This semester I had the unique privilege to be an intern with Mayor John Cranley downtown at City Hall four days a week. The whole purpose of this internship for me was to learn and grow in my leadership abilities and to learn and grow in my professional attitude. Since I feel that leadership is best learned through the examples of others, working in the office of a strong leader is a stellar way for me to learn how to grow in my own leadership capabilities. I have been exposed to many different leaders throughout my life and adding all the different people and their own unique leadership styles to the mix of my life experiences was fulfilling in more ways than I would have ever thought it could be going into the experience.
The past two summers I worked at an attorney’s office and so I thought I was fully equipped to work at the Mayor’s office. “How different could it be? “ I thought, “Constituents are like clients, their complaints shouldn’t be too hard to handle.” While I was right in that I was equipped, I absolutely was not fully equipped. My first month was an intense lesson in patience and adjusting my attitude. Calls and emails could not just be sent onto the appropriate attorney, I had to deal with the brunt of the complaint without getting frustrated with the caller and then work the issue in my mind down to the core and then send a summary of the issue to the appropriate department. This was a true test of my leadership because leadership is not just working with and motivating a large crowd; true leadership comes with how you deal with the one-on-one interactions of people who look up to you-or in this case your boss-for guidance. I was now affiliated with the Mayor’s Office and therefore I must know something and be able to help the caller, something much easier said than done. If I dealt with a constituent incorrectly one of two things would happen, and unfortunately I messed up enough to see both. One, the incorrect department sends the complaint back and asks if I meant to send it to XY Department instead of AB Department, which leaves me to correct the issue, and the constituent is none the wiser. If not that, then the wrong department just ignores it because it’s not their issue. Then the constituent gets angry because nothing has come of their complaint and calls back. Unfortunately, usually they get very rude and there is lots of scrambling and inconveniencing of the Mayor’s Staff on my part to get the complaint lodged with the actual appropriate people. Luckily, I am a fast learner and I learned that unless the issue is clear-cut to just ask someone from the staff who is more experienced than me. This was a big lesson in humility, I don’t really ask questions much in school (nature of an honors student I suppose), so learning that asking a question would not make me look any less intelligent was something I had to get used to. Eventually, I got the hang of it and not only do I know departments and their contact person by heart, but I know that asking questions is an important step in the learning process, especially if you have been thrown into an established system where you need to mold to it, not it to you. This lesson is something I can apply to my studies and my future co-op as well. I will be able to learn better because rather than trying to learn something on my own and getting frustrated, I have a humble enough attitude to go and ask questions understanding that asking doesn’t make me look unintelligent. Not everyone gets everything the first try, and asking questions is what led to the world’s greatest discoveries, making it a valuable lesson to learn. Before I started at the Mayor’s office, I did some reading on his platform from when he ran for Mayor, this platform is now posted on his website for his constituents to browse. It was interesting to see where he was coming from in his policies before beginning my work with him. Reading his positions on different issues allowed me to know what kind of politician the constituents were expecting when they called the office and also allowed me to become familiar on issues that were facing the Cincinnati area that are unique to Cincinnati, since I grew up in Louisville, some of the politics here are still new and different from what my home city is facing. I also noodled around with a few books on interning in a political atmosphere because politics is not my major, nor my forte, just an interest. Most of what these readings taught me was to keep an open mind regardless of party affiliation, to constantly be a professional worker, and to make sure to keep connections open even after you have completed the internship. These readings were clearly geared towards someone who wants to work in politics in the future and often referenced ‘climbing the ladder’. This part of the books never seemed very relevant to me since I do not want a future in politics so reading these books was also an exercise in skimming out the relevant information. Keeping an open mind and constantly being professional were not very difficult for me, especially since professionalism was a main goal of mine for this internship. Keeping the lines of communication open between myself and all the people I met via the Mayor’s office is going to be much harder and is something I cannot comment on the success of at this moment. In order to make this lesson successful I will have to get better at small talk and check in every once in a while. Since the office has large ongoing projects like the Young Professionals Kitchen Cabinet that I got to work directly on, these are the kinds of things that I can use to keep connections open and communication flowing. After all, connections are everything in the professional world regardless of what your specific degree may be. Disseminating to the First Year Leadership Program allowed me to explain my experiences at the Mayor’s Office to an audience who was interested in more than funny stories about clueless constituents. It was rewarding to know that I influenced some of them into thinking about applying. Another thing of note to me was that when I went up to start speaking they had just been told that their meeting that evening was to be lengthy, and I watched as some of them checked out, just hoping to survive. As I continued to speak, some of them actually became interested in what I was talking about, and by the end more hands went up as interested in an internship than went up at the beginning. I realized that I had opened up a door for them that many of them thought was much more tightly closed than it really is. Finally, I think many of them thought that only PolySci Majors could participate in an opportunity like this, but seeing someone in engineering who was pursuing this opportunity let many of them know that your major doesn’t define your interests. That lesson was something I struggled with my freshman year, because my interests are broad and most of them aren’t really connected to one another. These lessons and experiences are things I can carry into many different aspects of my life. Patience is always a good thing to have armloads of because you never know what your day is going to throw at you. Leadership is something I strive to continue refining in my life because I have always had the personality of someone who will step up to lead when there is a void of leaders, so when I do step up and lead I want to make sure I do a great job. Professionalism is something I have recently needed to start working on. As I grow and get ready to enter the professional world, with my first Co-Op just around the corner, I know I need to be professional if I want to continue to advance and reach towards my career goals. Humility is something I have always really struggled with. I have been blessed enough to have never ever been in the situations that the people who were calling me to complain were in. I hope to be fortunate enough to never be in that situation, but I still want to have enough humility so that I know that not everyone is like me, and that I am not the most important thing in this world. If I can adopt this attitude I can further my humble heart and start to meet people where they are and understanding their situation to help them better or to lead them in such a way that they will want to follow. Working at the Mayor’s did fulfill my goal of growing in leadership and professionalism, but it helped me in so many other ways that I didn’t even think applied and I know I am a better person because of this experience.
