Non-Traditional Leader-Follower Relationships in a Remote Internship

Since my internship this summer is remote, it has been more difficult to discern the leader-follower relationships between the interns (followers) and our supervisors (leaders). However, my supervisors, Sam and Hassan, have done their best to allow us to get to know them, communicate openly, and form professional relationships throughout the summer.

We have monthly periods of mentorship from each supervisor (as well as an outside investor) during which we have 1 hour long Zoom meeting to discuss how we are doing so far with the internship and to discuss any questions, concerns, or comments we have about the way the program is being run. This allows the interns an opportunity to openly communicate about whether or not the leadership style of the organization is working well or whether it could benefit from a shift in structure.
The work is primarily directed towards the interns in a way that allows us to be almost entirely autonomous and self-motivated. At the start of the program, we were allowed to choose which project we were most interested and would like to work on, and as the months have progressed, our autonomy has only increased. Most days, we are each working on our own projects, which we self-assigned, and if we need any clarification or direction, we can easily set up a Zoom call with our mentor or supervisor.

During one of our monthly trainings, in which our supervisor chooses a topic to discuss, such as teamwork in the office, open communication, or the structure of a company, Sam Chin talked to us about how he is purposefully giving us more autonomy than we are most likely used to because he wants to push us to learn how to operate independently. He doesn’t want us to rely on him to give us instructions every single day, but rather have us come to him when we feel the need to. This is not to say he just threw us into the deep end of the pool without teaching us how to swim. We had multiple days of training and introductions the first week so we would feel comfortable coming to Hassan and him with any problems. Therefore, this successfully fostered a more horizontal, decentralized leadership style within the company.

Further, although we are only interns and therefore typically seen as the “bottom of the corporate ladder”, at Cavi Consulting, we have a good deal of influence in the decisions of the company. For example, Sam and Hassan value our input and ideas because we are younger and thus more in tune with the wants, needs, and thought-processes of the demographic that we are trying to reach. A few weeks ago, we were discussing the best marketing strategy to market our online courses, and I gave my input about how I thought we should used Social Media platform A instead of the one they were originally going to use to promote the courses. My supervisors really took my input into consideration and we ended up using the platform I suggested instead. This is a micro example of how people who aren’t necessarily in typical leadership positions can have influence on those in higher positions.