I just finished up my sixth week in Dublin, and this may have been my favorite week. This weekend I went to Edinburgh. Edinburgh is probably one of the coolest cities I have ever been to. I went to the castle in the city, and that was amazing. However, the best part of Edinburgh is the cliffs you can climb to get an overview of the city. I did all of that on my first day there. The next day I went on a tour through the highlands, and they were beautiful. Overall, the trip was amazing and I can’t wait to go to Paris this upcoming weekend. Then on Sunday, I celebrated my birthday with my friends. We went to the pubs and watched the hurling match between Kilkenny vs Tipperary. This weekend was one of the best I have had in a long time. 

Now that I’ve talked about my personal life, I can talk about my work life. This week’s discussion about leadership is a hard question to answer, since I am working on a solo project. However, it will not stop me from attempting to answer the question. Being a leader is an extremely important skill to have in life. With that being said, growing up I was never the type of person to be a leader. Whenever given the opportunity to take charge and control a situation, I always passed it off. I never enjoyed having the pressure of a situation on my shoulders. This was a bad trait of mine, but in the last couple of years, I have started to take charge when given the opportunity.

My leadership strategy before this internship was to take charge and assign tasks to people. I micromanage because this is what has been instilled within me from the American work culture. The boss makes the decision, and people follow that decision. When working on something, I like to have things done my way. This way of thinking has its pros and cons I realize. The pro is that I can see my vision through and get the work done efficiently. However, a massive con is that it doesn’t allow for many creative decisions to be made outside of my own. This has led to problems where someone wants to do something that I don’t think would work. Then in hindsight, his idea would have been the best for the group. I have tried to limit my micromanagement recently, but I still find it hard not to see my vision through on something. 

Going into this internship, I knew I wouldn’t have to worry about my leadership too much because I was working on a solo project. Even though I am not a leader during this internship, it doesn’t mean I wouldn’t see others being a leader. Dublin has really challenged my views on what it means to be a leader. Does being a leader mean that the group is you? Or does being a leader mean you are the group? What I mean by that is, the group just the leader’s ideas, or the leader a combination of the group’s ideas. I always functioned on the mentality that the leader is someone who controls the group and paves the way for most ideas. However, in Dublin they function that the leader gives the group a task and the group figures out how they want to complete their task. For my solo project, my boss gave me a vague idea of what they wanted me to do, and I completed the task in my own way. I have found this way of working to be extremely successful. This success has challenged my ideas on what it means to be a leader. 

This internship has changed my mindset on what it means to be a leader. I have always been micromanaging because I knew it worked to an extent, but after seeing the success of a layoff approach to managing my ideas of what makes a leader have changed. I have come to the conclusion that like almost everything, balance is what makes the best leader. Being too micromanaging as a leader leads to a lack of diversity in ideas. However, if the leader is too loose in managing it can lead to bad ideas and less efficient work. Working out the balance between both is what I can take away from this internship. This internship has challenged me on what it means to be a leader. This is why experiencing different cultures is so important because it can allow you to improve on skills in ways you could have never thought. Even though I may always be a leader who likes more control than others, I hope to be open-minded in my approach in the future.

Photos from my trip.