Week 5: Solving Problems/Improving Leadership

Through observations and interactions at my internship, I have come across two things which I believe to be leadership shortcomings in my internship organization: (1) poor mentorship and (2) under-use of interns.

Though the firm tried to transfer a lot of the traditional methods of mentorship to this remote internship, they have not accounted for the “remote” aspect and modified enough, leading to poor mentorship. I am supposed to have an Intern Coach, Staffing Director, and a Relationship Leader to support me through my eight week internship. However, because of being remote, it has been very hard to get my hands on these people in order to find face-to-face time in-which I can learn from them. When in a traditional office, it may have made sense for the intern to seek out moments of mentorship but while remote, everyone is more inaccessible and separate from others, making the onus of responsibility on the intern a little out of place and more difficult to reach the same level of mentorship and guidance as one might have received in the office.

The issue of poor mentorship may be exacerbated by the under-use of interns issue. After talking to my fellow interns in my specialty group, all of us are struggling to complete our utilization goal of 80%. Part of this is because our directors/coaches who are supposed to ensure we are being fully utilized do not reach out, possibly because it is more out of their way in a remote world than in an office settings. Clearly, this is an underuse of the interns and we could be utilized better. I believe that this issue starts with poor communication and expectations from the side of the firm employees. None of the people I have worked with are aware of a how long our internship is and be what we’ve been trained/what we know how to do. This makes it harder for us to be deployed onto client projects because the people we work with most, i.e. the associates, don’t have any idea what we’ve been up to, and they don’t know that we have a bunch of free time. In addition, I do not believe that our coaches or deployment directors also have any idea what you’ve been trained in or how we are supposed to reach utilization, which appears to be a failure of expectations because whoever taught them how to do their position did not modify for remote work. As a result, there are portions of my day where I don’t know what is going on. 

I believe both the issue of poor mentorship and the underuse of interns could be solved by more training for the firm employees on the front end about what the interns will be learning/what is expected from that position as well as clearer expectations for the interns as to how we are expected to find work. If their goal is to have us reach mainly reach out to others about finding more responsibilities, then I wish that had been more clear during our on boarding because at times, it feels as if I do not know what is expected from me on that front.