At THREAD, the work has continued. Research, competitor analysis, customer analysis, building visuals — the usual mix. I have gotten better at moving through projects without needing everything to be perfectly spelled out first, and better at taking feedback without reading into it too much. Those feel like small wins but they add up.
The bigger thing on my mind this week has been leadership, specifically how my understanding of it has changed since I got here.
Before this internship, I would have described my leadership style as direct and energetic. A lot of that came from sports. I grew up watching and loving American football, and football leadership is loud and clear — coaches call plays, captains rally the team, and everyone knows their role. That model stuck with me. I thought being a good leader meant being confident, vocal, and ready to take charge when something needed to get done.
Sweden has complicated that idea in the best way.
At THREAD, leadership does not look the way I expected. Nobody is loud about it. People are trusted to manage their own work, make their own decisions, and figure things out without someone standing over them. At first that felt strange to me. I kept wanting more specific instructions, more check-ins, more confirmation that I was doing things right. I was used to environments where that kind of structure was normal. Here it is not, and adjusting to that took time.
But somewhere along the way I stopped missing the structure and started to appreciate what replaced it. Being trusted to take ownership of something and run with it is its own kind of motivation. And watching the people around me lead quietly — not through volume or authority but through consistency, preparation, and genuine respect for the people they work with — made me reconsider what I thought I knew.
Collaboration has been the other big shift. At THREAD, very little gets done alone. Projects involve internal teammates, external partners, and the other interns in the program. There were six interns I had the pleasure of working with, as well as the guidance and leadership from some of the partners, who helped to pass down the knowledge they have learned in this space, which I plan on taking with me for the rest of my life. Working alongside people who are all figuring things out at the same time has been genuinely useful. Someone always catches something you missed. Someone always has a cleaner way to organize the information. The final product is almost always better when more people have touched it thoughtfully.
Working with external partners has added another layer. Different people come in with different expectations and different ways of communicating, and a good chunk of leadership in those situations is just listening carefully enough to understand what someone actually needs, not just what they said. I am still learning that, but I can already see how much it matters.
The thing that has stuck with me most, though, is how much this experience has changed my idea of what a leader sounds like. In the United States I think we tend to equate leadership with being the most vocal person in the room. Someone who talks a lot, takes up space, and projects confidence. I still think there is value in that. But I have spent six weeks watching people lead effectively without doing any of it, and that has been eye-opening.
Slowing down before responding, sitting with a problem instead of rushing to solve it out loud, letting silence exist without filling it — these are things I have had to practice here, and they have made me a better listener and a more thoughtful communicator.
Going forward, I do not want to abandon the directness and energy I came in with. Those things have their place. But I want to pair them with what I have learned here — patience, trust, the ability to read a room and adjust. The best leaders I have been around on both sides of the Atlantic are not locked into one style. They read the situation and the people in front of them and respond to what is actually there. That is what I am working toward. Applying the things I have learned back at school and in my personal life are going to be important for me to achieve.