Young people need to know the power of just being yourself

“As I walked out of the hall after my presentation, I got speaking to a girl who wanted to start up a female rugby team and she asked me how to go about it. This moment was everything for me,” explains Kunle. “It was great to see her being herself, her wanting to follow her dream and her being brave enough to ask for advice. What more could you want from a young person?”

Having just finished his talk at a prestigious independent school in the home counties, Kunle was clearly inspired by this conversation. The young people attending his talk, this girl included, were all on the school’s elite programme. The brief for the occasion was to inspire this group of high achievers at the start of the new academic year.

Initially, Kunle had thought it could be valuable to do a TikTok-style, quick fire approach covering lots of ideas but only for a few minutes each. “I pitched the idea to our comms team, and they challenged me, suggesting it didn’t feel very ‘me’. After some discussion, we decided to focus more on my personal experiences and on my belief in the power of just being yourself and of being a decent human being. This was great advice,” Kunle explains.

“We also felt it would be worthwhile to talk about the work I do with women’s sport. It is a role where I am learning to walk in other people’s shoes, to see the world from someone else’s perspective. This is a deeply humanising, humbling experience. Again this paid off. Without having taken this track, I would not have had the great rugby chat I had.”

Kunle kept his talk short and the time for questions long. But importantly and in true Kunle style, he spoke from the heart and answered truthfully.

“I believe that because I was answering questions honestly, as me and not as a CEO of a finance company, the students were so much more engaged. They really responded to this. There were so many questions that the Q&A lasted nearly an hour and students stayed afterwards with yet more questions.”

Each question gave Kunle a little insight into the hearts and minds of these young people. But the answers he gave will undoubtedly have challenged them to think differently too, to think beyond the traditional metrics of career success.

Of course, there were the more standard questions – how did you get to be a CEO? What are the challenges of getting into financial services these days? There are a lot of driven young individuals in that room.

But Kunle was also asked, if you look back to your younger self, what would you want to have? Kunle’s answer was simple – love, love from a family. That’s going to hit home and make you question what is important for sure. He was also asked, what he would follow, profit or purpose. Kunle answered purpose all day long – you’ve got to do what you love and what matters to you.

“I explained that because of my mistakes, I’ve realised that yes, money is important, but that it is not the most important thing. You cannot put a price on happiness and health.” We all need to be reminded of that sometimes.

He also reminded the audience that how you speak to people matters. Kunle is, in his own words ‘just a regular Joe’ but talks to people from all walks of life. He urged these young people to be kind, to be yourself and to remember that communication is not just about words. Your tone of voice, your body language and how you behave carry far more weight than the words you speak.

 “As adults and often as parents, we focus very much on the academic milestones that we feel young people need to achieve. In the process, we can sometimes forget that learning is not just about getting top grades.  It is about being yourself, about doing what you love and about being a decent human being. And in today’s world, where robots and AI are becoming increasingly prevalent in our lives, surely, we need to be more human than ever before. A point very clearly made by Rachel Higginson in our latest edition of SKQ.”

If you would like to read the latest SKQ magazine on Young People, you can read it here.