Leader/Follower Relationships: CSRHub

CSRHub was founded as a remote company, with the CEO in Seattle, CFO in New York, and teams spread out around the U.S., Russia, England, and Germany. Covid-19 did not have a big impact on the company’s leader/follower relationships, as there was no need for an adaptation period to remote working. Due to the remote foundation and small work force, work is structured in an asynchronous way with emphasis on regular communication. There is no standardized procedure to be followed, as the current expansion and improvement brings all sorts of new problems for the different teams to tackle. Due to the ever-changing projects on the database and website, communication and regular meetings are crucial to ensure all team members are up to date on decisions and changes. Bahar and Cynthia, the CFO and CEO, make all big decisions and give final approval on blog posts, newsletters, data sources, subscriptions, etc. This requires a huge time commitment on their part, but as the leaders of this growing organization, they make themselves available to be the centralized source of decision-making. The commitment from CSRHub’s leaders to be available gives their teams the opportunity to try new ideas.

Feedback as a practice has always been emphasized during my time at CSRHub. Not only do I receive feedback from my supervisor, but she asks for my opinions on her work, and the CEO and CFO have both given me feedback on my work and designs. As an intern, to be able to regularly have my work reviewed by the founders of the company is a valuable and rewarding experience. For example, while working on the new website pages, I was able to create multiple different designs for certain pages; Bahar and Cynthia reviewed them and gave feedback. As a result from this, they decided that my writing could be used on different pages of the website, and my role during that time shifted toward content creation and temporarily away from design.  Bahar and Cynthia, as the centralized source of decisions and direction for the company, are able to give me insight on the bigger picture of what is currently going on at the company beyond my work. This is crucial because the company is entirely remote, without their insight, I would have no clue what the data and tech teams are working on. Their centralized and participative leadership style is key in the success and drive at CSRHub.