I've Got Your Back

Twenty-one years at Tianjie have embraced the most precious chapters of my life. Here I met my beloved wife, built a family, became a parent, bought my first car and home, and finally put down lasting roots in Lin’an.

Along the journey so far, the person I am most grateful to is Director Zhang.

Back when she was in charge of production planning, she forged deep bonds with team leaders and front-line workers like us. She always paid close attention to how I was doing, and could tell instantly whenever work got me down. I was skilled at my craft, so she regularly assigned me orders for custom-specification products. These jobs were slow to finish and dragged down overall efficiency, and I could not help but feel reluctant about them. Every time I voiced my concerns to her, she would always see things from a front-line employee’s perspective and understand our hardships. Yet at the same time, she would walk me through the company’s overall operations and offer patient guidance. Over all these years, she has long become far more than just a colleague or supervisor to me.

Earlierin 2022, the position of Workshop Supervisor for the security cable sheath department fell vacant. When Director Zhang first recommended me for the role, I turned it down almost instinctively. “I only know about technical work. I’m no good at managing people,” I told her.

She sat down to talk with me time and again, analyzing the workshop’s current situation as well as straightening out my strengths and weaknesses. To ease my worries, she walked me through all the challenges and shared respective management methods with me without reservation. “Tianjie needs managers who master both technical expertise and people skills,” she said. “and you, Wang Chao, have both. You just haven’t realizedthat yet.”

What truly pushed me to make up my mind was one sentence she said. That afternoon, sunlight streamed through the office window, and her words are etched forever in my memory: “Just go ahead and do your best. I’ve got your back if anything comes up. I have full faith that you can run this workshop well.” Those words were like a key, unlocking a door I had kept tightly shut for a long time.

Yet it was not until I stepped into the supervisor’s role and looked back that I realized how naive some of my old thoughts had been. Employees’ needs, production pressure and corporate interests — every aspect demands careful attention and balanced judgment. These are vistas you can only see when you stand at a different height.

I finally understood why Director Zhang kept assigning those special orders to me: it was a testament to her trust in my ability. I also came to grasp the true meaning behind her promise to have my back. It was never about solving problems for me, but about giving me the courage to face them on my own.

In my twenty-one years at Tianjie, I have taken on four different roles. I felt anxious every time a transition came along, yet each change proved one truth: we have more potential than we realize and have tapped.

Therefore, to my younger colleagues just getting started with their careers, I want to say this: embrace challenges bravely, for human potential knows no bounds. As your role and perspective shift, your knowledge, skills, vision and mindset will keep growing alongside your work.

Machines in the workshop keep humming, shaping a new batch of cable sheaths. Just as it has been every single day for the past two decades, products roll off the line, people grow step by step, and stories keep unfolding. Once a worker scared of not being able to rise to the challenge, I am now a supervisor encouraging young colleagues to give new things a try. And I am deeply aware that the greatest support we can offer is to help every member of the Tianjie family gain the courage to challenge themselves to become better versions.