truth_11🌍

I had a Zoom session this evening with three youngsters that I mentor. Their parents asked me to mentor them, so we chat, they ask questions, and I thought I should share this with other youngsters here as well, young adults who may be starting out in their careers. I was telling them that when you are starting work, when you are starting out in the workplace, you should always be respectful, not just to your bosses, but to your senior colleagues as well. I was sharing my own experiences with them from my time at the BBC and at ITV News. I explained that even when I was doing menial work while I was at university in England, working at McDonald’s, or as a security guard at Empire Security in Berkshire, or when I worked in a factory in Berkshire during my university years, I was always working with older men, much older men who are now late. I must have been around 22, and these men were in their 50s and 60s. I was always that young African boy who would go and make tea for the elderly West Indian men, English men, or fellow African men. They were far older than me, and I learned a great deal from them about life, not just about work, because they were factory workers. They taught me humility, patience, and humanity. They accentuated values that had already been instilled in me by my father. Things like do not be malicious towards other people. Do not try to bring others down using malicious gossip. Do not lie about other people. I would go and make tea, make toast. I remember when we were in Berkshire, we had a toaster and a kettle at work, and I would prepare tea or coffee for everyone without feeling diminished. I carried that same attitude into my professional career. When I went to ITV News and worked with Martin Geisler, who is now the presenter of Scotland Tonight, and Andy Rex, who is now retired and was the cameraman, I respected Andy Rex as my elder and I learned a great deal from him. Respecting them and showing professional curiosity outside my role as a producer is one of the reasons I am referred to as a multi-talented broadcast journalist, because I can shoot with a camera, I can edit, I can report, and I can produce. Respect the elders that you work with. Do not always feel that because you have the same contractual rights, they should go and make their own tea. If you want to rise and learn, even in highly technical fields, read biographies of people like Richard Branson and others who became billionaires. They started at the bottom and did the small things with humility. They made tea for those older than them. They ran errands. They showed respect. When I was working with Rex and Martin Geisler, I was already a successful journalist, an award-winning journalist, but I understood that this man knew more than I did in his field and he was older than me. I could not see myself as someone with equal standing in experience and age by letting him go and make tea. If we were filming in Bulawayo, for example, staying at a lodge, and there was a need to go and buy drinks, I would never say, you want a drink, go and buy it yourself. Even if I did not want one, I would still go and buy drinks to show respect. When you do that, they help you as well. They warm to you. They see you as a good young man worth investing their knowledge in. Rex would come to my home in Harare. Here was a massively accomplished, award-winning cameraman, an Emmy award holder, yet he would come into my home warmly and say, no, the way you have done your bar is not right, do it this way. And he would physically help fix things. I would feel embarrassed because this was my senior, but he did it because he understood the respect I had always shown him. I would make coffee and tea for him, get drinks for him. So when he came into my home and we were broadcasting live for News at 10, ITV News, sometimes broadcasting from my home, he would even do tasks that ordinarily would have been done by my housekeeper. That is what respect does. It creates warmth. It builds lifelong relationships. So I thought I should share this with you, especially the young ones. Do not look down on older people you work with, even if you are more educated than them. Respect them. That respect goes a long way. It opens doors in ways that are remarkable. Just last week, a white Zimbabwean girl, whose father is a friend of mine, a big businessman in Zimbabwe, called me and said, Uncle Hope, I need a media attachment in the UK. She is at university studying journalism in the UK. I called my former boss, Tim Singleton, who is now Head of International News at Sky News. I still maintain these relationships, even though I left ITV News and later started writing for The New York Times around 2015. I still have strong relationships with my former colleagues, people like Rohit Kachroo, a senior figure at ITV News, and Martin Geisler. When I am in their cities, they want to take me out for dinner. It is because of the relationships I built, the respect I showed them. Wherever I go, whether it is the BBC, particularly the people I worked with in the African Service, there is always warmth. When I am in town, they want to meet, they want to host me, they invite me into their homes. I never saw colleagues as competitors. I saw them as collaborators. I saw them as people I could learn from. Even when I became senior myself, I never lost that grounding. I would still go to the canteen, buy drinks, carry food, and bring it back for colleagues. It is a way of teaching humanity in professional spaces. Respect is not weakness. It is social capital. And in the long run, it pays dividends that qualifications alone can never buy. I repeat, respect is the quiet currency of success, it opens doors that qualifications alone will never unlock.

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