Sunday, November 13, 2011

Excellence

This week was the final week of my internship. At Princeton Sports, I sat down with the owner Mr. Alan Davis to have my exit interview. After going over all of the things that I had done for them over the past three weeks, I was impressed with what a difference I had made. The biggest shock for me, however, was how much responsibility I was given as only an intern. Alan said something to me that really resonated and will be my final lesson from this internship experience.

Lesson #13, give people a chance to excel.

Under proper supervision from the staff at Princeton Sports, I was able to help them and implement changes with their website, their organizational process, and their marketing tactics. I made suggestions for the website that were immediately changed. I was able to make some of these changes myself, and when I asked Alan why he felt so comfortable letting an outsider make all of these changes to such a tightly run operation, he told me that under the proper supervision, you need to give people the chance to excel.

To me, this meant that if you don’t give people the opportunity to show you what they’re capable of, you don’t know what you might be missing out on. If I hadn’t been given the opportunity to speak up and tell them what I thought should be changed, they would have been stuck with a website and a Facebook page that weren’t used to their full advantage. I was able to make so many good things happen at Princeton Sports, but only because the management there was able to push me and to listen to my ideas and allowed me to excel.