What went well?
- Closing out week two of my internship at BiD, I can now say that I have fully earned the trust of my colleagues in the office. From my fellow interns to the Legal Managers, and even our Office Directors, everyone has been able to see the output from my work and the effort I put in producing such results. This scenario has occurred so often that Pierre, one of the partners of the firm, even told me to leave my station in the call center and begin work on a “special project” that he specifically assigned to me. Now being put in the secondary office, I was put to work alongside a more senior employee by the name of Zaya to conduct a survey questionnaire. In this questionnaire, I was put in charge of calling up a spreadsheet of around 200 of our past clients and ask them about their experiences with BiD’s services, to recount the life’s story up until the present day, and how they felt while being detained in either prison or an Immigration Removal Centre: IRC (i.e., a Detention Centre). Through the responses we collect from this list of people, BiD plans on writing a generalized report to the Home Office denouncing them for their human rights violation, their poor treatment of detainees and inmates, and their lack of structural / foundational support for the less fortunate. Whether a person was out of detention, put back in, or still had little to no proficiency with the native English tongue, their responses were vital, and I had to do everything I could do to churn out results. By Friday, I was able to go through 130 of the names and either make an introductory call or log the lack of response/voicemail/deactivated number message. Knowing how tedious this task was, I took the initiative to reflect all my work in a color-coded excel spreadsheet. This definitely was unnecessary, but it helps me out visually and puts me in a more organized state for the remaining part of my call list that I’ll reach out to next week.
What could have been done differently?
- When looking at things I didn’t get done and or would change, I acknowledge that I didn’t meet my end goal of finishing all the calls. However, I now know that I was being unrealistic with the mass amount of time this would take and should’ve stayed calm more often. I wouldn’t necessarily change anything about this task besides the fact that I should’ve taken the time to memorize more of the questions in my head, so that I could reverberate them to the ex-client in a clear, concise, and efficient manner. Rather than having all the questions set in my head, I was spending extra time trying to dig through the packet to find the question I needed then having to process and relay the correct message in the manner that BiD had shown us. By finishing things at a quicker rate, I could have gotten more done, and the conversation wouldn’t have been so robotic (or one sided). This seems like a fairly simple fix, I just need to work harder and keep pushing myself more and more.
What did I learn about myself when working with others?
- As I worked next to Zaya, I quickly learned the true value of collaboration. Whether it meant being curious enough to ask clarifying questions, take suggestions, be open to being checked up on or simple bouncing ideas back-and-forth, knowing how to talk to a coworker is extremely important. In doing this self-reflection, I conclude that I exhibited endless determination to have a high production rate and great ambition to accept the change of work (and frankly the change in my job description as an intern) to prove how valuable I am to the firm.
What did I learn about leadership?
- In terms of leadership attributes, I developed or grew this week, I really tried to home in on my critical and creative thinking skills. Just because I can make a call, doesn’t mean I can do it well nor that I am perfect. I had to expect unexpected results than those listed as options on our cheat sheet, I had to expect drier (or even longer answers as people vented their frustrations) answers, and I had to expect obstacles in the process but it’s how I try to work around these realities that really defined how well my work week went. I needed to have the tenacity and cold mind to make effective decision on the spot while on a real-time call, be strong intellectually to type and process the verbal details into coded text on the spreadsheet and then let my coworker know what I finished every single day.
What do I want to develop or focus on next?
- Finally, in terms of areas or things I want to focus on for my next week of work, I want to again, get faster with how long a call takes and how efficient I can make updates to my spreadsheet. I also want to create stronger relationships with the translators we have on-call with our third-party site. Since most of the clients I reached out to, speak the same language, it is vital for me to develop a friendship with certain translators so I can directly call them instead of being stuck on a hold/waiting area with the general system as I wait for someone random. I will continue to work on myself and look forward to work in week 3 of my volunteering internship.