Leader/Follower Relations Within Small Teams
Since Allied is a global marketing firm, the company has offices all over the world in major cities including: London, San Francisco, Moscow, Madrid, Buenos Aires etc. While these offices are all connected under the umbrella of Allied, each office manages campaigns for clients in their local area. Within each branch of Allied, there are different teams. For example, I am interning for the Field Marketing team in the New York office. Other teams in this office include: Client Solutions, Integrated Owned Media, Creative Solutions, and Integrated Earned Media. There are five members of the Field Marketing team. Melissa is the director of the team and her job is to lead the Field Marketing team, oversee the account executives and troubleshoot for clients. The other four members of the Field Marketing team are account executives. As account executives, each person has specific accounts on which they focus. Since I have been assigned specific accounts, I work directly with the account executive in charge of my assigned account. For example, I’ve been assigned to Netflix, Screen Gems, and the Food Network. Kaitlyn is my supervisor and also the account executive for the Netflix account. Carmen is the account executive on the Screen Gems account, and Cassie is the account executive for the Food Network account. Each account executive is fully in charge of their account which is overseen by Melissa with minimal involvement. Melissa completely trusts her account executives which allows her to focus the majority of her efforts on troubleshooting for clients and leading the team. The Food Network account differs from the others in that Cassie works with Jennifer, another account executive in the San Francisco office. Since they work from opposite coasts, Cassie and Jennifer always function as a virtual team. The rest of the teams are also functioning virtually for now, due to the coronavirus pandemic. The small size of the Field Marketing team allows me to work one on one with each account executive and gain valuable insight from their experience. I have also worked one on one with Melissa, which shows the accessible nature of the team, considering she is the director. While each executive has their own accounts, the team often works together on major projects for specific clients, such as the release of a much anticipated Netflix show. Since each account executive functions as a leader for their account, I get to observe how they handle their accounts and how they delegate work to their interns. I also get to observe how the account executives transition to followers when Melissa is leading a team meeting. Overall, the small size of the Field Marketing team provides for close relationships and efficient communication.