Week 5: New Leader/ Follower Dynamic

This week Therese, the office coordinator, had her last day. I had mentioned in a previous post that I had noticed some tension between Therese and Jay, the Executive Director. I learned that Therese was leaving on her own terms after working there for approximately 4 years. Apparently, during the transition between the incumbent director and Jay, there was a period of time where Therese was on her own. She doesn’t like to speak of this period because it was a dark time with little direction or support for the Executive Office. Thus, some of this tension I witnessed may have been attributed to Therese’s history with the organization rather than Jay’s individual leadership style.

With Therese leaving, the office will have to restructure a little bit. The division of work is still the same: Jay is in charge. She has her own agenda and delegates projects to myself and the other intern. We work primarily independently but can turn to Jay at any point in the process for support or supervision. Charlene works rather autonomously, meeting with the individual committees and doing what is necessary to meet their needs. She is still new and receives support from Jay but I anticipate that the longer she works there, the less she will need explicit direction. Therese used to serve as the office and membership coordinator – a hybrid of an administrative role and Charlene’s new position. Therese’s position followed more standardized procedures. She kept the office running, collected membership dues, and planned the chapter’s annual events. Her position certainly was necessary and kept the organization running smoothly. Since the hiring process is long and inefficient at the National Lawyers’ Guild, Jay has asked the other intern, who will be working there longer than me, to do administrative work for 3-4 hours a day in the interim. Jay proposed that she would pay the other intern for that work and then allow her to work on projects which are more exciting.

Overall, the leader/ follower relations in the office are good. Jay is certainly the “leader” per se but she does not abuse her formal title. She is very generous and grateful for the interns help. For example, on Thursday we took a couple hours to clean and rearrange the office. This turned out to be a morale boosting experience and afterwards she treated everyone to lunch for their hard work. There is a level of friendliness that is evident among the workers, but as of now I believe that Jay still retains the respect she deserves as a formal leader. In the future when the interns leave and more permanent staff are hired, if I were Jay, I would be cognizant of crossing over the line to too friendly at the risk of diminished respect. At the moment, however, I think that this environment works and allows for productivity and creativity.