Week 1-Spaces As Foundation: How physical workplace spaces cultivate leadership dynamics

In my first week at Fulkerson Kennedy & Company, I entered a work environment that I had not been accustomed to previously. Although I have worked at smaller companies, this firm is all housed in relatively close quarters, with only five private offices, which line the parameters of the office space. The rest of the junior-level staff work in the main room in desks that line the walls of the room. That leaves the interns at the main table directly in the middle of the entire office, called the bullpen. This layout provides many opportunities while also having its disadvantages, and very much dictates the office relations and the leadership dynamics at the firm.

The two heads of the firm have 6 junior level staff and a senior level associate working under them. They oversee all of their staff physically from their offices. The junior-level staff members who work under them have offices that line the room, with desks that are connected, so that they can talk to each other about work-related business, which enhances the opportunity for collaboration. Many of them work together on the same clients or coordinate initiatives together, so the space of the office facilitates that interaction. This has created a stark division between the upper-level and the junior level staff members, for the space has facilitated junior-level mentality and and and has created a division between them and the heads of the firm.

We, the interns, sit at the center of the office al a big, conference-type table. We basically assist the junior-level staff with projects, so being at the center of the space helps them delegate tasks. We also get to stay updated on the goings-on of the office due to being in the same physical space. This creates a healthy dynamic between us and our bosses, because we can see the work they are doing and help them at any moment.

Through observing the dynamic of the office in my first, week, I noticed that this office layout cultivated a very specific dynamic in the office, so that the leaders oversee the operations kind of from a bird’s eye perspective, as well and creating a physical division of hierarchy in the office. Then the junior level-staff members are made apparent in their lower ranking, and have to enter the offices if they want to ask their bosses a question. The lowest members of the staff, us, are not only observed constantly, for we are in the center of the transient space, but also get a 360 look of the leadership dynamics of the firm.