Week 7: Theories in Action

While I may not be in a leadership position as an intern, I do get to observe a lot of leadership.

In my previous theories post, I talked a lot about transactional leadership. In the COVID environment, the firm had become much more transactional in nature because the human connectivity elements were not naturally present like when in the office. The highly transactional nature was super draining and boring, but as the internship has gone on, I’ve found some reprieve by being able to participate in some very different work. It is still very solitary, but I actually enjoy sitting down at my desk to work on a project.

The most interesting pieces of work that I’ve been able to participate in so far are merger and acquisition (M&A) projects. It is a much smaller team with just a principal/partner, one or two senior associates, and one intern (in this case, me). This allows for more direct communication and collaboration. It also is harder in smaller settings to create a feeling of “groupthink” because making a dominant majority with four people is very difficult. Regardless, I was impressed with how the principal in this group handled input and feedback. She would ask the associates for challenging ideas or for potential counterarguments quite frequently in the meetings. Doing this is a good leadership practice because she did not rely on the status of her position to protect her ideas, but instead embraced challenges and potential holes in the arguments. At times, she would even ask me my opinion, though my feedback was much less experienced than that of the associates. I mentally nicknamed this principal the “anti-groupthink” leader because of how active she was in gaining opposing positions.

In larger group contexts, this leader continued these practices, though less directly. In a larger M&A meeting with teams from other divisions and practices, this principal would provide potential challenges to other teams’ comments. Again, this “anti-groupthink” leader worked as the disruptor by not simply accepting the information put forth. I also appreciated that she gave a lot of contribution opportunities for her subordinates in these meetings, often asking them to share what we had talked about as a team prior. In one instance, she asked me to do so despite being an intern (she was also the only partner/principal who chose to bring an intern to the wider meeting which I also thought was pretty cool).

Overall, despite the COVID environment, I witnessed this leader being very effective in multiple contexts, and I think she is a good example of a leader in the business world.