How Highly Effective Leaders Utilize Interns When Building Teams

Great leaders know what it takes to build a team from scratch and what it takes to build Trust amongst inherited team members from previous leadership. They take the time to learn about these legacy team members and have an aptitude for understanding personalities and how they will interweave together.

Great leaders understand that they are incapable of accomplishing anything significant by themselves. As the saying goes,

“If you want to travel fast, go alone; if you want to travel far, go together.”

Great leaders understand the skills and assets required to make any journey. They can identify times when a generalist is needed and other times when specialists are required. They know how to build functional and cohesive teams that trusts one another. Trust amongst team members goes incredibly far, and I would even say that it’s impossible to have an efficient team without a bit of faith.

Leading by faith isn’t free

In professional situations, great leaders are aware of the financial sacrifices it might take to bring on qualified people. They are willing to pay premiums to ensure the right talent is acquired to bring the vision to life. It is naive to have big dreams and think you can accomplish them with inexperienced people. Sure, you can find individuals who believe in the vision and will volunteer or do it for equity, but the reality is that experience costs. You will not have the luxury of leaving critical tasks to people you don’t have faith in.

The ability to lead by faith, knowing that your team has is under control, is something you can’t get with unrefined employees. I have seen companies run entire businesses off of intern-level employees, and they always trend the same. The manager ends up stressed in the long run because they feel like they need to spend their time checking work, which turns into micromanaging.

In companies like these, the employee feels like they are never good enough because the manager approaches every idea with skepticism and changes every little thing the employee does. The manager will waste working hours and eventually personal hours to make sure the work gets done to specification.