The Intern Diaries: The Beginning of the End

I agreed to expanding our internship program without too many expectations.  After all, even though they had the RBA results that predicted they would be successful to varying degrees, they are still in college, with no experience to speak of.  Well, I am now convinced more than ever that giving people with potential a chance – and giving them the Role-appropriate challenges to meet – is a better strategy than bringing people on with fat resumes but nothing else.

The interns are beginning to leave and on their last day they have decided to make presentations to us, and their fellow interns, on what they accomplished and what they learned.

Crystal was the first to leave this week.  She’s going to visit family in China.  She had been the last to join us, a week after the others, so she had the shortest time.  But oh did she ever use it well!  She presented market research on one of our ‘skunkworks’ projects complete with data, analysis, suggestions – better than marketing presentations I’ve seen from senior executives.  But no wonder – as a strong Action Former who is also capable of being a Vision Mover, she is a powerhouse at any age !  And she learned enough about herself to be very clear on her entry level career goal – product management.

She was closely followed by Lindsay, now on her way back to Texas.  Since Lindsay is primarily a Communicator, I suggested to her that she just do an informal verbal presentation.  So I was surprised when she showed up with a PowerPoint.  Turns out while she didn’t think she had done much, when she started listing what she’d actually accomplished, she felt it would work better to do some writing.  I laughed.  Communicators are often thought of as lazy because they like to talk.  Even they can think of themselves that way.  But oh my, was she ever convinced as page after page of her accomplishments filled the screen.  Let’s just say the Social Marketing Optimization is in her future, whether she stays in her psychology major or not.

Best of all, while it is the beginning of the end of internship, it is not even the end of the beginning of these wonderful relationships!

The Intern Diaries: Week Four

Around the fourth day after Mr. Sperm meets Miss Egg, differentiation begins.  (If you slept through high school biology, differentiation is when cells start to get specialized.)

Ok, biology lesson is over.  I was just mulling over how week four of the Interns could be subtitled, The Week of Differentiation.  It isn’t that they weren’t fully formed individuals when they arrived.  It’s how we see them and assign work to them that’s undergone some subtle changes.

Lindsay is continuing to work on social marketing optimization because she’s a star Communicator.  Not surprising.  This line from her Role-Based Assessment pretty well covers why I wanted her for this project:

She will quickly make contacts throughout the organization and get to know almost everyone. She is especially cooperative and will also try to do almost anything she is asked to do. Her focus is on interpersonal interaction and trying to get everyone to work together harmoniously. She won’t do this by direct means but by attempting to broker the arrangements that bring people together in a positive manner. As a result, she is likely to be respected by those she has contact with.

But we needed to get the database cleaned up so despite the fact that she also had this in her report: “She will not want to do organizational tasks…”, there she was in the conference room with some others, working on exactly that task, with music emanating from someone’s laptop, a pile of snacks, and the sunniest of good natures.

Meanwhile, Kartik, the Action Former, whose report included the following, managed to reorganize, clean up, and optimize my consultant certification files.  Here’s Kartik in a nutshell:

This candidate is the type of employee who can be found in the front of the group with marker in hand, developing a list of things that need to be done or important points or assignments. He is the consummate organizer. The key is that he does not organize for the present but as a way of getting things ready for the future. His style is one of handling many things simultaneously. He believes that multi-tasking in a rapidly evolving environment is essential to keep on top of everything.

The others too have their unique qualities and it’s amazing how much more productive they are when we recognize them, give them work they enjoy, and celebrate the results.

It just makes good business sense.

Happy ending: Lindsay has a project beginning Monday that is totally about communicating with people, while Kartik will get a great new organization project!

Coherent Conductors, Crabby Culture

The simplest definition of corporate culture I’ve ever seen was “the way we do things around here.”  But corporate culture is anything but simple.  It actually derives from the human infrastructure, the energy of the organization as determined by the predominating Roles and coherency of the people who get the work of the organization done.

So I was particularly interested in Daniel Rubin‘s column in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer in which he mentions the predominant newspaper culture as “crabby, but effective.”  This is the setup to compare it to the culture at the US Census Bureau which, while it sounds less crabby, is also likely much less effective.  (If you want to know more, you really want to read the My Two Census blog – nonpartisan and written by presumably crabby political journalists, this is a gem.)

I bet they have a lot of Conductors in print journalism.  Dedicated to getting things ‘right’, using the power of the pen to do the work of the sword and, in general, teaching us the truth as they see it, of course they get crabby at times.  They don’t get nearly the respect they deserve, no matter what type of organization they work in.  But show me a bunch of coherent Conductors, with maybe a coherent Vision Former, a couple of Action Formers and a few Communicators and Curators and you’ve got a team that’s going to follow the Vision and truly give you the news that’s fit to print.

And it will be worth reading.

Learning From Interns

It’s like having a learning lab.  Not for them, for us. They apply online, take their Role-Based Assessment and we know where they’ll fit.  Then the surprises start.

Take Lauren, the Action Mover/Communicator.  Could there be anyone more suited to talking to customers and getting them what’s good for them?  So I figured she must be majoring in marketing or communications.  Was I ever wrong!  Some well meaning counselor convinced her that she should stay in accounting after she expressed her doubts.  No matter that she didn’t really like the work, though of course she is smart enough to do well in any course.  She’d already invested time, and her parents’ money, in the accounting track and it was the prudent thing to advise her to continue with it.

I knew she would be fantastic at any task involving connecting with people in a meaningful way and quickly getting what was needed.  And I have not been disappointed.  In a few months I’ve seen her do all manner of amazing things.  Even though I knew it was in her DNA – that she would inevitably do these things and do them well – it was like watching a bud bloom.

Now her internship is coming to an end and I wish I could get her and the counselor in the same room and remind them that real life is not always like in books.

Now that I think of it, this internship thing is just like speed parenting.

Managing the Receptionist’s Performance

I love WordPress.  There’s a dashboard where you can find out what people searched that led them to your blog, which is how I found out that someone was searching for a way to do a performance evaluation on a receptionist.  In the past people had to ask another person directly when they needed something.  Now you can just do a search and hope for the best.  Except, I suppose, if you really like to get your answers from a person.  I do, which is why I’m such a fan of really great receptionists.

Great receptionists may not have all the answers, but they have two important qualities.  First, they really want to help you.  Second, they usually know who to go to for the best answer.  And they don’t give up easily when the answer is hard to find – they just go to the next person on their list.

If you want to find one, you can screen people with Tools4Recruiting and look for a solid Communicator.  That’s their Role, their total way of being.   Don’t ask if they have the “communication skill set” (I HATE THE TERM “SKILL SET” – sorry for shouting but that is how much I hate that term.)  All you will get is people who can speak well and use the spell checker when they send emails.  That is not what you want.  Assuming you want your receptionist to make customers feel confident you can deliver and to make potential employees really want to be on your team, you want something else.  So junk that old typing test.

Managing that receptionist’s performance?  I assume you mean motivation.  That is everyone else’s job, actually.  If you can get them to respect the receptionist by stopping for a moment’s greeting every morning and a “have a great evening” (or weekend) at the end of the day – something that says you really like your receptionist – you should have a loyal, well functioning employee.  I hope that’s what you’re after, not a bingo card of meaningless “ratings”.