

Right. I found this, I found a lot of the same blocks and barriers with older people. baby boomers who still want to work. The ageism there is incredible. Having faced it myself, it is just, I mean, it's almost impossible for somebody who's in their late fifties, sixties to find a job, much less seventies and keep a job because they don't want to hire an older person. And

That's a shame because those people have, do you know what the number one language that things are written in in the world in the United States, at least maybe Canada, the number one computing language in the United States.

Cobol. Cobol is a language from the 1960s and 70s. All financial firms and things like that use Cobol, Fortran, things like that. These are old languages that were all handwritten. Millions and millions of lines of this stuff is there. It's not nobody, and the people who know it are getting older and they're aging out of the workforce. So if 70%, that's the statistic that I heard of

What is it?

Richard Lowe (22:06.018)
code is written in cobalt, which nobody wants to support anymore because it's not sexy like AI stuff. Then what's going to happen when all those baby boomers age out? The problem is, is a lot of the banks and big companies are supported by cobalt and they don't even know it. you know, if you really want to get a job in the computer world, think about getting some courses in cobalt and then go and support that old code and make some money. Of course, it's going to be

So, hey.

Richard Lowe (22:34.926)
It's not going to be as glamorous as working with AI and all the new tools, but there's definitely going to be jobs there if not already. yeah, the ageism, young or old, is one of the most insidious things of all. People just...

It's invisible because you don't have to, you can just reject somebody and it's not obvious that they're being rejected because they're older or younger.

Yeah, but even this you touched upon artificial intelligence that too, you know, it's a threat for many industry, but it could be an ally for other industry. And, you know, like there's always this fear that, what if it takes it away? You know, what if like artificial intelligence takes away our jobs? But I think we just have to be able to use it properly for our own advantage, you know, and for the advantage of an organization.

and not to see it really so much of a bad thing if you use it in the proper way.

If you think of it as a digital assistant instead of as a replacement or like as a writer, it's not going to write books for me. What it's going to do is help me organize those books and review them and do all of the tasks that it would give to virtual assistants. Now, virtual assistants might have a problem keeping a job because all of their stuff is pretty much rote work.

Urmi Hossain (23:58.606)
Yeah, exactly. I mean, you just speak about writing, right? Like I have a YouTube channel and I ask it and I ask artificial intelligence write me a description or give me a caption for an Instagram post. But, you know, there is only so much that it can do and you have to give it also the proper instructions because if you don't give it the proper instruction, you're going to get the wrong outcome. You know, it's that concept of like garbage in, garbage out.

Right.

Urmi Hossain (24:25.87)
Because I noticed that it does some mistakes. It does mistakes. And it says also.

not only does it make mistakes and it makes a lot of them, they're called hallucinations. It also lies to you, you know, and it also plagiarizes. So you have to be careful when you write something with AI. Is it unique? Is it real? it hallucinating? I mean, it introduces a lot of problems that you won't have to face if you just write it yourself.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, we've been going for about 30 minutes and that sounds like a good time. How would you sum up your thoughts in a couple of sentences?

our conversation.

Richard Lowe (25:06.85)
Yeah, anything you want.

If I have to use one word, I would definitely say it was very insightful and very conversational. And why I'm saying conversational, it's because often a lot of this conversation that I had, were mainly like, okay, the host asking the question and the guest answering the question. the host was never really engaging in a conversation. But this really felt like it was a conversation we could have had over a coffee.

That's exactly the format that I want is we're having a, just conversation. Other people may be, they'll be listening, lots of ears, but it's not, I hate the ones that are just question, answer, question, answer. And they're obviously canned and then the marketing thing, they go through a little marketing speak and I don't want to know about their product. I can read that on the website.

That's right.

Well, it's been great to have you here. How can people get hold of you if they want to talk to you?

Urmi Hossain (26:02.83)
So I have a LinkedIn profile. It's called Urmi Haasine. I have a YouTube channel called Urmi Haasine. If you want to find out the work that I do for women in leadership, they can just type women leadership Victoria chapter on Google or on Instagram and they can find out all the work that I do. And my book is available on Amazon. It's called Discovering Your Identity, a Rebirth from Intrusional Struggle.

And all of that will be in the description too, so you don't have to worry about spelling and stuff. Well, I'm Richard Lowe. This has been the Leaders In Their Stories podcast. Thank you for listening. I'm the ghost, the ghost writing guru and the writing king. And you can find me at the writingking.com or ghostwriting.guru. Thank you for listening. Bye bye.