The Top 3 Ways Your Intern Has An Advantage Over You

The Top 3 Ways Your Intern Has An Advantage Over You

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As that piano-playing philosopher Randy Newman once sang, it’s lonely at the top.

Being a leader in your industry may come with years of experience-honed expertise, a contact list of every power player in town and a wall full of framed degrees, but rising to upper management levels can also have a distorting effect on your perception of both your company and your place in it.

So while you may be riding high, there are (at least!) three advantages that your company intern over you.

  1. The intern can ask for help.

The longer we sit in a well-regarded role, the harder it can become to let others know that we don’t have all the answers. Admitting ignorance can seem the most painful option—although ignoring a problem you don’t understand can certainly prove more damaging in the long run.

According to research conducted by the London Business School and the Kellogg Graduate School of Business, power can often have a negative impact on our relationships and our perception of others. One implication of that study is that power corrodes trust. The person in the position of authority will come to perceive even acts of kindness and generosity cynically and fear that reciprocation will indicate vulnerability. By asking a coworker or colleague for help, you’re opening yourself up to being vulnerable in a way that your intern does without second guessing himself dozens of times every week. Garret Keizer, the author of “Help: The Original Human Dilemma” writes that within a business context, many fear that asking for help will be used against them at a later date. In fact, when you don’t ask for help, the real problem often ends up snowballing into a much larger issue—a good reason not to put your fear of appearing vulnerable over your need to resolve the task at hand.

  1. The intern hears what everyone thinks.

As a leader, you’re naturally going to be privy to high-level decision-making long before the rank and file is aware of what may be brewing. This type of inside knowledge can seem to be the most valuable information within the corporate structure. But often, it’s not enough.

The intern can pick up on workplace sentiment at various levels. From the casual chit chat at happy hour to the terrific ideas entry-level employees might be too terrified to pitch to someone in the C-Suite, the intern may be getting a more well-rounded perspective of the state of your company than you are at the top.

Often, the key to being an approachable executive within your company is fine-tuning your emotional IQ. In fact, an oft-cited UCLA study found that intelligence is only responsible for 7% of leadership success. The other 93% comes from the so-called “soft-skills” like trust and honesty. Many executive education courses delve into this often-overlooked topic that can help build empathetic bridges between you and the beating heart of the company—the employees.

  1. The intern “gets” social media. 

Yes, this is the topic you knew would land right here on this list of things to pick up from your intern. But “getting” social media doesn’t mean that you need to be live-tweeting your board meetings. It’s about learning to leverage this powerful tool to be a key component of your company’s strategic operations.

A recent study led by Stanford University’s Rock Center for Corporate Governance surveyed C-suite executives and leaders across all major North American industries on how their companies use social media—if at all. This study differed from others in the past in that it exclusively polled top-level executives in their respective fields. The average respondent was in his or her mid-50s—certainly not your typical millennial glued to Tumblr. Ultimately, researchers found a serious gap between upper management and the social media engine of their company.

Only 32% of companies surveyed were employing social media to predict risks in their sector. Even fewer—14%–were using social media data to measure how the company was performing. And while the majority of respondents had a personal social media presence of their own, they were overwhelmingly not using these platforms to engage with their customers and research the competition.

Social media is no longer just a procrastination method—it’s a serious business tool that can ultimately be leveraged to great personal and professional success. In fact, global public relations firm Weber Shandwick conducted a survey finding that company stakeholders overwhelmingly support having a social-media friendly CEO—with 73% of employees saying that they actively seek out what their CEOs are saying on social media and 69% saying they would like to see their C-Suite participate online even more often.

As an executive, it’s vital to remember that the learning process is a never-ending one—and sometimes, even the intern can teach you a thing or two.

R Kress
About the Author
R Kress

R. Kress is an Emmy Award winning journalist whose reporting and writing has appeared in national media from NBC News to the International Herald Tribune. She has covered news from cities around the world including Jerusalem, Krakow, Amman and Mumbai.

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