Week 2: Leader/Follower Relationships

Although I have only spent one full week with my team at Aetna, to date, I feel qualified to describe and categorize the leader and follower relationships among our department and more widely. Throughout my first week with Aetna Better Health of Kentucky (ABHOK), following a tiresome and exhaustive orientation process, I gained a thorough understanding of my team and their functions and duties, as well as the people of whom it composes. My team comprises the Medicaid department for ABHOK, and in normal/non-Covid-19 times, everyone lives and works in the office in Louisville, KY. The team is currently operating in a virtual format which has allowed greater flexibility in involving outside partnerships and organizations in different projects. From what I understand, they hope to return to the office by the fall of 2021. In describing the organizational chart of the Medicaid team, at the top of my direct team is Paige Mankovich, the Chief Operating Officer who is also serving as my manager this summer. Paige’s day-to-day schedule is formidable, as she jumps between virtual meetings throughout the day, providing comments, feedback, support, criticism, and approval to various departments and organizations without blinking an eye. Her leadership style can be best described as coaching, as she exemplifies high directive and high supportive behavior to everyone on the team, regardless of whether they are an intern or a similarly ranked managerial staff member. I noticed this almost immediately as I began working with Paige. Through observing the way she leads during our 1:1 meetings to the way she participates in larger group, cross-team meetings, Paige balances supporting our team through providing affirmation and assurance while also actively encouraging team members to produce actionable items and results.  

Besides writing about Paige’s leadership style and the way it impacts her ability to effectively and efficiently run our team, I also believe it is important to discuss the relationship and trust levels between Paige and the rest of her reporting team members. Resoundingly, I have heard positive feedback about Paige from other team members. Many of the team members I have interacted with thus far have echoed the sentiment that Paige is supportive, directing, incredibly intelligent, and an all-around jack-of-all-trades. I trust the confidence my other team members have in Paige and already have been able to see that I have not been misled. As a personal anecdote to expand on this characterization of Paige’s leadership style, when I expressed to her during one of our weekly meetings how grateful I was for her to take time out of her week to meet with me and discuss my goals, my progress, my work, and the organization, she, very simply and kindly, told me that regardless of however many meetings she had in a day, she would shift them around in order to fit in our 1:1. Having this show of faith and trust in my abilities as an intern from my manager so early in my internship has been truly reassuring, and I look forward to learning more from Paige and her leadership style throughout the summer.