Reputations

One place where reputation comes into play in a huge way is when you are in the workplace and people don’t necessarily know you well enough to judge you based on anything but what they have heard from others, your reputation as a person.  As with anything I pursue and am passionate about, I want to do everything perfect the first time. I realize this is not realistic, but that is just my nature.  Even when making a mistake is expected, I strive to be the one person who does not make that mistake. I don’t believe in taking the easy way out and not worrying about making that mistake just because it’s okay to do so.  While I obviously still make mistakes, my attitude towards them helps me to really learn from the mistake and how to do it right the next time.  Due to this mentality, as an intern, I developed a reputation as a very fast learner, and was very quickly being approached my people with tasks for me to do.  While these tasks were beneath the level of staff, they felt most confident in my ability to do it correctly with minimal corrections needed by them, thus saving them precious time.  As I was given more and more work, I found that more and more people had work for me simply because someone else I had completed a project for had referred me as someone they felt could complete the task at hand. One of my favorite moments came when I received my official job offer, and one of the first things the human resources manager said was how many people had been impressed with my work during busy season and really wanted to see me come back.  This to me was a validation of all the times I had struggled through something and been tempted to throw in the towel but persevered because I felt my reputation was on the line. 

One thing I realized however, was that a strong reputation can be a double edged sword.  While (in my case) people may have confidence in your abilities to get the job done,  this also means they expect you to do work you may not actually be prepared for and could present a really tough challenge you may or may not be equipped to handle.  Thankfully, as I have talked about previously, I had a great support system in place and this never became a problem. 

I can think of times where my reputation has been challenged, however this takes place more here on campus than it ever did at work.  I would say I have a reputation here among my circle of friends of being very committed to fitness.  Most of them expect me to go to the gym on Friday night before I do anything else, and if I have to choose between the gym or going out with them, I will likely choose the gym.  There are many times where I would love to ditch the gym and go out to happy hour and out at night, but most of the time my dedication wins.  There are times however, when I have “cashed in”.  Usually this is after a long week of exams and my willpower to work hard is pretty much exhausted.  One thing I have found however, is that occasional deviations from your reputation don’t necessarily mean people change their idea of what you represent.  This seems to be very different for people in the public eye however.  For example, a celebrity or politician may be the most philanthropic, giving, caring person but the moment they slip or deviate from that reputation, they are jumped on by the media.  I personally feel this is very unfair, but that is a whole different discussion for another time.

More Conflict Management

One triangle like situation I am very familiar with and have had quite a few experiences with is one quite literally involving principals, or as they are more commonly known, partners at the firm I interned with.  I was fortunate enough to be able to intern during busy season, January 15^th or so, through April 15^th.   I say fortunate, because I was able to experience what life would actually be like during the most stressful time of year, as opposed to many interns who get to experience the relatively cushy summer environment at an accounting firm and then are in for quite the surprise when winter rolls around.  That is another story however.  I mentioned busy season purely due to the fact that from intern to principal/partner, everyone’s workload is very high.  Since interns and staff are relied upon to put in the groundwork, including updating work papers and collecting/requesting/organizing information provided by the client, there are often many different people who are higher on the ladder, demanding that their work be done first.  This actually presents quite the challenge at first.  Imagine you are an intern, you have been at work for one or two weeks, and a partner of the firm you are interning for stops by your desk and tells you he has a project he needs completed by the end of the day, or perhaps the week if you’re lucky.  First of all, simply the fact that this person is literally at the opposite end of the hierarchy from you is enough to make it a nerve wracking situation.  This is further compounded by the fact that at any given time, you also have projects from several senior managers, even more managers, as well as some seniors.  Of course there are several of these projects which have been deemed high priority with a “firm” deadline of no later than x amount of days. 

This all presents a rather difficult choice for a poor lowly intern.  Do I take the project just given to me by a partner and ignore existing projects that have the same deadline, or do I tell said partner I cannot complete their project by the required deadline and they should find another intern?  Doing the first will probably piss off several other people who are also very senior (and have the ability to make my life miserable), while doing the latter will also be very uncomfortable. 

Thankfully, I chose wisely when choosing where to intern, and the firm I worked for had a fantastic support system in place with these issues specifically in mind.  After quietly freaking out for a day or two as the work started rolling in, I decided to ask my senior “buddy” what to do.  He kindly explained that this was perfectly normal and not to worry, the work could be re-assigned with no issue.  As an intern, I also had a designated advisor who was a senior manager, one step below partner.  My advisor got me out of some difficult situations with less than reasonable partners quite a few times by talking to them on my behalf, and sometimes helping me work through their projects by pointing me in the right direction or explaining a complex issue. 

In response to the question of whether there is a way to resolve the tension, I believe in my particular case, what I explained above is the right way to resolve the tension.  In addition to helping me when I was new, by the end of three months I had become fairly adept at resolving the scheduling conflicts on my own, with a few exceptions.  I am fairly sure this was intended, and was a way of helping the interns grow professionally.  The short version of my long answer would be yes, with a sufficient conflict resolution program/support system, many tensions can be resolved without any fallout. 

In contrast, I can definitely see how an agent could satisfy one principal and fail by neglecting the other.  As I have said, without the higher level support I had access to, I would have been in some very difficult situations which I doubt would have been resolved smoothly. I most likely would have ended up trying to prioritize everything, which is obviously impossible and would not have ended well.