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.)
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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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