My Experience with the Experts

In a previous reflection I discussed the office dynamics and hierarchical relationships among coworkers in the office. Three senior managing directors lead our practice. Because the SMD’s focus on working with clients and bringing on projects, I hadn’t had the opportunity to spend a lot of time working with them directly prior to this week.

After working on one project for the first seven weeks of my internship at FTI, I was assigned a new one this week. I quickly learned that two of the three SMDs at our company planned to be heavily involved with the new project. On my first day of being on the new project, I sat in on a meeting with two of the SMDs and the consultant on my team. This was one of the highlights of my internship so far, because I was able to hear the thought processes and insights from the top people at the company. Accordingly, these leaders exhibit trust in myself as an intern and trust in the consultants also on the project to meet deadlines and handle the work behind the project so that they can directly meet our client’s needs. From the intern to the director level, employees regard the Senior Managing directors as industry experts.

While I think that the SMDs exhibit legitimate, referent, and expert power, their expert power really stood out to me in this meeting, as they have been working in the healthcare industry and a part of the company for over a decade. Prior to the late afternoon meeting, I had spent the majority of that day looking into client data to try identify patterns and trends. After looking at the same information for only 5 minutes, the SMDs were able to find things that myself and the other consultants on the project didn’t pick up on.  Their ability to think quickly on their feet and instantly find trends in the client data demonstrated their expert skill. Prior to this meeting, I hadn’t seen SMDs involve themselves in some of the data digging and behind the scenes work on projects, because they are usually the one’s directly speaking with the clients. Because of the role structure within the office, they have legitimate power based on their rank. Working with them directly on this project has given me the chance to see referent power they have because they are able to build trust and foster strong work ethic among team members by exemplifying it themselves.