{"id":5067,"date":"2021-06-14T14:20:26","date_gmt":"2021-06-14T18:20:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship2021\/?p=5067"},"modified":"2021-06-14T14:20:26","modified_gmt":"2021-06-14T18:20:26","slug":"week-3-leader-follower-relationships-at-phca","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship2021\/2021\/06\/14\/week-3-leader-follower-relationships-at-phca\/","title":{"rendered":"Week 3 – Leader\/Follower Relationships at PHCA"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I come upon completing my fourth week with Pennsylvania Health Care Association, I have a greater understanding of the leader-follower relationships within the association\u2019s structure which defines the scope and effectiveness of their advocacy work.\u00a0 The office has eleven staff members, each holding the title of \u201cDirector\u201d or higher in their specific area of the long-term care sector.\u00a0 Although the other intern and I are in person, the office is still operating in a hybrid setting, with four staff members choosing to work remotely.\u00a0 By this, in my experience, I have observed the work and decisions made for the association to be more decentralized, leading on its own challenges for the internship program.<\/span><\/p>\n

While the association\u2019s work requires collaboration and teamwork, I noticed, typically, that the same staff members work together depending on their facet of the industry with which they are most familiar.\u00a0 For example, the Director of Policy and Regulatory Affairs collaborates with our Director of Quality Initiatives, and the Director of Strategic Communications and Engagement collaborates with our Director of External Communications very closely on a day-to-day basis.\u00a0 However, there is usually little overlap between these two teams with their specific responsibilities.\u00a0 It also happens that the individuals who are remote work the most with each other, so there is less stress of communication errors because they are all working from home.\u00a0 Although those four staff members are practicing the most efficient methods to complete their work, I have found it to be difficult to connect with them as well as those who are in the office.\u00a0 The office uses Slack as the medium of quick contact and GoToMeeting for video meetings, and I have only \u201cmet\u201d those working remotely once through these platforms.\u00a0 This is also reflected in the overall group work of the association, as the staff working from home are more isolated.\u00a0 I am curious to see how these dynamics may change if the association decides to have all staff working in the office.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Further, this structure of mostly isolated group work influences more self-directed work that is checked by a centralized board.\u00a0 Since the association only has eleven staff advocating on behalf of the long-term care sector, each employee specializes in a specific area of the industry; thus, the culture of the office is more self-directive than standardized.\u00a0 As I have met with staff in the office, I hear a frequent comment that the office environment and their work is always fun because every day brings about new challenges.\u00a0 Therefore, the staff needs to be flexible and creative in their work, especially given the special circumstances of the pandemic and long-term care.\u00a0 However, as PHCA is an association, they are responsive to their membership.\u00a0 So, there is a PHCA Board made up of representatives from their membership, and much of the large campaigns the association takes on must be approved by the Board.\u00a0 This Board serves as a check on the self-directed work done by individual staff in the office to best advocate for the membership.\u00a0 For the association at large, the decision-making is centralized by the Board, while the expertise and initiatives are spearheaded by self-directing staff in the office.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I come upon completing my fourth week with Pennsylvania Health Care Association, I have a greater understanding of the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4692,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[76623],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leader-follower-relationships"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4692"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5067"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5067\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5068,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5067\/revisions\/5068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}