Your manager is arguably one of the most important people you will engage with during a summer internship. Your manager may be assigning deliverables, connecting you with colleagues, and answering your questions. Regardless of what company or industry you work in, you will most likely have one-on-one meetings with your manager. The cadence of which could be once a week, multiple days a week, or even every day. These touchpoints are opportunities to update your manager with progress, get questions answered, and learn more about the organization.
Because of the importance of one-on-one meetings with your manager, it is helpful to be intentional about planning these meetings.
This article will help you get the most out meetings with your manager!
Planning Meetings
Given everyone’s busy schedules, you may only have a 30-minute Zoom call to engage with each other. Use a document to develop a brief agenda of what you would like to cover before the call. This does not need to be shared with your manager, but serves as a resource to help you during the call. Use this document to detail specific points, questions, and ideas you would like to discuss during the meeting.
A simple way to stay organized is to store your meeting plans and notes in one location, whether it be an ongoing Microsoft Word Document or One Note tab. This will allow you to be effective with how you manage your time planning for the next meeting. It will also give you the opportunity to look back after calls and remember what was discussed.
Casual catch ups
Your manager, like yourself, is just another human being! At the beginning of a meeting, feel free to briefly catch up at first. Ask them how they are, chat about your past weekend, share what you have been up to outside of work. This is totally acceptable and encouraged! This is a great place to connect if you and your manager have similar habits, hobbies, or favorite cuisines.
The topic at hand
After some brief chatting, it is important to pivot the conversation to focus on the work assignments at hand. At this time, you could update your manager on progress on assignments since the last time you spoke together. You could share your screen to physically present the deliverable you are working on. This will give your manager the opportunity to deliver some immediate feedback, ask questions to guide you further, or give you validation that you are on the right track. Most importantly, use this time to ask questions or bring up issues that are blocking you from making progress.
Learning about the organization and industry
Another great way to use the time with your manager is to learn more about the organization or industry. Managers are generally more experienced members of the organization, and so are great sources of knowledge. Picking their brains on how an organization works, or their opinions on a technology could be very insightful. Whenever I have questions about the team or product I am working on, I write them down in the meeting notes for the next upcoming meeting and bring them up towards the end of the call. By showing an interest, previous managers have given me great insights into their work that I had never even considered. Questions that you pose are excellent fuel for conversation and can create direction moving forward.
If you are an internship program, you should be evaluating the company just as much as they are evaluating you. Managers are trying to create enjoyable experiences for you so that you may return as a fulltime employee. As a result, it is completely appropriate to use this time to learn as much as you can about the team and the company. A few relevant topic areas that you could chat with your manager about are:
- Previous projects the team has worked on
- Interesting leaders that they have learned from
- Future challenges that this company will face
- Their own professional goals within the organization and the steps they are taking to get there
In summary, a little meeting planning, note-taking, and question writing can go a long way. Your manager is eager to support you, so be enthusiastic and thoughtful in your communication.
I hope these notes will help you have more fruitful conversations with your manager and other team members that you work with during your summer internship and beyond!
Zuhair Imaduddin is a labor relations student at Cornell University. He was a Product Management Intern at PNC Bank and is an incoming Innovation Development Summer Analyst at JPMorgan Chase.
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