“Trust me.” Two words shouted by the hero of our story or whispered from mother to sick child.
“Trust me.” Two words asking someone to put control of this moment into your hands.
“Trust me.” Two words to build the future of our industry and our workforce.
Trust built civilizations – “I trust you to work our crops with me.” “I trust you to protect me as I sleep.” We say, “It takes a village,” and what we mean is: “It takes a village that trusts each other.” For the workforce of Millennials and GenZ, our early lives are shaded by harsh memories and recent reminders of when the collective trust in “how things work” failed. We watched from classrooms and kitchen tables as the world collapsed on a sunny September morning or bubbles burst in ’02 and ’08, a slow recovery, some big changes, and all of 2020. Millennials and older GenZ aren’t kids anymore; we have kids, mortgages, and daily heartburn. We’ve been through “once-in-a-lifetime” crises most of our lives, but we still want to believe in the world. We want someone to believe in us, to teach us the rules and tricks to get through. We want someone to trust us and to share hope for our visions of the future and our children’s futures. We want mentors for our journey — if we could just figure out who and how to ask.
Some people, possessed of great self-awareness or greater humility, can ask for help without a second’s hesitation. I am not one — stubborn, even obstinate at times, absolutely sisu enough to make my Finnish ancestors proud — and I am not alone. Sticking your head up to find potential mentors is hard when everything’s flying by fast and furious. Crossing generational gaps and power dynamics looks as welcoming as crossing no-man’s-land. Some will speak up, and others will keep their noses to the grindstone. All of us are looking at the successful people around us, and we’re looking for someone to teach us. Teach us when to pop up and when to keep our heads down, how to dodge, and when to charge. Someone who helps us take risks, succeed marvelously or fail beautifully, and always keep moving forward. We don’t need superheroes, despite the success of comic book films – we need leaders. We need someone who builds trust with us.
Good leaders have the trust of their people; great leaders trust their people in return. If you lead a project, team, or whole company, people have put their trust in you to bring them success, and you must bring it to be successful yourself. If you trust those around you to do the jobs you picked for them, it allows you to grow and improve yourself, your skills, and the outlook for tomorrow. Trust gives you the foundation to build companies, industries, and workforces ready for the future. Trusting others lets you do the work and take the risks a great leader must take to keep moving forward. You get back the bandwidth to give back. Trust allows you to reach out and become a mentor, to find and support tomorrow’s leaders.
Mentorship can be personal or professional, casual or formal, 30 minutes or years long, across experience levels and age ranges, or any point in between. Infinite methods, all built on trust. Building trust builds understanding. Building trust builds a common vision. Building trust builds a common goal and highlights the paths to get there – and how to go beyond. A mentor teaches and learns as their mentee learns and teaches in turn. Together, we grow and improve, connect and understand, plan for the future, and build the vision we’ve created together. If we trust each other, teach, and believe in each other, we build more than a future workforce and industry – we build hope.
Trust me.
This blog is part of Sam Ogren’s “Workforce Solutions” series. To follow along, be sure to check out the Workforce Solutions category on our blog menu.