{"id":3553,"date":"2019-08-04T22:45:49","date_gmt":"2019-08-05T02:45:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship2019\/?p=3553"},"modified":"2019-08-04T22:45:49","modified_gmt":"2019-08-05T02:45:49","slug":"the-age-gap-in-leadership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship2019\/2019\/08\/04\/the-age-gap-in-leadership\/","title":{"rendered":"The Age Gap in Leadership"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now that our new Membership Coordinator (and my direct supervisor) has settled in, productivity has shifted immensely with her leadership. Katie previously worked in membership for the VMFA, so I was happily surprised by her experience after such a turbulent transition of Membership Coordinators. After I gladly relinquished the desk I had been using in the interim, Katie immediately took to reorganizing and purging all of the files I had been frustrated with, yet reluctant to throw away. Her prior knowledge of a much larger membership program gave her the confidence to determine what is and is not necessary to retain. We\u2019ve already set new procedures in record-keeping in her first two weeks, and I\u2019ve worked closely with her as she transitions Bens\u2019 work into her own system.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Katie\u2019s younger age and gender have also shifted the dynamic of the office. As the museum expands, they\u2019ve been hiring younger employees. This has tilted the average age of the office, which has counteracted the frequently used phrase, \u201cbut we\u2019ve always done it that way\u201d. With Katie here, we are no longer doing it \u201cthat way\u201d, but more efficiently. There are still some things that Katie cannot change, due to the museum\u2019s generally older audience. Frankly, her age has played more of a factor than gender when it comes to leadership dynamics within the office. She always has a witty response to our president\u2019s jokes, which he learned from his days at VMI in the late 1960s. Her understanding of younger generations has helped immensely when working with our junior executive board. Initially, I saw the museum as a very \u201cVirginia\u201d workplace, where more seems to be accomplished after a smoke break than a formal meeting. However, the age gap no longer plays such a large role in the organizational structure of the museum and its departments. Now that the museum\u2019s staff is skewed younger, I\u2019ve been introduced as a colleague, rather than an intern. As we prepared food and drinks for the summer board meeting last week, the director joked that that was the first and last time I would be asked to make coffee during my internship. I\u2019ve also been invited to more and more meetings as I learn new skills, which has broadened my understanding of the museum\u2019s function immensely.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Now that I have a direct supervisor again, the nature of collaboration and achievement in the office has changed as well. As much as I appreciate how much trust the older members of the department placed in us, I often felt as though I was just taking shots in the dark. The Director is always incredibly supportive, but I was definitely doing way more than I expected and learning faster than I thought myself capable. Now, with a younger Membership Coordinator, we interns have a more easily approachable, direct supervisor who is willing to delegate and accomplish tasks with an organized efficiency, rather than trying to make sure that everything gets done, no matter the method. Now that things have settled after Katie\u2019s first two weeks, the summer board meetings, and the end of our last major appeal, we\u2019ve had the time to be diligent with our methods and organization. Katie has successfully taken responsibility for most of what I had been doing in the past five weeks, so now our time as interns is mostly focused on streamlining our routine tasks so that Katie (or a fall semester intern) can easily pick up where we left off once the summer is over. With so much transition, it only seemed natural to ensure that all of our procedures could be easily understood by any future additions to the development office.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now that our new Membership Coordinator (and my direct supervisor) has settled in, productivity has shifted immensely with her leadership.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3037,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[76607],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-organizational-culture"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3037"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3553\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}