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Don't be fooled. This says finale like the ending not like finally. I am very sad that my time at the Mayor's office has come to a close. I really very much enjoyed going down to the office four days a week. I loved walking into the office to a 'Good Morning Miranda!' from someone already there before me. I love how beautiful City Hall is, and I loved that I was a part of all the change that was going on in that building. As much as I laughed at the things people thought they could come to the Mayor about, it was fun to try and explain to them that the Mayor doesn't have control over national television and he doesn't have control over when it snows.(Yes, both of those situations were real things I experienced.)
The end is near. As of today, November 21st, I'm only down at the Mayor's office two more times before I'm done. I have Monday and Wednesday of Thanksgiving week and then I have a stray farewell luncheon with the Mayor and other interns during finals week and my journey here will be over.
This week has been just as busy as ever. From trying to reorganize the scheduling system, to organizing two very large meetings hosted by the Mayor for the beginning of December, to continued work on the Young Professionals Kitchen Cabinet...it seems like every time I come in I have a million things that are my responsibility and those things are tasks that no other intern can be assigned to. Probably the strangest thing about being almost finished here is projects I have been working on are starting to have timelines past my timeline for continuing my internship. Planning events close to Christmas and booking venues for dates far into 2015 seem extremely distant. I know that I am going to have to leave my name on these projects for now but in a week if someone calls the Mayor's Office asking for Miranda the response will be, "She has completed her internship with us, how can I be of service?" I know this very well because I said the same thing when Julia left to go back home to Germany. At the same time though, just because I am almost done does not mean that I've stopped trying to get as much done as I possibly can. The Office of the Mayor still needs to run smoothly and a lazy intern will not be helping that cause. So for now I just keep chugging but the difference is I can see the end where I don't have to take a call asking why the Mayor let it snow so early. (You didn't hear? The Mayor controls the weather now.) M Basically since I started at the Mayor's Office I have been working on getting the University of Cincinnati Student Senate to have a meeting here at City Hall. This past Wednesday that project finally came to fruition and was a complete success. Even though I had to scramble to get a speaker, the person I got was a great choice and answered everyone's questions well. The Mayor was also able to make a short appearance upstairs for us for about ten minutes which was really exciting because we really did not except him to come at all.
While my internship and experience with the Mayor isn't quite over, one of the other interns who is from Germany has her last day in the office today. She has been one of the best parts about working down at City Hall, because it is so much fun to learn about how things are different in city government and life in general over in Germany. Plus her accent is just so much fun to listen to, and you can't help but fall in love with her cute personality!
Big things have been happening for me this week, the Student Government and City Hall project I was working on hit some major strides. The Senate meeting down here at City Hall is quickly approaching (Less than two weeks YAYAY!!!) and at the start of this week we had no speaker, no budget and lots of the Senators still had no idea what was going on with this really cool opportunity. Now, sitting at the end of the week, we have a speaker, and we have a budget (and a SG Appropriations Bill to match), and most of the senators at least have a vague idea of what's going on. I went to Senate this week as someone's alternate and was able to explain how the evening is going to work and answer people's questions and it was great to see how me answering a few things really made people more comfortable with the whole situation. I also feel much more comfortable because things are falling into place with this whole event. I really really hope I don't hit any more snags, but I know that if I do I will be able to handle it. That's the biggest and best thing I have learned so far, planning early is great and you should absolutely do it when you can, but keeping calm and having a back-up plan in times of seeming crisis is the best skill I could have asked to learn. I've been given a new project here, and it involves me calling bars. Working in a political office I never thought I would call a bar and say that I am representing the Mayor. What I am actually doing is setting up the meeting spots for the Mayor's Young Professionals Kitchen Cabinet. So it is a pretty official thing. It's surprising how easy it is to set up a meeting at a bar for like 60 people. As another part of this I am contacting and setting up the speakers.
