Final Reflection: My Summer at AlphaSights

Re-reading my personal plan and site contribution papers has a bittersweet, almost nostalgic feeling. These past 10 weeks have truly flown by and I am extremely thankful for the experiences and expertise I gained this summer. In my personal plan paper, I expressed interest in working for a large corporation with many moving pieces. I also explained that I wanted to ask “how” and “why” questions to my superiors. This internship definitely provided me the opportunity to do so. In my offer day meeting, the vice-president and my manager said that they were impressed with my ability to push back and aim for a deeper understanding of every situation. This was a very gratifying thing to hear and something that definitely stems from my Jepson education. I was also lucky to have a lot of independence this summer. I mentioned independence as something I really wanted to have in my personal contribution paper, but also wanting to better my teamwork abilities. However, this desire to work independently did come with its own learning curve. Lastly, in my site contribution paper I discussed the idea of making mistakes. In particular, I explained that I wanted to work hard to limit my mistakes, which I know realize is more naïve than it sounds.  In rereading these papers, I can see how much I have grown professionally and as a person this summer.

In order to maximize my time at AlphaSights, I tried to challenge my superiors by invoking my curiosity and asking countless questions. The day before my offer meeting, I started to reflect on this strategy. Asking questions did allow me personally to grow and be the best employee I could be, but I started to wonder if it had been a mistake for the sheer fact that it could have been annoying for my manager. In my personal plan paper, I explained that last year “I was always told what my budget was for specific events or where to be at a certain time. This summer, I want to make sure I am asking the questions “why” and “how” (Friedman, Personal Plan Paper).

Because of this goal, I went into every meeting with my manager, which happened twice a month, ready with questions about the future of our team and where he sees the company progressing. I asked him if he saw the credit model we currently use, which essentially tracks employee performance, as sustainable. In particular, in one of our meetings I used the idea of legitimacy to explain why the AlphaSights credit model does work. I explained to my manager that this credit system gets people to work hard because they know their credits are being tracked. But, AlphaSights only hires driven people who they believe will comply because they intrinsically want to. Further, the company uses transformational leadership by investing in its people professionally. This gives the company legitimacy because its associates feel a motivation to intrinsically be better. I believe there is also an aspect of transactional leadership: the company gives us so much that we want to give back in return. I told my manager all of this and he was truly interested. He even asked me to send him my blog posts! It is clear that this summer I was rewarded for asking these questions and making such observations: it is something my manager said led to my offer.

For my summer internship, I wanted to have a lot of independence but also gain exposure to be a true part of a team. Thinking back, this was a lot to ask for! However, I now realize that I did get both of these experiences. One of the biggest things I have learned this summer is you have to earn your independence. You need to build trust within the group because mistakes are inevitable. At AlphaSights, there are a lot of technical things to learn; you have an entire week of training to learn their processes, and it is said that this week only teaches you 10% of what you need to know. This means that when you start your job on the desk, there is a lot of catching up to do.

In order to learn all this information, you are assigned a trainer who teaches you all you need to know. For the first week, I was extremely thankful for my trainer and the careful eye he had over me. He listened to my vetting calls, he checked over my emails, and he read over all the profiles I wrote up. This provided some comfort because I knew he was there to either catch my mistakes or take responsibility for them. Because I was in a sort of conflict condition, being in a new and scary place with a lot of room for error, I did not mind the dominance that my trainer and manager had. This is very similar to the findings of Lausten and Peterson on how certain contexts may affect our desire for dominant leaders. However, by the second week on the desk, I craved more independence. I felt frustrated that I was being watched over so closely and thought I was ready to take on more responsibility. I felt like I had gained enough idiosyncrasy credit with the group to ask for this independence, but I soon realized how quickly this could wash away.

My third week on the desk I came into the office ready to make an impact and ask for more responsibility. However, that Monday morning, my manager and trainer seemed to be acting strangely and I got the sense they were talking about me. A few minutes later, my manager called me out for not reaching out to a group of people I should have. He told me my mistake in front of my team. As someone who really values being part of a team and having the respect of my peers, I was frustrated and disappointed. I immediately felt like I lost some credit with not only my manager, because of my small mistake, but also with my team because he had essentially told them my mistake. However, I came into work the next day ready to address this mistake with my manager at our weekly meeting. And then, after a hectic morning, I forgot to go to our meeting. He was not necessarily mad at me, but I sensed his disappointment. I felt horrible and realized I could either accept defeat or again try ameliorating it. I chose the latter: I came into work the next day with a planner and highlighted that I wanted to work on my organization in all facets of the job.

Throughout the summer, I started to realize that everyone on the team, even my manager and trainer, made mistakes and that true growth came from learning from them. Of course, this is easier said than done. A few weeks later, I expressed to my manager that I had learned from my mistakes and was trying very hard not to make anymore. At this point, I felt like I had established a good amount of legitimacy within my team and had built up the idiosyncrasy credit I had previously lost. His response, however, surprised me. He explained that making mistakes is inevitable and that it is okay to “fail forward”; making mistakes is fine so long as you learn from them. Hearing him say this made me realize that a true leader does not have to be perfect, they just have to make a differential influence within a group, and there are many ways to do this. In my site contribution paper, I highlighted the fact that I wanted to be okay with making mistakes and ensure I learned from them, and I am proud to say that I was able to live up to this goal.

While I enjoyed so many parts of the job this summer, I am still not sure if it the place for me. However, in writing this paper, I can see how much I have actually learned. I have improved my technical skills, such as critical thinking, research, and negotiation. I have also gained a stronger understanding of softer capabilities, like how to be an effective team member and what it means to work for a large corporation. Because of this, even if AlphaSights is not the place for me, I know that this was an invaluable experience. The reflections I have written this summer have served as a reminder of the amount I have learned and progressed. Further, this experience has helped me decide what I want in future jobs. While it has not shown me the exact industry I want to work in, there are specific features of future opportunities I know I want. I really enjoyed being a part of a team and know that I want to work in a similar type of environment. I have also realized I like working at a job where you can get some sort of gratification and see the impact your work is making. This summer, I wanted to have an experience where I could learn as much as possible, and I am grateful to say that this was definitely the case

 

Works Cited

Alex Friedman, Personal Plan Paper, April 2019