FROM INTERNSHIP TO IMPACTSHIP

Internships are not meant to be free service or a favor that you are doing for emerging Leaders and Talents. They are not a mechanism to supplant an employee in your organization. And they shouldn’t be used for clearing any kind of mundane or non-value work at your organization.

Internships are a great unexplored opportunity or platform for students of all kinds to get real-world experience in a particular way and also in reframing their “purpose” & “meaning” if done appropriately, and for employers, it’s a playground to explore uncharted paths of innovation and process excellence. But when they are not well organized and planned, they won’t be successful for both the students and the organization. The Internship should be fully aimed at creating an Impact for both students and organizations from the first day of engagement.

So what are the drivers for successful engagement?

1. Impact Mastery: It’s all about impact, and this is what you can do for an Intern through your words, actions and thoughts. Since the Millennials and Gen Z are looking for ‘Purpose’ & ‘Meaning’ in what they do, it becomes imperative for Leaders & Managers to ensure that they try to convey Purpose & Meaning in the right manner, which then kick-starts the right enthusiasm, satisfaction, and involvement which then brings in the right kind of work engagement. Students should always see the internship as a means to their great end. The means to reframe their perspective and meaning of the bigger picture called career or life.

2. Learning Mastery: “Learn | Un-learn | Re-learn” should be the pedagogy used by Managers and Leaders to deploy interns in this new norm. Students can come in various forms and flavours, and it becomes essential for Leaders & Managers to ensure they learn from the below-given tools:

• Observation: Students should use the god gifted organ, “eye,” brilliantly to ensure they see something new which no one else has seen. The real essence is in seeing what someone has not even thought of. This can only happen when you are in the unlearning phase and your baggage of old learnings and thoughts. Observation & Questioning revolves under 2 quintessential competencies or traits called — Curiosity & Inquisitiveness. Both are unexplored territories of wealth that Leaders should try to rekindle and develop as part of Impactship.
• Listening: The power of listening needs no explanation, but it only needs super and brilliant execution in the form of discipline and habit. Interns and Leaders should have a mindset to listen and learn from each other, which in turn would help them to widen the perspective of the Impactship topic. Listening requires a lot of discipline and is a vital tool for all emerging leaders at any level.
• Experience: “Your experience is your best teacher.” If this proverb is right, then the whole philosophy of Impactship is to ensure that “Tacit” knowledge of a Leader or Manager is transferred to the Intern during the engagement timelines. Going by the “observation” point, it becomes very vital for interns to cultivate and master 3 great traits to capitalize and catapult “experience”- Curiosity, Listening & Questioning. If done right, this itself sets the Leadership platform or ground for interns to learn, explore, and grow.
• Feedback: Feedback is not the leader’s or manager’s job, the Intern should have a “critical incident” diary to capture and track time and deliverables, which by itself induces or self generates a feedback loop or mechanism. Interns should take time out to reflect on their “do-ables” vs “deliverables” as in the end, it’s the Impactful deliverables that fetches job and bring outs the best for both stakeholders. This is one way to understand whether the interns are drained in transactional or transformational work. The Leader’s or Manager’s role is very important to guide emerging leaders. Their timely feedback intervention would be a “Moment of truth” for interns to explore and reflect on their potential.
• Questioning: “He who Questions, finds the truth.” Both the parties of the “Impactship agreement” should accept and agree to this most hated & dreaded competency. Art of Questioning should be promoted by all means by the Leader and Manager to reinsure that the right learning has been imparted, and if the experience shared is going in the right direction. In most cases, questioning can be observed as a “Feedback” exercise — which is wrong. Questioning brings re-confirmations and reframing of thoughts and perspectives.

3. Supervisory Mastery: This is an opportunity for first-time managers to see how they can impart impactful deliverables through the right way of deploying intern talent. The most critical task for Leaders & Managers here would be in creating a lasting impact on the Interns’ life. The engagement should enable interns to build both their competency/behaviour and technical skills & expertise.

4. Time Mastery: If time is scarce, then both parties should ensure that the whole of “Impact engagement” should meet the “Return on Time” by all means. Both parties need to track feedback and do self-reflections on a timely basis to ensure they beat “ROT” by all means.

5. Evaluation Mastery: Both self and manager evaluation of deliverables should be of primary importance from the start of the engagement. In the end, it’s all about the “purpose” and “impact” both parties bring to the table that matters.

Here are some thoughts to fix the “Impactship” engagement

• Obtain support from your organization’s leadership.
• Be thoughtful when creating the program.
• Create a class of interns.
• Holding an orientation session for managers and mentors and a separate session for students.
• Providing a handbook or website that serves as a guide, answers frequently asked questions, and communicate work rules in a welcoming way. A website for interns has the advantage of being easy to change and can be a way for interns to meet each other. Adaptive uses a special Facebook page for this purpose.
• Offering flex time or other different work schedules.
• Having an intern manager.
• Offering training or encouraging taking outside classes.
• Conducting focus groups and surveys with representatives of your target group.
• Conducting exit interviews.

The real measure for the parties of “Impactship” engagement is the meaning and purpose it serves to both parties — interns and organization. Both parties play a pivotal role in the success of a great internship engagement. If done rightly, it succeeds in building a Leadership pipeline for the organization, and thus it’s time for all the parties to capitalize on the “Internship” game.

By,

Aravind Warrier, Director- Human Resource, RapidValue

This article has been published in the e-newsletter by XIME (Xavier Institute of Management and Entrepreneurship), Kochi.