Leadership isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about creating the conditions for others to thrive.
Başak Büyükçelen has built her career at the intersection of technology, community, and purpose, leading teams across cultures, sectors, and time zones. As CEO at Pressbooks, she knows that traditional leadership leans on authority, while collaborative leadership begins with trust, and that modern organizations need leaders who build environments where people feel safe to speak up, not just follow directions.
“At Pressbooks, we have embraced a distributed leadership model where people are trusted to lead in their areas of expertise,” says Büyükçelen.
Cultivating collaborative leadership requires shifting from control to trust by empowering people to lead in their areas of expertise, building psychological safety where every voice is heard, especially the quiet ones, and leading with curiosity, not ego, by asking better questions rather than having the loudest voice.
Shifting From Control to Trust
Traditional leadership often leans on authority. Collaborative leadership begins with trust.
Büyükçelen has embraced a distributed leadership model where people are trusted to lead in their areas of expertise. “That shift has unleashed creativity, accountability, and ownership in ways a top-down model never could,” she notes.
Top-down models concentrate decision-making with senior leaders who approve strategies, review work, and maintain control through oversight. This creates bottlenecks where decisions wait for leadership approval, stifles creativity because people execute rather than think, and limits ownership because teams follow directions rather than lead initiatives.
Distributed leadership models work differently. People are trusted to lead in their areas of expertise without requiring approval for decisions within their domain. This unleashes creativity because people closest to problems design solutions. It builds accountability because ownership is clear. It strengthens teams because people lead rather than just execute.
Building Psychological Safety Where Every Voice Is Heard
You can’t collaborate if people don’t feel safe to speak up.
“One of my biggest responsibilities as a leader is making sure every voice is heard, especially the quiet ones,” Büyükçelen explains. “That means creating space for feedback, disagreement, and reflection. Real collaboration thrives in environments where it’s okay to question and challenge respectfully.”
Most organizations claim to value collaboration while maintaining cultures in which disagreeing with leadership is risky, raising concerns is labeled as negativity, and speaking up means risking relationships or career progression. In these environments, people collaborate on execution but not on thinking. They implement decisions but don’t question whether they are right.
Psychological safety changes this by making it okay to question and challenge respectfully. Leaders create space for feedback by actively soliciting it, space for disagreement by rewarding people who raise concerns early, and space for reflection by building time into processes rather than rushing from decision to execution.
The quiet ones matter most because they often see issues but won’t speak unless the environment feels genuinely safe. Making sure every voice is heard means noticing who isn’t talking and creating specific opportunities for them to contribute without putting them on the spot.
“Real collaboration thrives in environments where it’s okay to question and challenge respectfully,” Büyükçelen notes.
Leading With Curiosity, Not Ego
The most collaborative leaders aren’t the ones with the loudest voices. They’re the ones who ask the best questions.
“I try to lead with curiosity about people, about problems, and about possibilities,” Büyükçelen explains. “It’s that curiosity that opens the door to innovation and inclusive solutions.”
Leaders with ego lead by having answers. They’re valued for knowing what to do, solving problems quickly, and demonstrating expertise. This creates pressure to appear certain even when uncertainty exists, to move fast even when reflection would help, and to have solutions even when exploring problems more deeply would reveal better approaches.
Leaders with curiosity lead by asking questions.
What are we missing? Who else should we hear from? What would success look like from different perspectives?
These questions open doors to innovation because they invite diverse thinking. They create inclusive solutions because they ensure multiple viewpoints shape outcomes.
Curiosity about people means understanding what motivates them, what challenges they face, and what support they need. Curiosity about problems means digging beneath surface symptoms to understand root causes. Curiosity about possibilities means exploring options before converging on solutions.
“The most collaborative leaders I know aren’t the ones with the loudest voices,” Büyükçelen notes. “They’re the ones who ask the best questions.”
Leading With Others, Not Above Them
“Collaborative leadership isn’t soft, it’s strategic,” Büyükçelen concludes. “It requires trust, safety, shared vision, and curiosity. And when you lead this way, you don’t just get better results, you build stronger, more human teams. Let’s lead with others, not above them.”
You can’t have collaborative leadership without psychological safety. You can’t have psychological safety without trust. And you can’t have trust if you’re leading from above instead of beside.
Connect with Başak Büyükçelen on LinkedIn for insights on cultivating collaborative leadership.
