The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Interns
Lessons from the Brussels Bubble
One of the realities of life in EU affairs - and many other professional sectors - is a heavy reliance on interns.
The conditions - sub-minimum wage or outright unpaid, up to a year or longer via internship-hopping - are often bad. Even as politicians increasingly lower the minimum age for political rights like voting, young people’s actual financial independence, a crucial component of effective autonomy, is increasingly delayed by mass higher education and internships - in short, inflationary credentialism.
This post does not claim to have solutions to such a big socio-economic problem. But I would like to share some tips on how to be an effective intern as a successful launch to your career: the point of internships is to gain experience, skills, professional friends, and, ultimately, a full job. I don’t claim to have been an effective intern myself (results were mixed, I often didn’t know what to do and could be too self-righteous). But I can share with you, after a decade of experience in EU affairs, what I wish I had known when I got started.
Habit #1: Go to meetings
Go to meetings. All the meetings: internal, external, formal, or casual. Don’t think meetings are unproductive and you could be doing other things. At least at the beginning, you need meetings to figure out what’s happening in the organization, who the key players are, the information flow, and decision points (i.e., who needs to agree to get things to happen?). You need a sense of the organization’s big picture and negotiation processes.
Listen carefully, ask questions when things are unclear (you’re there to learn and, often, the point will also be unclear to other participants, perhaps too shy or polite to ask). You can get more involved by volunteering to take notes and identify the key take-aways.
Again, don’t think that meetings distract you from being “productive.” A good meeting is productive, because it helps identify meaningful objectives and distribute responsibilities. More generally, meetings - that is exchanging information with an eye to establishing common understandings and positions - are the core of much government and management work.
Of course, meeting hell does exist and I hope you don’t end up there. But even bad meetings - overly long, poorly organized, leading nowhere - are instructive: now you know what not to do. Later, share your views on why you think the meeting was subpar and how the next one could be better.
Meetings are also crucial for Habits #2 and #3: taking on responsibilities and getting to know people.
Habit #2: Take on responsibilities, not tasks
During meetings and while talking to colleagues, be on the lookout for responsibilities you can take on. That includes both volunteering for projects/tasks that need to be tackled and pitching your own ideas.
But, come to think of it, don’t think of them as tasks. Think of them as responsibilities. Tasks are menial, responsibilities can be empowering: you’re in charge of something that needs to be done, but it is (or should be) up to you how to get it done, as long as the results are there. You are a steward of the meeting notes, the newsletter, relations with a client or partner, an ongoing project, etc.
In taking on responsibilities, you are freeing your colleagues and managers of cognitive load. In our modern life, we’re all overstimulated and over-solicited by devices and seemingly endless requests and activities; our mind-brains and calendars are constantly overwhelmed. Freeing people of some of that load is one of the most helpful things you can do.
Here’s how Lee Kuan Yew, the former leader of Singapore, described what a good minister was to him: “When I had the right man in charge, a burden was off my shoulders. I needed only to make clear the objectives to be achieved, the time frame within which he must try to do it, and he would find a way to get it done.”1
If you show you can be trusted with responsibilities, your standing and influence will naturally increase and people will naturally turn to you for more advanced projects and responsibilities.
Habit #3: Reach out to meet people
Besides formal meetings, you should be meeting and talking to people bilaterally and informally. Identify the people in your organization or industry that you admire or want to work with. Meet with them, share your professional project, and learn from them.
Also meet with random colleagues. You never know what you might learn or what you have in common. There’s always more to a person, more depth and life experience, than what they can express in their formal role. So get to know them. Knowing someone more personally can also give context to professional challenges (e.g., problems at home or frustrated ambitions). Abraham Lincoln said: “I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.”
As an intern, you are not working for charity, but with the ultimate goal of getting a regular job: so network and get the knowledge and contacts that can get you there.
Habit #4: Be strategic (with your time)
Menial tasks are going to be part of almost any entry-level job, but it should not define your work. You ought to have some time to plan your work, to discuss with colleagues what actually needs to be done (thus identifying your tasks), to think about the best way of doing them (including how to automate or deprioritize tasks, thus freeing up time to be strategic).
Many internships will actually not be well structured and will give you lots of “free” time. This can be a curse, but you should make it a blessing. If you (and/or your manager) don’t know what to do with your time at the office, use that time to think strategically. Figure out what your values, priorities, and objectives are (in your job and in your life generally). Then, plan weeks accordingly, as Stephen Covey says: reserve time for your priorities, the “big rocks,” first (e.g., a networking meeting with someone you might want to work with; exchanging with a colleague on a problem you are not sure how to solve…) and then fit lesser priorities around those.
You only have so much time in any given period of your life. All you can personally do for any particular issue, relationship, or challenge, is dedicate time to it intelligently. You cannot control the ultimate consequences and results of your activities: that is not up to you. But you can take pride and find peace of mind in acting on good planning, by consistently dedicating time and paying attention to what matters most to you.
Habit #5: Avoid make-work
Don’t do things just for the sake of doings things or to look busy. That’s the opposite of being strategic and effective. Government organizations that don’t know what to do sometimes engage in make-work, but you shouldn’t. You shouldn’t be trying to “kill time” until 18:00 or whenever you clock out.
As a newcomer to the organization, your external, fresh viewpoint will often be highly appreciated. You can try to automate menial tasks to the extent possible and suggest eliminating non-essential tasks with low return on investment (low impact compared to the effort put in). This will free up time for Habit #4, being strategic.
Habit #6: Listen
Richard Branson advised: “Listen more than you talk. Nobody learned anything by hearing themselves speak.” Good listening is one of the great virtues. I wish I were better at it.
To be effective in any organization, you have to synchronize yourself with its logic. You need to understand the needs of your colleagues and partners, and even their mental states. You can achieve this through proactive listening.
The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius said: “Attend carefully to what is being said by another, and enter, so far as possible, into the mind of the speaker.”
Habit #7: Be solution-oriented
No organization is perfect. Complaining about it rarely helps. Only by synchronizing with and understanding the organization and the people there can you understand how it got to where it is, and what the potential solutions are.
Though no one can say for sure why we are on this Earth, while we are here we may as well help each other. So don’t stagnate on problems or inadequacies. Focus on where progress can be made. Rome wasn’t built in a day. One can confidently make a little progress each day and, occasionally, there are exhilarating breakthroughs.
Every morning and evening, samurai would swear among their daily oaths to “serve compassionately for the benefit of others.” If we work in this spirit, there is no limit to what we can achieve.
Lee Kuan Yew, From Third World to First: Singapore and the Asian Economic Boom (New York: HarperCollins, 2000), p. 664.