Managing Interns

If you are looking at moving into leadership but not sure that you are ready, give some thought to managing interns. It can be a lot of fun, and if you mess it up you won’t scar them for life. Maybe.

Many firms use interns as a way to fill out their workforce while also offering a chance for talent development — and, often, an audition for future full-time employment — to rising students and recent graduates. Singapore firms, for example, often have university students on “attachment” as part of the students’ academic program. These interns, who might spend a summer with you, or perhaps a fall or spring semester, may often be assigned to a specific project and usually will not be in a position to bring down the company if they fail. This puts them in a perfect position for you to practice with them.

Leading interns offers many of the same responsibilities and challenges of leading full-time employees or free agents, with just enough differences to make life interesting for you. The differences will allow you to better develop a leadership style that can be adapted to different situations.

Interns will need guidance just as regular employees do; actually, they usually need more. They need to start with a clear set of objectives, and this might be a little easier for you to develop because of the limited scope of their work. They will need regular feedback from you, perhaps a little more often than others do since they are only with you a short time, and perhaps a little more in depth since, from their perspective, they are there for experience and professional development. You do not have to worry about another firm poaching them out from under you if they are talented, but you do have to be thinking about whether or not you will want to offer them full-time employment later.

In many cases, this will be the first real working experience for your intern, and they will be looking at you as a role model. Whether they see you as a good role model or a bad one is up to you; many people finish their internships with an idea of how NOT to lead, and some abandon the field entirely based on an experience with a poor manager. So, try to see things from their perspective, because the image you convey to them is something they are watching very closely.

If you know you have some weaknesses when it comes to leading, this is a good chance to work on those. Are you uncomfortable talking to people? Your interns are pretty low-threat, so you should be more confident in your dealings with them and look them in the eye when talking with them. Are you disorganized? Now that you have others relying on your leadership, focus on organizing your own life as you help organize theirs. If you tend to isolate yourself and have no idea what’s happening in the rest if your company, try to serve as a conduit of information for your interns, and help introduce them around so they can learn more about the firm; in the process, you will learn, too.

A lot of people avoid working with interns because they see it as taking up their time without an obvious payback. Very few people have gone on to become CEOs because they agree to participate as a manager in the intern program. But if you are trying to put yourself on a leadership track, this is a good opportunity to work on your skills with very little risk.