People talk about \u201cbig shoes\u201d like they\u2019re meant to intimidate you. I\u2019ve started to think they\u2019re just opportunities wearing a costume.<\/p>\n
Over the last four years, I\u2019ve taken on three different roles at Heirs Holdings. Each one asked something new of me, usually before I felt ready enough to give it. Right now, I\u2019m double-hatting two roles I couldn\u2019t have pictured myself in when I first walked through HH\u2019s doors. And here\u2019s the thing that surprises me every time: and it\u2019s not how much my role changed. It\u2019s how quietly the growth happened and I didn\u2019t even notice.<\/p>\n
Recently, I stepped in as relief officer for my department while the Head of my Department was away on leave. Not my first stretch assignment but this kind is the type that makes you pause mid-week and think, wait, when did I become someone who can do this?<\/p>\n
The truth is, nobody hands you that kind of responsibility on a whim. It\u2019s not a leap of faith, it\u2019s a receipt. Years of learning, observing, asking the \u201cobvious\u201d question anyway, and saying yes to the things that scared me a little, all quietly building a case for me before I knew one was being made.<\/p>\n
I hadn\u2019t noticed I wasn\u2019t that person anymore. That\u2019s the funny thing about growth; the fact it rarely shows up with a fanfare and a name tag. It shows up as the meeting you get invited into, the project you\u2019re trusted to run solo, the deadline you somehow hit, the mistake that taught you more than any training presentation ever could. And then, one day, someone hands you a responsibility that would once have flattened you, but it doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Looking back, I can trace every one of those moments to the same source: someone believed in me before the evidence fully caught up. That\u2019s not a small feat. It\u2019s a debt I\u2019d like to keep paying forward; by taking chances on the people around me the way people once took a chance on me.<\/p>\n
Which is exactly why this month\u2019s theme lands so close to home.<\/p>\n
As Heirs Holdings prepares to open applications for the second cohort of its Graduate Trainee Programme, I keep thinking about where my own story started. Four years ago, I was one of more than 50 graduates walking in for the first time, with big dreams. I had no idea that one \u201cyes\u201d would multiply into a stack of lessons I didn\u2019t ask for but absolutely needed, and a career built by people who clocked my potential long before I did.<\/p>\n
So if you\u2019re sizing up the shoes in front of you and wondering if they fit: they\u2019re not supposed to, not yet. You don\u2019t need all the answers on day one. You just need to keep growing into the room you\u2019ve been let into.<\/p>\n
One day, you\u2019ll look down and realise that the shoes were never too big. You just grew.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
People talk about \u201cbig shoes\u201d like they\u2019re meant to intimidate you. I\u2019ve started to think they\u2019re just opportunities wearing a costume. Over the last four years, I\u2019ve taken on three different roles at Heirs Holdings. Each one asked something new of me, usually before I felt ready enough to give it. Right now, I\u2019m double-hatting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":10306,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-career-story","category-features"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10294"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10307,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10294\/revisions\/10307"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}