Leader Follower Pairs

This week I wanted to write another entry on leader- follower dynamics as they have shifted since the first weeks at my internship site. I have increasingly found that the team works better in paris. I have been working almost exclusively in a team of two for the past couple weeks and I have noticed several positives and negatives. First, working so closely with the same person does mean that we now have a close working relationship that seems to function more efficiently as times goes on and we get to know each other better. I think we are better able to anticipate the other’s needs. For example while working with my supervisor over the past couple of weeks I have learned how she likes to approach projects and can structure the work that I do to fit into her scheduled timeline. It makes our work go by much quicker and smoother. What I like the most about working in pairs is that when we are starting a new project we have a meeting to brainstorm what we want everything to look at. We make decisions about the projects together and bounce ideas off of one another. My supervisor does a wonderful job of not treating me like an intern and more like a coworker. It makes it seem like they do not view the college kids in the office as a temporary workforce but rather an important part of the team. This in turn makes me more motivated and willing to do the work that they need me to do, regardless of if I actually like the work in the first place. Over the past month, the level of trust that my supervisors have in me as skyrocketed. For example, last week and the week prior my supervisor was out of the country and the organization shifted most of her workload to me while she was away, and I was given total control over how I did it and what I produced with limited oversight.  It was intimidating at first, but it felt good to know that they trusted me so much with such important work after seeing what I was capable of in the first few weeks of my internship.