Managing your remote internship [2/3] : Management mistakes

I decided to write a long series of articles on the evolution of working practices and methods. I am convinced that we are living in a period of radical transformation and it is important to take an interest in these changes in order to adapt without undergoing them.

After reading the articles on working in confinement, I realized that there is a lot of content circulating on telework but none on internships. So here is the first article in a series on telework internships.

The first part [1/3] is on Productivity and third parts will be on How to find an internship during quarantine [3/3].

Before starting, please be aware that the current situation is not “real” telework. It is forced home work. During “real” telework, you can work in the place and with the people of your choice.

1) How to solve the lack of work ?

If you’re an intern in a company that sells services or physical products, it’s probably idling.

Having fewer tasks than at the office is normal. Look on the bright side. You get paid, you continue to learn and you gain experience from home.

In this situation, it’s tempting to do as little as possible. The green light on collaboration tools which shows you’re logged in doesn’t stop anyone from getting caught up in the browser tabs. YouTube suggestions, the Facebook News Feed, and your Tinder notifications are not your friends.

In addition, your tutor may be having trouble managing his or her own work, and his or her mental workload may not be able to think of you.

What you can do concretely to chance that situation:

• Ask your tutor to find tasks for you to do, usually it won’t be something that takes a long time to do, but you will avoid impostor syndrome. Don’t hesitate to insist, nobody will blame you if you are given a job.
• Do your own internship. Even if it’s not supposed to be the purpose of the experiment, find your own work. This is the time to work on something you really like or on a subject you haven’t worked on before. Think about tasks you were supposed to do before confinement. Also ask yourself how you can improve team productivity.

Do you think it’s weird to ask your supervisor about work? Be aware that boredom is a cause of burnout. This concept is called bore out.
A job where you have nothing to do is as mentally tiring as overwork.

Forcing your training supervisor to find you a job, or setting up your own tasks, will help you get through a better confinement.

2) How to solve non-quantifiable work ?

If we realize very quickly when there is a lack of work, it is more difficult to determine when the work required is unclear or not.

When I say “unclear”, I am not talking about tasks that are not understandable, but rather about final objectives without intermediate steps.

I am going to talk about a personal case. When I was in San Francisco, I was involved in e-commerce. Often, my boss would ask me to “make sales”. At first glance this seems clear and quantifiable. When you look more closely, it doesn’t seem so.

Making sales in e-commerce is not just about launching ads, changing the description of the sales page or sending emails.
It’s working on conversion and retention, site funnel, customer service and so on. Things that are already goals in themselves and if done right can generate sales.

“Make a sale” is like saying “make a site” for a developer. Without information and intermediary steps, there are too many variables to take into account for the work to be done properly.

You will rarely reach the goal, despite your efforts. If the company in question is in financial difficulty and you are in a key position, you will be under even more pressure.

Usually, non-quantifiable objectives are cross-cutting for a team. A product/service that doesn’t sell is the fault of an entire team. If you are dirty and the product is bad, you can be Jordan Belfort, there will be few sales. If you are a product manager and the team sales is not effective, you can be Steve Jobs, your product will have difficulty selling.

This situation is rare but it happens in some early stage startups and SMEs with little established processes. Some founders, a minority fortunately, see interns as profiles capable of doing everything, and expect the same expertise as an employee, without the salary of course ;)

What you can do concretely to chance that situation:

• Ask for a clear and precise list of tasks from your internship supervisor. Even if these tasks are silly and repetitive, they should be quantifiable. This is not for your internship report but to be happy at work. And your supervisor will easily be able to see that you are doing your job. Again, there are scientific reasons. Your brain needs to tell itself at the end of the day, “I’ve done X number of tasks, that’s great”.
• If you’re not given a clear list, create your own tasks and show your team that you’re moving forward. Check your own boxes, even if you don’t reach the final goal. Even with bad results, instead of “you didn’t do your job” you will have “by what other means do you think you will achieve the goal? This will lead your manager to give you leads to avoid starting from nowhere.

3) How to solve Micromanagement ?

If certain superiors neglect you as mentioned above. Others develop a fear that you will not do your job and are willing to use every possible means of control. This behaviour is rarely voluntary, it is often a lack of trust and delegation on the part of your manager.

The Wikipedia article in French explains this phenomenon perfectly

“Micromanagement can be recognized by a tendency of the manager to carry out the tasks assigned to his subordinates. Benign forms occur when the manager can perform an employee’s work more efficiently. In the severe forms, the manager lacks the required efficiency skills, but still tries to dictate to his subordinates not only what to do, but how to do a particular task; he delegates responsibility, but not authority. It is also linked to requests for unnecessary and overly detailed reports (“reportomania”).

Typical examples include, but are not limited to, performance monitoring. A micromanager tends to require constant and detailed monitoring and tends to focus too much on process rather than on overall performance, quality and results. Frequently, a micromanager requires much more detailed and innocuous information from employees than he or she can actually process.

At the same time, decisions may be delayed, overall goals and objectives are often unclear, the flow of information between employees may be restricted, the direction of a project may be changed several times in opposite directions, and the results of a project may be less important than maintaining a sense of control. Micromanagers are usually irritated when a subordinate makes decisions without consulting them, even if the decisions are entirely at the subordinate’s level of authority. “

The fact that you are not in the workplace, and that in the collective imagination a trainee cannot be autonomous, will amplify the situation.

What you can do concretely to chance that situation:

• Talk directly to your supervisor. In general this is not voluntary. Few people have been trained to manage from a distance.
• Be proactive about your tasks and projects. Show that you are trustworthy and the extent of your skills.
• Get into meditation, it’s a good thing I publish a weekly newsletter on the subject.

If the situation doesn’t change, there are two scenarios:

• It’s the beginning of your internship. You don’t see yourself staying in a relationship with someone you no longer love and who doesn’t want to change things. It’s the same thing for work. Taking on yourself and “waiting for it to pass” will only make the situation worse. You will not develop skills and you will be disgusted with your experience. Which is a shame because there are some great internship stories.
• You’re halfway through your internship. Tell yourself that the hard part is done. Buy a calendar, count the days, and share your experience on Glassdoor and with your colleagues to report the situation.

NB: for employers who read me, remember that your team’s productivity and investment is the most important thing for your company. A box is first and foremost about people.
The advice I give is to make the person you employ feel good. Because paying a trainee to be useless in the end is useless. A person who is happy at work will be proactive, motivated and productive. It’s a win-win situation for you and your employees.

If you liked the article, don’t hesitate to add me on LinkedIn or to send me a mail to samuel.amsallem@edu.em-lyon.com, I will be happy to answer you!