Personal Reputation

I had a strong reputation among my friends for photo shooting, video production, and also graphic design (Photoshop/poster design/brochure design). I was familiar with media production equipment and software and also design software to create these stuff. And this was developed gradually throughout my first year of college.

This was actually a college reputation at first. When I first went to college as a freshman, my major was Creative Media, and the college I was in is called the School of Creative Media (CM). There are several different majors in the college, but during the first two years, everyone in our college takes the same foundation major courses in photography, filming, production, graphic design, etc. Students in other colleges all know what we are doing, and whenever people say that they are from CM, others will assume they are “experts” in photo shooting/video production/graphic design. We also had general education courses where students from different colleges are mixed to take the courses together. General education courses (in my previous university) usually have a lot of group projects, and the projects are in various format. So people usually want to have one student from CM in their group to deal with the artistic aspect of the project (e.g. creating videos for the presentation/designing team posters/creating project websites, etc.).

I enjoyed the benefit of our college reputation for a while and gradually I developed my personal reputation. In my major courses, as well as the general education courses, I created my own work and I was able to create my portfolio at the end of my freshman year. I sometimes will post some of my work on social media, so people get to know my work. I had my own style of photo shooting/video editing/graphic design, friends around me gradually recognized my work and my personal style, instead of recognizing me as merely a CM student. They would ask me to help with their projects or work when they need to do photo shooting/video editing/designing posters/creating brochures. Friends asked me to help create their personal video or create posters for their student organizations/activities. Friends have also asked me to do professional photo shooting for their LinkedIn profile picture, and I’ve did that several times for different people.

To keep my reputation intact, I need to produce very good work. In addition to producing good personal work, I also needed to produce good work for friends when they ask me for help. Because if I produced work with low quality, they will feel disappointed and will leave them the impression that I cannot do it well. As my reputation developed, more people wanted me to help them to create stuff. However, with all my coursework and other commitments, I didn’t have that much time to offer help to everyone. At first I tried doing that, but I ended up having not enough sleep. People that does not know about production and design feel that this job is simple and should be completed very soon for free. However, production and design are extremely time consuming. So later I started to become “selective”, and only helped those that are close with me. This did affect how people think of me, some might think I’m not generous enough to help them, but this was the best solution for me to balance everything.

Later I changed my major, and less people ask me for help in production/design, because most people does not know that I’m good at these stuff. Now I see production/design as a spare time entertainment, and I feel much less burden.

The Triangular Principal-Agent Model

During my HR summer internship at Dow, I was assigned to work on two projects. One on employee satisfaction, and the other one working as the Summer Internship Program Ambassador to help engage the 34 summer interns and provide them a fruitful and meaningful internship experience. I had one supervisor, who is one of the function leader. I was also assigned two mentors who each guides me on my two projects.

For the ambassador project, I mainly served two principals: the group of summer interns and my project mentor. But in addition, I also needed to report to my supervisor, who evaluates my performance at the end of the internship.

As an ambassador, my job is to support the summer internship program leader (my mentor), help her to design and organize activities, and also work individually on some other tasks (4 deliverables) including e-newsletter (internal use) & social media engagement (external use), creating a summer internship video, creating a summer intern alumni book, and also internship program feedback analysis. The ultimate goal of all the work is to ensure summer interns a good experience and sustain the impact for campus branding.

My mentor wanted to provide the interns a great experience, while the interns for sure is also expecting a meaningful experience. So they actually have a similar goal, but even though what they expect from me is quite different. Their definition of “a good experience” is also different.

My mentor for the ambassador project is a very young woman (just a few years older than me) with a lot of creative ideas. She previously worked for Unilever in Singapore and have just came to Dow for a few months. She was in charge of the Management Trainee program when she was in Unilever, and she wanted to implement a lot of the Unilever successful projects in Dow’s summer internship program. However, due to the industry difference, the intern group in Dow is very different from the trainees in Unilever. Unilever as a fast-moving consumer goods firm, their trainees are mostly marketing/branding people, which are mostly extroverts, they are active and creative, and enjoys exciting activities and experiences. On the other hand, Dow as a chemical and manufacturing firm, their intern group are mostly composed with science and engineering students, which are usually very practical and down to earth. And most R&D interns are final year PhD students, which means that the age group is also very different. Asking interns at Dow to be very active is quite difficult, but that was what my mentor expected.

My mentor’s expectation was reflected on the 4 deliverables she assigned me. She wanted me to create a e-newsletter in a fun way to help interns better know each other and therefore promote cross-function communication. I had difficulties to decide what to put in the e-newsletter, because I actually thought that this is unnecessary and meaningless. The summer internship is a 6-week structured program, and everyone had their own projects to work on. The majority of the group are R&D interns. It could be imagined that how difficult it is to work on a real industry research problem, conduct experiments, and come to a conclusion in 6-weeks’ time. So the interns’ focus is on how to perform their work better and deliver a better presentation in the end, they actually didn’t care (they just didn’t have the time to) that much about knowing each other or learning about different functions. They may spend a few minutes reading the e-newsletter, and then they’ll forget it forever… For the summer internship video, my mentor expected a very exciting video maybe with different teams shouting their slogans or making creative postures. This kind of video seem fancy but I feel it is too deliberate and does not do much good to the interns, and I was sure that nobody would be willing to participate in this kind of video. Later I convinced her to create the video in another way that the would be more comfortable for the interns and also doesn’t require too much work from them, and it turned out pretty well. All I wanted to do is to try not to occupy too much of their time, so that they won’t feel any burden, or feel being overwhelmed by all kinds of activities and requests. Beyond these, the summer internship experience sharing (to be posted on social media) and alumni book also requires the interns to put in some time and attention, which distracts them from their work. One or two activities/requests may seem fine, but with all kinds of activities held each week, plus these extra work my mentor expected, under the pressure of their own project and also the group case competition (as I mentioned in my previous post) in such a limited time… I just don’t want to bother them too much. Towards the end of the internship, I was crazy busy as well. As a HR intern, and also as the program ambassador, I tried to make things easier for other interns, so I ended up having even more workload.

