Week 1 – Group Dynamics First Impressions

This past week, I began my internship at Sephora, based in San Francisco, CA. As a remote intern whose manager has also never worked in person with her colleagues (she was hired during the pandemic), I anticipated that the experience would be unique. I was pleasantly surprised to find out about how engaging my team is despite the barriers that might normally affect remote workers.

I was assigned to the Strategic Sourcing department, and since there are many moving parts, there is a small team of experts in areas such as real estate development or IT working on managing requests for finances over $500,000. They are a small team of 9, and although I have not had the opportunity to see them all work on the same project, I have seen their communication and relationships with one another.

Despite their being a hierarchy in the group, where there is technically a manager and individuals who report to her, they seem to work as equals and do not address one another with any formal language. The group is not exclusive, and they were all very open to scheduling time to meet with me to learn more about my interests inside and outside of work, and to let me know to message them with any questions I may have, no matter how small. We communicate mainly over Microsoft Teams, and there are a lot of “face to face” meetings that range from 15 minutes to up to 2 hours.

More specific to the topic of leader/follower relationships, every month Sephora hosts a headquarters-wide Town Hall, where every employee in the company is invited to hear about the high level work that is being produced in Sephora USA by the chief staff. I was astonished to hear about how open these meetings were, as well as how frequent. The meeting that I attended this past Thursday showed me how although there is a maintained hierarchy within Sephora, it is a fluid dynamic where anyone at the company can contribute to and learn from other teams. I am excited to be a part of such a fluid power structure, and although I am not sure how it affects responsibility / work load, I enjoy how I have the opportunity to get a wide view of how the company operates.

Although it should have been more difficult to get a sense of how leader/follower dynamics and group dynamics function over an online internship, I left this past week with a strong sense of their company culture, and I am excited to learn more about it!