Doing both of these things together results in one of those puzzles where there are clues and this person can't go here because of this. Let's just say I rocked those things when I was younger. They were my favorite type of brain teaser, and this one was like a real-life brain teaser. There is one speaker who rides his bike everywhere, so I needed to make sure that his speaking location is near his downtown residence. Other speakers lived in neighborhoods further out, so they were assigned to the bars near to their neighborhoods. Finally, some of the locales only have room for a large group like the YPKC during the warmer months when their patios are open. Long puzzle short, I have reserved the locations for both the November and December meetings and am working ahead of most of the restaurants to reserve meetings for 2015. Things are clicking into place and it's so fun to have something that is very much task oriented and a to-do list that I can check off things as I complete them. It's also awesome to have something that is in the local news that is my personal responsibility. We got fresh blood this week. I know that sounds morbid and very much sounding like a bully to say, but it's true. We got a new intern from Mount St. Joe this week. It seems to be perfect timing, because Julia is gone in Chicago with other German interns, and then she leaves to go back to Germany in less than a month.
The only thing that is strange about this new situation, for me, is that I am now the person that is getting all the questions fired at them, instead of me firing questions at Julia (which I'm sure she got tired of very quickly). On Wednesday I had to teach Garrett how to do basically everything I do day to day. It was really easy to see, through him, how overwhelmed I must have been to a (thankfully) very patient Julia. While that is strange it's not a downside, so that makes the only downside the fact that because he is slow and still learning I have to pick up a lot of the slack. Answering the phones is by far the hardest part of the job. People who call in here often call as a last resort and are now frustrated not only with their problem, but also with the multiple offices that have failed them in their pathway to phoning the Mayor's office. There's also the process of referral, which I still don't really know who exactly does what, and I'm still getting calls and cases to the wrong people sometimes. I'll get it eventually, I think. Always a student. M One of my main goals when beginning to work here at the Mayor's Office was to increase my professional behaviors. Even though I am in engineering, I also want to obtain a degree in business. In order to be successful later in life in my career path of choice, I need to know how to deal with people in a way that is efficient, polite, and professional.
Speaking of professional, that is a word that gets thrown around lots by various important people in my life. We as college students hear all over the place: "Look Professional.", "You are representing group XYZ now and you need to be professional", "Take those kinds of pictures off your Facebook, you don't want a picture to hinder your professional career.". After hearing all this professional talk, I have really been striving to define professionalism for myself, and trying to apply it to my life in any way I can. For me, being professional means not loosing my cool whenever someone calls who I may just want to hang up on. It means not getting angry back at a constituent who is very very frustrated with something going wrong in their life because of a City sponsored program. It means keeping my wits about me and knowing exactly how to handle a situation, and if I don't know what to do knowing who to ask. And finally it means, not throwing my keyboard across the room because the 'g' key doesn't always like to work. Professionalism is an aura, and I'm learning here that everyone takes it a little differently. Watching these highly professional people at work, only adds to how I want to project myself to others. Finally, the biggest thing I have learned about being professional is that you can always learn more and polish yourself more. Much Love, M This past Thursday the Mayor gave his State of the City address to the people of Cincinnati. This week leading up to this event, the office was flooded with calls of people to RSVP. The Mayor was working on his speech for most of the week, and everyone was working with the venue and guests to make sure everything was absolutely in order.
While I didn't go to the event, I know that it went off without a glitch. The office opened late the next day to give the staff a well deserved sleep-in morning. Ever since then the office has been buzzing with responses to the address. It's really nice to see that most of these responses are good ones. People were pleased with various aspects of the mayor's future plans for the city. Interestingly, most of the people who have reached out to the Mayor are also pleased with how things have been going so far during the year he has been in office. My job only becomes busier as staff members pass off work to me as they get involved with their own projects and the council gets settled into their work year. I always have something on my desk to do, and if I don't I have plenty of emails to answer or the phone is ringing off the hook. I am so enjoying my time there, and the more I answer the phone or respond to emails and letters the more I feel like I am growing as a professional presence, which is one of the goals I had for myself starting on this internship journey. Forever looking foreword to the next day. M The office this week was super busy but it was really cool to see how even through all that business how people are still able to work calmly and get actually progressive work done.
The Mayor is really great and every day he comes in he is ready with a smile on his face, even though he hasn't yet had his coffee. He is really driven to do good work for the city of Cincinnati, and isn't deterred by something having a minor bump in the road. He likes having interns that are interested in his work and politics in general, and always asks us how we're doing. The staff is just as genuine and every morning when I come in someone greets me by name and with a very pleasant "Good Morning". As I learn the system (like who to contact for what issue), every time I ask someone they are willing to give me an answer and do so nicely. (Even when I ask the same question I have already asked every single day I've been in the office.) I'm learning slowly but surely, although the security guards know my face now. Speaking of security and the security guards, I received a pass this week with my name and face on it. So now instead of signing in with my name and the time and a bunch of other information, all I have to do is flash my little pass and I'm good to go. It's a simple little thing, but it makes me feel really official, even though my Bearcat card is more complicated than this pass is. I'm still excited every day to wake up and head to the Mayor's office, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Much Love, M |
AuthorMiranda Hileman is an honors student at the University of Cincinnati embarking on a journey to combat the insanity of working for a public official. Archives
December 2014
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