Reflection 6: Thursday, July 8th (Anna Marston, Council for Court Excellence)

Category: Solving Problems/Improving Leadership

During my time at CCE so far — closing on my 6th week — I see very few issues with the way that the organization is run, even from a remote setting. It honestly took me some thought in crafting a response for this topic, because CCE is so organized, well-run, and dedicated to improving the DC justice system. In terms of operational issues, the only problem I see is that, because CCE only has 6 full-time staff members, each person is a bit overloaded with meetings, projects, advocacy, and administrative tasks. Although each staff member has a “title” that designates their main focuses, there are times where those titles become a bit confusing because each staff member is contributing to so many projects. This is often due to the collaborative nature of the team and that having extra sets of eyes on a writing piece or project is almost always useful. Subsequently, Misty, being the Executive Director, oversees a little bit of everything, making her job extremely high-stakes for CCE and her position in the legal community. I feel that this over-extending of staff roles could be mitigated a bit by making the roles of both the interns and full-time staff a bit clearer; in an ideal world, CCE could hire more employees, but as a nonprofit, that is unlikely to be possible with a limited budget.

As an intern who studies Leadership, I definitely take a close inventory of the leadership structure of CCE and how it can be improved. I truly do feel there is little to be improved in this sense because CCE not only well-compensates their employees for their hard work but also works as a team internally and externally. In a situation where I felt I could share my strategies to address any problem-solving issues, I would feel comfortable sharing these at one of our weekly staff meetings. Being a team of all-women with approachable natures, I feel that the power dynamic between myself and supervisors is very healthy; therefore, I would feel comfortable adding any concerns to the weekly agenda and bringing them up. Misty has encouraged interns to share their feedback and requests for feedback during these staff meetings–whether that is to workshop a project, brainstorm ideas for something new, or discuss the team’s culture. Knowing the team, I am more than certain that the staff members would be incredibly receptive to any concerns I raised during a staff meeting, in the Microsoft Teams group chat, or to my main supervisor Casey during our weekly check-in meetings. Taking my Leadership Studies education into account, CCE offers an environment where I can freely and comfortably use my voice to solve problems and improve the company’s leadership.