Leader/ Follower Relationships in the First Week

The leader/follower dynamics in my organization are fairly simple. I work for the Turkish Heritage Organization (THO) and we all work as a team. In my first week here, it was slightly confusing given that my supervisor was not in the office to introduce me to the way that the office functions and the work that I should be doing until the middle of the week, and I did not start any substantial work until Thursday of last week. This out of the ordinary week gave me a glimpse of the roots of the relationships within the office when our “leader” was not present.

Everyone here has a specific job title that they work under, and each of the interns all have a certain issue area that they are focused on. However, everyone here seems to do a little bit of everything, especially as an event approaches. The team is fairly autonomous in how they accomplish the agreed upon goal. So what I have noticed so far is that the team agrees on an end result and what types of work will go into making this end goal happen, and then everyone splits off and does their own task. For example, we have a teleconference this Thursday on what is happening in Idlib. The president of THO decided that we should do this conference last Monday during a team meeting, from there everyone sat down and decided our respective tasks and went to work. In sum, decisions are fairly decentralized and the organization is incredibly open to new ideas from anyone at any level.

Additionally, for me in particular most of my work is self-directed. When I finally sat down with my supervisor, he asked me what I wanted to work on and what skills I was hoping to gain or hone in on over the course of the summer. Over lunch we were able to hash out and settle the work that I would do over the summer. Further, there is a huge learning component to our work that coincides with the outreach goals of THO by going to events in the city. In DC there are tons of events every day, and part of my job is to find the ones most relevant to our organization (or even ones I am simply interested occasionally), attend them, and take pictures and notes. This leaves me with a considerable amount of freedom to direct my own work and the different areas I want to learn about.

My favorite aspect about my new office, aside from the free coffee and tea, is that everyone here is overwhelmingly welcoming and friendly. It seems that everyone has a solid relationship and they all work together really well. They have an immense amount of trust in one another because everything is so self-directed, and it pays off due to the successes they have had in the relatively short time that this organization had been around. In addition to the people who work directly within my organization, the people in the offices around ours are also friendly and welcoming. They work for different law firms and nonprofits, so it is a super interesting group of people to talk to or sit at lunch with! Overall I am really happy with my choice of internship for the summer.