There\u2019s a learning curve with every job, including learning how to master doing the \u2018small things.’ \u00a0From my experiences in legislative offices, work can be mundane and seem like grunt work, but taking the time to be detail oriented, to double check mail is sorted correctly, or even to become the office printer whisperer, helps gain staffer\u2019s trust when the time comes for bigger projects or to attend interesting briefings on their behalf.\u00a0 Especially for the Hill, I found that from the conversations I have had with other interns, there is a huge expectation gap for intern tasks \u2013 many interns come to the Hill expecting to write groundbreaking policy memos on the Congressperson\u2019s preferred issue areas, and find themselves instead sorting mail and being the on the front lines of angry constituent phone calls.\u00a0 This expectation gap, coupled with differences in mindsets, contribute to the divide for interns who love the environment, versus the interns who don\u2019t find the Hill to be the right fit.\u00a0 The interns who do well and come back are the ones who can connect their personal ambitions to their daily tasks, and have an aptitude to grow and challenge themselves by learning about the process, even from the \u2018little things.\u2019<\/p>\n
Path goal theory, as described by Chemers (2000), claims that leaders exist to motivate followers to create better outcomes through their work effort.\u00a0 The mechanisms to motivate followership are dependent on relating tasks to the individuals\u2019 personal goals through different levels of directiveness and supportiveness.\u00a0 With new interns, staff assistants (typically the intern coordinator) need to be nurturing and structuring to provide insight for the internal processes for how the office functions.\u00a0 But when the daily tasks become engrained, staff assistant leadership directiveness lessens, giving interns more autonomy to complete letters and tasks on their own.<\/p>\n
None of the other interns in my cohort last year wanted to come back again to intern or work on the Hill because they found they were \u201cbored\u201d and that their work wasn\u2019t \u201cchallenging.\u201d\u00a0 In hindsight, our supervisor last year, Will, potentially was not as motivating or supportive of their ambitions to do \u201cbigger\u201d things.\u00a0 Rachel, our supervisor this year, had a very different approach to leadership than Will.\u00a0 Whereas Will was very hands-off, Rachel made sure to be supportive by relating to us using her past experiences as a Congressional intern, and often directive for our tasks, such as noting the proper format and language to use when we wrote constituent letters.\u00a0 Rachel\u2019s support was helpful in other ways outside of tasks \u2013 when I was nervous about being a leader in a male-dominated intern group, Rachel was extremely encouraging, and once I grew more comfortable, she trusted me to lead autonomously.\u00a0 Rachel was also extremely supportive of my career ambitions to work on the Hill, and due to my experience last summer, she entrusted me to cover her role for her when she was out a few days, and for whenever she needed to step out of the office.<\/p>\n
Path goal theory is dependent on the leader learning the follower\u2019s personal mindsets and ambitions and observing whether they are either growth-oriented, challenge-seeking followers who are more comfortable with unstructured tasks, or change-adverse, low-growth followers who require more leadership structure (Chemers 2000).\u00a0I viewed every task she gave me as a way to learn about daily job functions as either a staff assistant or legislative correspondent, which encouraged me to pay close attention to detail.\u00a0As a result, when it came to tasks I completed, Rachel directiveness significantly lessened, as I typically would enjoy doing research on my own and use each opportunity to dive in deeper to the legislative process.\u00a0 My coworkers were often nervous to answer the phones or had questions for how to do complete daily tasks, which is why they required a more structured work environment and guidelines to follow, whether it was by asking me or Rachel for what to do in different situations.<\/p>\n
In Congressional offices, staffers are drawn to be public servants, and while they could make much more with their talents and writing abilities by working in the private sector, there is an affinity for the \u2018warm-glow\u2019 and the motivation to do well to play a larger role in giving back to the constituency and the nation.\u00a0 For staffers, it appears the leadership from Members trickles down through each office, and the connection of the greater public service goal encourages staffers to perform their job to best represent the Congresswoman.\u00a0 Leadership on the Hill is thus inherently tied to representing the people as an overarching personal ambition, even under stressful, time sensitive legislative periods when research is crammed in right before votes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There\u2019s a learning curve with every job, including learning how to master doing the \u2018small things.’ \u00a0From my experiences in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4398,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[76624],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theories-into-action"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3919","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\/4398"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3919\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}