October 7: The People Who See Something In Us
The People Who See Something in Us
Yesterday, as part of our week celebrating The People Who Make a Community, we explored what it means to occupy space and how the confidence to do so can be shaped by the people around us. There is another part of that story that feels worth spending some time with, because long before many of us feel confident enough to step forward, there has often been somebody quietly encouraging us to believe that we can, sometimes seeing potential in us long before we have learned to recognise it for ourselves.
Throughout our lives, we encounter people whose influence becomes much greater than they probably ever intended. They may never formally become a mentor and there may never be a conversation in which their importance is properly acknowledged, but something about the way they see us can begin to change the way we see ourselves. Their confidence can arrive at a time when our own is still developing, allowing us to consider possibilities that previously felt too distant or simply hadn't occurred to us at all.
This kind of influence is rarely dramatic in the moment. It develops through a relationship in which another person continues to treat our ability as something real, even while we are still questioning it ourselves. Gradually, their certainty begins to feel less surprising and we become more willing to trust our own judgement, until the belief that initially belonged to somebody else has become part of how we understand ourselves.
The difference being seen can make
There is something particularly powerful about being recognised in this way because we can spend years surrounded by people who know us without necessarily encountering somebody who sees what we might become. When that recognition eventually happens, it can shift our sense of what is possible because another person is reflecting something back to us that we have not yet been able to see clearly on our own.
For people who have grown accustomed to being underrepresented in the spaces they enter, this can carry an additional significance. When the world around us does not provide many examples that feel familiar, certain paths can appear more distant than they really are, particularly when nobody we identify with seems to have travelled them before. Having another person recognise our potential cannot remove the structural barriers that may exist along the way, but it can change the way we imagine ourselves moving through them.
For Black communities in Britain, relationships of this kind have long held importance because access to opportunity has not always been fair. When established systems have overlooked talent or made progression more difficult, people within communities have often found ways to recognise potential in one another and pass on the understanding they gained through their own experiences. This has not always happened through formal programmes or relationships with defined roles, but through people recognising that something they had learned might make another person's path a little clearer.
How another person's belief becomes our own
Our understanding of who we are develops through our experiences, but it is also influenced by how other people respond to us. When somebody whose judgement we respect treats our ability as though it is obvious, we become more willing to consider the possibility that they might be right.
Over time, this can affect the decisions we make and the opportunities we allow ourselves to consider. Something that once felt beyond us begins to feel achievable, not because our ability has suddenly appeared, but because our understanding of that ability has changed. The potential may have been there all along, waiting for confidence to catch up with it.
Often, the person who helped begin that process will have no idea how significant their influence became. They may remember an ordinary conversation that the other person has carried for years, or have offered encouragement that felt completely natural to them but arrived at exactly the point it was needed. The importance of these moments is often only visible much later, when we are able to look back and recognise the point at which our thinking began to change.
When experience is shared
As people become more confident and experienced themselves, something interesting can happen to the relationship between support and community. The knowledge they once needed from somebody else becomes knowledge they are now able to share, and their own experience can make an unfamiliar environment feel less daunting for someone entering it for the first time.
This is not about removing challenges from another person's path, because everybody still has to find their own way through the experiences they encounter. Instead, it is about recognising that very few people move forward entirely alone and that understanding gained through experience can become valuable to somebody who has not yet had the opportunity to gain it for themselves.
Communities have always carried knowledge in this way, with understanding moving between people and changing slightly as each person adds their own experience to it. Someone who once relied on another person's reassurance may eventually find themselves providing that reassurance without consciously deciding to do so, simply because they remember what it felt like to be at the beginning.
The influence we may never see
This feels particularly connected to the Black History Month 2026 theme Honouring Our Communities, because contribution is not always something that can be easily seen or attributed to one person. Sometimes a person's influence lives within somebody else's confidence and becomes part of the decisions that person goes on to make, travelling much further than the original interaction ever seemed likely to reach.
At Powered by Diversity, lived experience stories often reveal these connections. When people talk about the experiences that shaped them, there is frequently another person somewhere within that story whose influence only became clear with time. They may have recognised an ability, offered reassurance or simply behaved as though the person in front of them belonged somewhere they had not yet imagined themselves being.
As we continue celebrating The People Who Make a Community, these quieter forms of influence deserve a place within the story because communities are shaped not only through visible achievements, but through the ways people affect one another over time. A little confidence given at the right moment can become part of another person's confidence for years, and as that person grows, the influence can continue through the way they begin to see and support those around them.
Perhaps this is one of the ways communities continue to strengthen across generations, as belief passes quietly between people and each person carries something of what they received into the relationships that follow. The person who once needed somebody else to see their potential may eventually become the person who recognises it in someone new, allowing an act of belief that began years earlier to continue travelling.
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