Week 4- Leader/Follower Relationships

In this week of my internship, I really focused on the relationships between leaders at Wells Fargo and followers of those leaders. When looking at the dynamics of these relationships, of course they are affected by the changing times of the pandemic, as creating, building, and maintaining relationships during this time has been a difficult task. However, the employees at Wells Fargo that I have been working with have shown that although there are obstacles that are making relationships difficult, it is still possible to maintain and create them.

In the organization, work is mostly structured through teams. Interns report directly to their hiring managers and work with teams on various projects and tasks with those teams. I have gotten to know several hiring managers and other interns who are working on teams. It has been great to develop relationships with peers and other leaders in the organization besides my direct hiring manager who I already have gotten to know well. When I have calls or meetings with these interns and managers, the leader to follower dynamics are smooth, relaxed, and less formal. It is a space where interns and managers can discuss ideas with each other freely, and it is just as easy to speak to one of the managers as it is to one of the interns. Given this atmosphere, there is a high level of trust between the interns and managers.

In larger group calls that contain interns from other internship programs within Wells Fargo, the formality and structure of leadership and the followers of leaders is increased. These calls and meetings are facilitated by program managers who are leaders of various intern programs which contain more interns. As they have to manage and assist more interns, their leadership styles become more formal and structured. This makes sense and is probably consistent with most organizations, as the leaders speak or lead larger groups of people, they usually become more formal in their styles. 

When speaking to other interns in my project groups, it is interesting to observe how leader and follower relationships emerge. With these relationships, there is not a manager who is clearly the leader. As these groups are with all interns, usually leaders emerge because of actions they take in the group. These actions could be being the first person in the group to reach out for meeting times, or being the person to set up the meetings. I have found it very interesting to analyze the differences in relationships between leaders and followers when a clear leader is already present compared to when a leader has to emerge among followers.