Why Friends are “WICKED” Important to Make at yah Office

A pretty slow week here in Boston so I’m going to go a little bit more on the prompt’s topic and talk about my experiences with leadership here.

I’ve definitely talked about this some in my previous blog posts but it’s been so interesting to me to see here how big of a difference a leader investing in you can make in a person’s experience. I have learned so much from Jen Queally and her staff. Not only about the opioid epidemic but also about how to relate to people in general in the work place. In the EOPSS everyone seems to be friends and asks about the other’s families and stops to chat in offices and checks in on one another. I think I have seen pictures of the majority of the office’s kids and one of the other women ( the Chief Operating Officer also named Jen) told me she told her son about me and he’s excited to meet the new intern when he visits. A few days ago I was sitting at my desk and one of my coworkers came in to the office and introduced himself to me and we chatted about law school and his experience with the EOPSS for around ten minutes before he had to go to a meeting. It meant a lot that he was willing to come into the office to get to know me considering how busy everyone is here.

I have been fortunate in the sense that because I work in the DPH in the morning and the EOPSS in the afternoon, I have really been able to play the comparison game with work environments. The DPH leadership is much more sporadic and although I think that David is a great person with a lot of passion and knowledge, it is hard to foster a warm work community with everyone scattered in the building in cubes and minimal interaction. I feel like I still don’t know many of my coworkers in a way that I would like to because so much of my day is spent in my cube opening mail and writing correspondence when I am here. I also feel like this office has been focused much more on office and logistical tasks than conversations about the opioid epidemic. David is very busy and has so many hats to juggle that I feel like I get a little bit swept under the rug here in terms of being able to have meaningful or educational talks about the work or anything really besides emails regarding certificates and opening mail. But this has been a big lesson in itself that I am grateful for because it has forced me to put myself out there and find meaningful projects in the workplace on my own rather than having them handed to me like I was expecting. I feel like this will help me to stand out in future positions because I am willing to take initiative when I feel like I need more responsibility, and I would not have really known that about myself had I not had this experience this summer. David has been very interested in the project that I found for myself at the EOPSS and has since then told me about a project that he too has been working on with an idea to have naloxone vending machines in places around the city where overdoses commonly occur. I think its a great idea and I would have loved to help him with it if I were here for longer, but it meant a lot that he valued my opinion and wanted to run his idea by me. I don’t think he would have told me any of this had he not seen me pushing to become involved with my own project before this, but who knows. Either way I’ve learned that going the extra mile makes people respect you and see you as more than “just an intern” and that sometimes it takes more than simply having a position to make people invest in you.

To sum it all up, I have learned that to be a good leader it is truly important to invest in those you are leading. This makes them want to go the extra mile for you. Additionally, it is important to foster a sense of community in the workplace so that people will look forward to coming to the place where they spend the majority of their days. Learning names matters. Asking how someone’s day is going matters. Relationships matter.