They say that the most sought-after job title from Gen-Z is not nurse, fireman or astronaut, but online “Influencer.”
This explains why places like the Southeast Technical University in Ireland launched a new program last month: a Bachelor of Arts in Content Creation and Social Media.
It’ll teach business skills, video and audio editing, marketing, creative writing, public relations, all that good stuff.
We can already hear you kvetching, “Really? More Influencers? Is that what the world needs?”
But that’s not the most important question. What’s more interesting is, what are they learning here that’s truly valuable?
When you think about it, isn’t an influencer simply someone who has amassed a lot of trust?
From product influencers to restaurant critics to movie reviewers, these are people who say, if you trust me, you’ll like this.
Yes, there are scam artists and people who try to pull one over on us, but at its core, anyone that can build trust and an audience can be an influencer.
Therefore, the real issue here is “trust” and how to grow it. And that’s hard to teach.
Yes, when these college kids take this course, they’ll likely learn the basic technical stuff, but what we think would be most valuable, is learning how to build trust at scale.
Which is, when you think about it, what proper leadership is all about. Trust at scale.
A leader who can’t do that is no leader at all.
