Leader/Follower Relations at the IDCCA

Having completed my second week as an intern with the Illinois Democratic County Chairs’ Association, I have gained more insight into leader-follower relations at the organization. Because I live far from the organization’s base in Springfield, am one of only two remote interns in an office that has otherwise returned to work in person. The fact that another intern and I are working remotely has necessitated some changes in the organization that have led to interesting opportunities, but has also created communication challenges.

To address the latter, I began a significant project last week, one on which I will continue to work for the remainder of the summer. I am assisting with data entry for each of the county parties — finding how many of the county’s registered voters cast ballots in 2020, as well as how many Democrats cast ballots, so that the county chairs can assess the performance of their precinct captains. My supervisor, Jillian, instructed me to go county-by-county for this project — so after a day or two, I reached Cook County, home to Chicago and over 40% of Illinois’ population. Obviously, Cook County was taking substantially longer than the other counties. However, Jillian had forgotten to tell me I could skip Cook County for this project; when she realized I was working on it she emailed me to inform me of this, but I did not see her message until I had worked on the spreadsheet for several hours. This miscommunication could have been corrected much more easily had I been in the office in person. These communication challenges can prove especially tricky in an environment like that of the IDCCA, in which the structure of work requires that I check in with Jillian each morning to receive my projects for the day. My projects so far have been individual, so not having an open line of communication with another member of the office can lead to mishaps like this one.

With that said, one thing I do appreciate about my experience thus far is the fact that I am being treated like a valuable member of the team. I was included on a weekly conference call last week in which the team discussed their progress on projects that did not pertain to me, as they have been underway for months. However, my work will eventually connect with theirs, since all of these projects are building toward our annual County Chairs’ Brunch on August 18th. Thus, even though the other interns and I had nothing to contribute to the conversation this week because we have not been assigned work for the Brunch yet, I still learned valuable information. In addition to logistics about the brunch, I learned more about the working environment of the IDCCA — based on that one call, I gather that it is a decentralized environment in which all team members, regardless of seniority level, are welcome to contribute their ideas. As my work becomes more relevant to these calls, I will certainly feel comfortable speaking out because it is clear that the diversity opinions is not only welcomed but valued. Dan, the executive director, even said as much during our onboarding meeting.

Though there are certainly communication barriers because of the remote nature of the work that make the leader-follower relationship challenging at times, our relationship is overall strong. I am encouraged by my supervisors’ leadership style so far, and look forward to learning more about this relationship in the coming weeks.