Being Your Own Hero: Trust
/Trust is a basic tenant…
…in the military world. As an Army brat, I learned this through constant relocations. Each move was a crash course in rebuilding trust from scratch.
New friends, new teachers, new communities. But what I didn't understand until much later was how this continuous cycle of building and rebuilding trust was preparing me for something bigger.
The real revelation about trust came years into my professional life, through an unexpected lesson from the DoD mental health program. What started as a crisis management situation evolved into a profound understanding about the nature of institutional trust.
The rough start of the program led to fix it or die moment. Initially, I focused solely on operational fixes—righting the ship, meeting metrics, delivering services. Like most contractors, I saw trust purely in terms of execution: deliver what you promised, when you promised it.
But years later…
…I realized something deeper in the client's words when she said she trusted me. Her trust wasn't just about believing I could fix the program—it was about sharing her vision.
She had fought hard in the Pentagon to get the program approved and dollars to establish it. Not everyone above her supported her efforts to establish the program. In fact, there were people on the medical side of the military that constantly tried to get the program killed given it was not under their domain.
Her trust in me…
…was an investment in her own legacy. She needed the program to succeed not just for the military families it served, but to validate her fight for its existence. This revelation transformed how I viewed my role—I wasn't just a contractor executing a program, I was a guardian of someone else's vision and career capital.
This lesson has profound implications in today's contracting-heavy world. True trust isn't just about delivering on specifications—it's about understanding and protecting the stakes others hold in your success. When someone says "I trust you," they're often entrusting you with more than just a task or project. They're sharing their reputation, their dreams, sometimes their entire career trajectory.
It's a lesson…
…that brings me full circle to those early Army brat days. Each move taught me to read the subtle languages of trust. Now, in the corporate world, that skill has become invaluable—not just in building trust, but in understanding the full weight of what it means when someone places their trust in you.
