When was the last time you truly inspired someone?

Do you consider yourself a leader? When was the last time you truly inspired someone?

Can’t remember? Then it’s too long ago!

Or is it…

This message is to say thank you to the unsung heroes who inspire us without truly knowing the affect they have on the trajectory of our lives. I’m sure you have people that spring to mind right now who have helped you!?

Although I believe success is a culmination of many factors and areas of life, for now I’d like to highlight a few moments that have shaped the success in my career.

Bear with me, there’s reason behind the list:

·????????In response to an email to a senior executive at Sage UK requesting thirty minutes to talk through how he became successful I was taught to go specific and be flexible to move locations when working. Two years later I was working near Manchester while living in Newcastle.

·????????One training professional gave two hours a week of his time for several months to mentor me to move from a sales role into a training role, without which I would have never passed the CV sift to be a trainer and presenter at Sage UK.

·????????After being headhunted into a start-up tech business, I was mentored in terms of technical skill and industry knowledge. I class this as mentoring, because the individual gave up nearly 10 hours a week for 3 months of their personal time to answer my many questions.

·????????As my role moved into a managerial role, a new mentor supported me through understanding how to lead people and how to strategize both departmentally and as a whole business. This was normally lunchtimes and evenings after work.

·????????A 3rd mentor from the same company recommended me to an investor as I was looking to start Stryde and continues to support with key guidance and advice.

Throughout all of these examples, and throughout examples from other areas of life, there’s one key element that remains the same, time. These mentors have all given a part of their incredibly precious time to help.

As I sit here in our offices provided as part of the Entrepreneurial Spark accelerator program, I’m wowed by the collaboration between business leaders to help provide free support to grow each other’s businesses. But actually it’s not free. It costs. It cost time, just like those mentors who’ve shaped my career.

Let me ask the question I posed again, do you consider yourself a leader? When was the last time you inspired someone?

Maybe this is the wrong question. The people who have truly inspired me, those I consider to be mentors and leaders, have simply given me time. So, perhaps the question should be, ‘when was the last time you gave time to help someone else get what they want’?

I’d love to hear from you if this thought process resonates? Who have been your unsung heroes in your career or in your life, and why?