Slowing Down and Learning to Communicate

Now that I have been working for my Turkish Heritage Organization for three weeks I have started to notice areas of improvements. Specifically, I have become increasingly aware of the communication issues among the team. I usually do not know what the others are working on, nor am I particularly aware of how some of my work is being used. It feels odd to be working in a relatively small office where I am not in touch with everything that is going on. 

For example, the office right now is divided between an education project and getting prepped for the writing fellow’s trip to Turkey later this week. Since I have been so involved in media outreach and gathering content for next week when everyone is away, I have a pretty limited idea of what the education project consists of. Another example, when my direct supervisor asks me to do something for her (write a bio, research a certain topic, type up event notes, etc.), I am not always sure what she is going to use it for, if at all. When I have asked, I generally get vague answers. These types of occurrences are problems because they limit efficiency in the larger office. If I had a clearer idea of what others were working on, I would be in a better position to help, and if I knew exactly what my work was being used for I could format it in the most efficient way possible so there would be less of a need for secondary editing (changing fonts, restructuring, etc.) So far asking my colleagues what they are working on has not been particularly effective and has left me still feeling out of the loop. Since I have a check in with my supervisor later today (we check in every Monday and Friday), I am going to propose we use a google doc where we can enter in small descriptions of our respective projects and goals that we have for the week for them. That way we can all read it and reference it when necessary to stay in the loop. I suggested something like this to her last week and we made some steps to have more team meetings, but with everyone’s busy schedules it did not work out as well as I had hoped.

I have noticed that teamwork and collaboration have increased since I previously brought up the communication issue. In particular, on a smaller scale, the interns have been working together more to collaborate on projects because we all acknowledge that each of us has different strengths and weaknesses. We are getting better about utilizing them, and my supervisor made a comment last week that in general, the organization was significantly more productive since the interns started using each other as resources.