Evaluating my Contributions Thus Far

With every week producing a new reflection, I always find it scary how quickly time flies, both at work and in my persona life. This week, I thought it would be a good week to evaluate my contributions to Guidepoint, as I am nearly halfway through my internship program here. I think 4 weeks is enough to look at myself critically, as well as my work, to recognize some of my personal contributions on my day to day work, as well as the assigned final summer project for Guidepoint.

While I would not say I have fully mastered the role of business development associate intern, I do think I have effectively found the best way I personally go about the process of completing primary background research on specific companies exposing certain areas where these corporations and organizations could benefit from Guidepoint and its unique services. With each project consisting of a similar approach, I discovered over these past four weeks that it is the immense preliminary research, helping me to uncover areas where Guidepoint can help corporations grow as a business, which is the real determinant of getting clients to use our services. And along with being able to discover such insights comes the equally important tool of portraying such concerns with effective language in my communication, tailored to the specific corporation. Luckily for me, I have another intern on my team who I sit next to; I have shared my personal approach with her, and how I go about outreaching after my due diligence, and we have both helped each other grow in our roles. As a result, we both now go about our research and process on each project in similar fashions, and I think we are both excelling. What I enjoy about having another intern on my specific team is having a resource to bounce ideas off of, as we both learn from each other’s contributions. My approach is not new, but what I have done is created a methodology, derived from careful research and persuasive language in my communication, which has undoubtedly created some positive contributions on my own work and others.

Regarding the final summer project – where I am in a group of 5 interns assigned to one of Guidepoint’s biggest problems, namely how to expand our services into law firms and legal solutions departments- I think this is an excellent opportunity for me to display my insights about leadership in both an individual and team effort. I am especially lucky to have this opportunity because literally everything from my Theories and Models course will be applicable and relevant while working on this team, with a group of individuals who I have no prior experience with. Both as a member of the group, as well as a leader which I am going to step up to be, I want to make sure I use specific theories to maximize all of our strengths and ultimately succeed as a group with our final presentation. Similar to the approach I have developed on my daily projects, I too think our group project will take lots of preliminary work, such as learning about all five of our group members strengths, making sure the work is being completed evenly, and making sure all of our voices are being heard in respect to ideas. I think I have a great advantage with my leadership studies, and I want to be sure I apply those strengths to be the best team leader I can be. With our group being assigned this week, we have not officially all met up yet, but I am very excited by this amazing prospect to apply my leadership theories into a personal opportunity to exhibit my knowledge. I will continually revolve back to the final summer project in future blog posts.

All in all, I think my contributions on my daily projects of preliminary research followed by tailor-made communication to corporations has boded well for me. My results thus far, as well as my effect on my fellow intern partner, Haley, serve as reinforcements for myself. I am excited by the opportunity to continually grow in my role and see what other positive changes I can make for the corporate business development team on daily projects, as well as the equally exciting opportunity to serve as a leader, through applications of various leadership theories, in my final summer project at Guidepoint.