Blog #3

Communication with European Values

This week was an important step in the right direction for communication with my bosses. While in Prague, our communication was reliant on the app Signal which was a protected form of communication with my three bosses and the other intern. The other intern and I found it difficult to get our assignments through this platform because it was hard to ask questions when it didn’t pertain to two out of the three bosses that assigned it or vice versa. Because they didn’t want us in the office as much as I had originally thought, it was difficult to get all your questions answered, so you would have to wait till the following week to get your questions answered if you’d already gone to the office that week.

On this phone call that I had scheduled with my direct boss, we discussed this communication problem as she was made aware of it from the other intern. She was braver than I to bring it up first, but I’m glad that she did. This led to my boss making a Google doc that is shared in the Signal app where the task is described, assigned, given a section for notes, section for questions, and the deadline for its completion. It may have been about a month and a half since starting this internship but every form of communication that we’ve had has been rocky till now. I’m very glad with this new set up it’ll be more accommodating for us interns as well as accommodating the situation of us being on the other side of the world.

In the article, “Solving the 11 Most Common Performance Problems”, it states that one the most common problems it,

“The people who work for you don’t know what they are supposed to do.”

“Why This Happens: You have not set and communicated clear expectations and standards. You have not reinforced the importance of the expectations and standards you’ve set.

Solution: Explain exactly what you expect them to do and how they need to do it. Clearly describe what good performance looks like.”

I think the communication is a bit different from an American firm that I may have been interning for because there is a bit of a language barrier. The people that I interact with directly can speak English but they have to think about their words it’s – not always the clearest understand. Sometimes my questions get misunderstood and answer somethings that I never asked in the first place but that’s what they thought that I asked. Besides the language barrier, the only difference of communication between this and American firm is that there is a more structured work set up. In the US most people work from 9 to 5 every day; however, here is very different. They don’t work set hours or days and usually they can modify their hours and days to their personal schedule. This leads to sometimes not being able to ask your question to the person that you need to on that specific day.

I wish I had more time to interact with my coworkers and get to know them, their daily tasks, and more to do with the company that I’m working with as well. In the, “Four Skills You Need to Become a Leader”, it discusses the importance of studying and immersing yourself in other cultures. Although I am lucky to have had 4 weeks in a different country and working in that country, I can’t help but feel a bit robbed of what I could have learned if I was able to stay there. I have tried my best to make the best of this situation but, I haven’t solidified a great relationship with people other than the two or three women that I interact with most often. Some issues that I’ve run into is a bit of time management just because my class times have changed and that has interrupted my time working my normal hours for them as well as just working around the time difference. The other intern is in a different part of the US so she turns in her assignments before me because 3 PM her time is different than 3 PM my time so I try and not to turn in anything after her because it looks like I’m always turning things in late.

We have decided to have weekly Skype meetings with all of the interns. They recently hired a student from the Czech Republic to continue interning online until they open the Czech Republic back up so now we have a new person in the mix. There isn’t a dress style/code and things are very, very laid-back and regards to communication and conduct deadlines etc., which is good in some regard, but difficult when my whole days are pretty much up in the air besides school work.