Chapter Two: When Someone Hands You the Keys

At 17, I was given the keys to a retail store in Norwich.

Even writing that now feels slightly strange, because at the time I do not remember thinking there was anything particularly remarkable about it. I was still studying for my A levels, still very young, and yet on Sundays I was trusted to open the store, make sure it was secure, manage the team, deal with customers, understand the figures and report back on how the day had gone.

I do not remember wondering whether I was ready. I had a job to do, so I did it.

There were people above me and structures around me, of course, but there was also enough space for me to experience what responsibility actually felt like. If somebody did not turn up, if there was a problem, if the day did not go to plan, I had to deal with what was in front of me. The store still had to run and the figures still had to make sense at the end of the day.

At the time, I think I just accepted that somebody trusted me. Only much later did I understand how important that was.

Retail became a huge part of my life from there. I progressed quickly, moved into management and later led successful stores and teams, including within Levi Strauss in Central London. There was always a commercial side to the work, with sales, targets, staffing, stock and performance, but when I look back, the part I remember most clearly is the people.

Retail brings together young people at all sorts of stages in their lives. For some it is a first job. Some are studying alongside it. Some know exactly what they want next, while others have no idea and are simply trying something out.

I remember seeing people change once they were given a little more space. Someone who was quiet in meetings might gradually become the person others listened to. Someone who checked every decision with a manager could, over time, become confident enough to make a call for themselves. Someone who had never thought of themselves as a leader could suddenly find that other people were starting to follow them.

Those changes rarely happened because of one formal conversation. They happened through ordinary moments. You gave someone a little more to own. You asked them to lead part of a shift. You let them deal with a difficult customer before stepping in. You invited them into a conversation they had not been part of before. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it did not. Then you talked about what happened and tried again.

I think I enjoyed that more than I realised at the time. Not simply seeing who was already good at something, but noticing who might become good at it if they had the chance. Perhaps I recognised something of my own experience in that. I knew what it felt like when somebody assumed you could handle something before you had fully decided that for yourself.

There is a strange point in development where you have to move before you know exactly what will happen next. You step into the responsibility before you have complete confidence that you can carry it. You say yes to something before you have all the evidence that you will succeed. In some ways, it is like leaping before you know how far you can jump. Not recklessly, and not without support, but with enough trust in yourself to explore what you might be capable of.

Sometimes you make it. Sometimes you do not. Sometimes you misjudge the distance completely. But even then, you learn something you could never have learnt by standing still and thinking about the jump.

That did not mean leaving people unsupported. Sometimes somebody needed more guidance. Sometimes I stepped in too early. Sometimes probably too late. I was still learning how to manage people while they were learning how to manage themselves.

Over time, I became more comfortable with not always having to be the person with the answer. That is harder than it sounds. When you are responsible for a business, it is usually quicker to solve the problem yourself. You know what needs to happen, there is pressure on time, and another issue is already waiting. But if you always take over, the other person never gets to discover what they would have done.

Some of the young people I worked with moved into management. Others left retail altogether. Some went back into education or took completely different routes. I never saw that as a failure. Developing somebody did not mean shaping them into the next version of me. Sometimes the most valuable thing was simply seeing someone become more confident, more capable or more willing to trust their own judgement before they carried that somewhere else.

Years later, I found myself thinking about that again at NYSA. The setting could not be more different, but the feeling is strangely familiar.

Our interns often arrive while they are still studying, at a stage where they are discovering what kind of work suits them, what they are good at and how they want to show up professionally. In the beginning, some are understandably cautious. They watch, listen and try to work out where they fit. Then, gradually, the same kinds of moments begin to appear.

An intern who was quiet in their first meeting starts offering an opinion without being asked. Someone who initially wanted every task checked begins to take ownership of a piece of work. Another finds themselves in a meeting with a partner, contributing to a conversation they might not have imagined being part of a few months earlier.

None of that feels dramatic while it is happening. It happens in ordinary working days. A question is directed towards them instead of towards me. A task becomes theirs rather than mine. They are included in a conversation where the answer is not obvious. They see that real work is often messy, that people disagree, that decisions are made with incomplete information and that sometimes the best you can do is make a thoughtful choice and learn from what happens next.

And sometimes, just as I did at 17, they have to take the step before they know for certain that they can do it. Not because we want them to fail, but because there are some things you can only learn once you are allowed to try. Confidence does not always arrive first. Sometimes the experience is what creates it.

That is where the connection with my own story feels strongest. At 17, nobody sat me down and told me that this was my development opportunity. They gave me the keys.

At NYSA, the keys look different. They might be a project task, a meeting, a partner conversation, a piece of research, an idea that needs shaping or a decision where somebody younger is invited to contribute rather than simply observe. Sometimes they are ready for more than they realise. Sometimes they need us to slow down. Sometimes they surprise us, and sometimes we get it wrong too.

What matters to me is that their experience is not reduced to completing safe tasks around the edges of the organisation. I want them to experience enough of the real work to discover something about themselves inside it. Where it makes sense, I also do not want that relationship to end simply because an internship finishes. Some stay connected. Some move into other opportunities. Some may work with NYSA again later. Others will go somewhere completely different.

We may only be one small part of what comes next, but I know now that small parts can matter.

When I look back at that 17 year old standing in a Norwich store with a set of keys, I do not see someone who was fully ready. I see someone who was trusted enough to begin, and who trusted herself enough to step forward without knowing exactly how far she could jump.

Perhaps that is the part of the story I have carried with me most. Not the keys themselves, but the feeling that somebody was willing to let me find out what I could do, even if I might fail along the way.