The power of trust

The Rev Dr Martin Johnstone says one of the most important elements of leadership is trusting others.

IN my late teens – I am fearful to admit over forty years ago – I was asked to lead a summer mission team in the northeast of Scotland. I was one of several young people trusted in this way. At the time, I think I thought that I was helping to save the world. Looking back, perhaps the best that can be said is that I didn’t do too much harm.

Perhaps the most striking thing about that group of young people is how many of them went on to exercise significant leadership in the decades that followed. Seeing the potential of others and being willing to mop up the pieces when things go wrong, is such an important dimension of effective leadership.

A year or so before I was being asked to take on a leadership role in summer mission, I had decided that I wanted to leave school and to spend a year volunteering in a centre working alongside the homeless. My pastoral care (or guidance) teacher was so concerned that he came to the house to try to persuade my parents that it was a very bad idea. With a great deal of justification, he was fearful of how I could cope. (Some days I barely did.) He was fearful that it might do long term damage to quite a timid young man who had lived, to that point, a relatively sheltered life.

My parents, however, trusted me. It was my dad, normally a very quiet man, who said: “Mr Currie, we are grateful for your concern, which we share. But if Martin feels that this is the right thing for him to do then we will back him.”

That year changed my life. It lit a fire in my belly for people at the margins of our society that has burnt passionately throughout my adult life. I cannot thank my parents enough for trusting me; for seeing that glimmer of potential.

I offer these very personal stories because, looking back, I realise that one of the most important dimensions of leadership is trusting others, and helping them to fulfil their potential. That involves considerable risks, and I am concerned that we have become risk averse, particularly when it comes to trusting our young people. That needs to change for they will need to learn leadership skills to equip them for a world that will be infinitely more challenging than the one that I have inhabited.

Over the last decade I have been privileged to hang about, and learn from, a remarkable youth work project called theGKexperience. It is only one of a number of amazing youth projects operating across the country. It’s just the one I have got to know best. theGKexperience works alongside young people who live in some of our most economically challenging neighbourhoods. However, it is resolutely focused on seeing the resilience and potential of young people and their families rather than simply the challenges that they face. It is also committed to being with people for as long as it takes.

“ I cannot thank my parents enough for trusting me; for seeing that glimmer of potential."

When as a young person you join GK, you get a green hoodie. And then, as you begin to assume a level of responsibility – as your potential begins to bubble up – you get a blue hoodie and become a young leader. When I think of some of our blue hoodies, I am in awe of what they have and are achieving. They are some of the people who give me hope for the future.

That hope is partly grounded in the resilience and potential that these young people have which too often goes unnoticed. And partly it is because those in current leadership have chosen to trust them and to help them to flourish. It is a risky but hugely rewarding business. And we need to encourage much more of it.