During the process, my mentor kept coming up with new and creative ideas, some of them are great, but given my situation with my other project and case competition in hand, it just seemed impossible to implement all of the ideas. I tried to balance the expectations of my mentor and the needs of the interns. It was quite difficult to change the intern’s needs, because their workload and project is fixed, and performing a good work is no doubt their first priority, so I putted more effort to change my mentor’s expectation. One of the reasons they assigned this ambassador project to me is that they hope with me acting as the bridge, they could identify the interns’ real needs and hear the voices of the interns, therefore they could improve the program in the future. So communicating the situation to my mentor and adjusting her expectation wasn’t extremely difficult.

The issue might also be solved if I exactly followed my mentor’s requirements, and ignored the interns’ needs. I might be able to gain a pretty good evaluation from my mentor, but I think it will negatively affect the interns’ experience. This might affect their decision whether to work for Dow or not in the future, and when they share their experience with their friends, it damage the Dow’s campus brand. I will feel very uncomfortable as well, so I would not see this as a good choice.

I think communication is a good way to resolve the tension between different principals. Although usually different principals have different standpoints, in my case, my mentor thinks about what is good for the firm and how it could help them in campus branding, while the interns think about whether they could perform well during the internship, secure a return offer, or will this experience be useful and bring them opportunities for other positions in the future. Figuring out the common interest and develop ways that satisfies the fundamental goals of both principals through communication seems to be a good solution.

Workplace Conflict in a Hiring Decision

I was recently watching The Good Wife, which is a legal and political TV series mainly about Alicia Florrick’s career in law, after a public sex and political corruption scandal that have put her husband in prison. Lockhart, Agos & Lee is the law firm Alicia used to work for, and it is the main law firm involved in the entire series. In Season 7, there was a conflict when Diane Lockhart, David Lee, and Cary Agos came to a contentious hiring decision.

They were planning to hire three new associates and disagreements arouse among the three name partners after interviewing the candidates. There were 5 candidates being interviewed, 4 white males and 1 black female. Diane favors the black girl Monica, Cary advocates for the three guy from top law schools, while Davis votes for the one with the highest LSAT score. They each had their own reasons and disagreed with each other’s opinion. Diane believed that their firm needs diversity and some new talents, she feels that they are always hiring the same kind of people. Monica is the kind of attorney that she sees in their future. Cary believed their future is in new law, so he values candidates with experiences in the tech industry. The candidates he preferred also the ones in top of their classes. While, David, always practical and rational, wanted to hire the 3 most qualified candidates based on their scores/school rank.

Diane blamed Cary that he is just looking for candidates that is similar with himself, accused David that he is holding bias towards Monica, and concluded they were hiring 3 white males again (actually they were sued and experienced discriminatory hiring investigation later in the show). Cary and David see Monica as an easy pass because she didn’t have a very high LSAT score and was not from a top tier law school. David disagreed putting their future in new laws related to technology and despised Cary’s opinion. No one agreed with each other. Diane actually tried to act as the conflict resolver and offered to make a concession that could satisfy everyone. Many guidelines discussed in B&D Chap8 when facing interpersonal conflict in groups, and also the guidelines in Model II was applied by Diane. She communicated her thoughts, expressed her understanding of Cary and David’s perspective, conceded by picking one candidate from both Cary and David’s list, but asked them to support Monica. However, Model I discussed in the B&D book was exactly the way how Cary and David acted. They believed their decisions by themselves are the right one, and assumed others are the wrong ones that should change. David despised other people’s voices and refused to listen, always being in a defense mode.

In the end, they ended up hiring two candidates from Cary’s list and one from David’s list. But the conflict did not end, they soon faced troubles. The new associates betrayed the firm and went to their competitor’s firm in the middle of an important technical case right before a filing deadline, because they were unsatisfied with the culture of the firm and the lack of upward mobility. When problems emerged, the name partners did not see the hiring decision as a team decision, they blamed each other instead of taking the responsibility together. I think it is because they did not really agree with each other when they were making the final decision, if they could be more open, they might have taken it as a group responsibility when problems appear. They blamed Cary because the two candidates favored by Cary was among the associates who betrayed them, but Cary argued this was a team decision and also blamed Diane and David for the culture of the firm, which caused the associates to leave. Cary was asked to solve the problem. In the end, fortunately, Cary used a strategy to bring the new associates back, fired them, and solved all the problems. Seeing Cary solving all the problems, Diane and David was satisfied and the tension eased off.

However, even if this hiring problem was well solved in the end, they faced all kinds of other issues throughout the seasons. Issues have not been solved at root. The values of the three name partners are quite different, and I think the most fundamental problem is that they are not open to each other’s thoughts and feelings. According to Argyris and Schon’s Model II, they are having high advocacy and low inquiry, therefore leading to passive decisions. Diane as the only female partner, was the one who puts most effort in balancing everyone’s opinions, and she was also the one who compromised most of the times, David was the most stubborn one who alnost never make a concession, while Carry being somewhere in the middle. I think teams works the best when everyone has a good incentive in mind with the willingness to collaborate with diverse individuals, being aware of one’s fallibility, and respecting the judgment of others. But how to deal with members like David that do not have these awareness in mind? It’s just too difficult for me to provide a good answer. I think this kind of problem is where a good leader could be identified.