In my first internship, I was working with a very cool boss. He was incredible; We were in the innovation department so we had one big project due at the end of our internship, and he gave us general autonomy throughout the entire thing. He led us in making our own decisions, guiding us, but after we reported back to him with our research and findings he allowed us to make our own opinion just as long as we were able to justify it. He even allowed us to learn about the other projects the team was working on and made us feel a part of the group, not just extras.
At the time I was just grateful to be involved with the innovation team and did not think too much of the semantics of it, but after the lesson learned in this course I realized he was applying methods from the Leader-member exchange theory (LMX) to the situation.
The way the internship was set up through the company was that each department had its own interns, and departments were separated into subgroups- like marketing, business, IT, sales, etc. the innovation department was weird, because we were grouped with the marketing group but housed in the IT building, so we went to meetings for both. This only enhanced the LMX dynamic. We interacted with fellow IT interns and other marketing interns, and it was clear that by far we had the best experience.
One thing that I remember our boss doing is treating us like a fellow software engineer. The department was implementing Agile thinking processes, which included meetings bi-weekly brainstorm for status updates and brainstorming sessions. Compared to the other interns, who had menial work and were treated like computers with no input on what they were working on, our work had meetings and we had a sense of our own importance. In LMX one of the benefits of being in the in-group is that you receive more support and opportunity(Hamel, 2021). While I knew that I could not change departments, if my boss didn’t like the effort I was putting in or what I produced he could easily have excluded me from meetings, or degraded the level of decision making I had and this made me work harder to impress him.
Further, a full time software engineer organized work sessions for the interns in the IT department where we learned about new coding techniques and applied them. These meetings were at the end of the day Thursday, and whatever spare time we had before the end of the day we were allowed to play Mariokart and spend time with one another. In LMX theory another benefit of the in-group in a sense of community almost like a clique (Hamel, 2021), and this time spent with fellow programmers relaxing and building relationships definitely created a small community between us. It felt like a secret the members of the group and our boss shared, but it was understood that if we did not complete what needed to be completed by the time the meeting came around, our privileges and the meeting would be re-evaluated. This made us work harder, come in earlier, and on most Wednesday’s I would even take time out of my evening to make a snack for Thursday’s meetings.
I look back on my first internship fondly, I was given more privileges and freedom than most other interns were allowed, and I had a great relationship with my boss and team. In response, I came in early, worked hard to impress the company, and tried to foresee my boss’s needs to impress him. I met with other interns and was incredibly aware of my luck, a lot of them had less than interesting jobs with no freedom or discretion. After learning about Leader-Mentor Exchange theory this dynamic makes sense. I was a part of the in-group, and in exchange for hard work, I received benefits from my boss. Other interns weren’t a part of the in-group, instead treated as a tool to be used, not a member of a group, and witnessing this made me cherish the privilege I had.
References:
Hamel, R. (n.d.). Lesson 8: Leader-Member Exchange Theory (LMX), 2021
Hello, I think this is a really interesting application of the LMX theory in real life. It is certainly interesting to see how the interactions between leaders and the in and out-groups are different. Your boss seems to have done a good job at being able to keep the in-group members active in doing their work but I do wonder how the out-group members felt. It certainly is something that would make group members work harder if they were awarded these privileges but it would have been interesting to see if it actually hurt the work ethic of the out-group or if it would have pushed them to the in-group. This is a really interesting example and I am glad you look fondly on these memories.