Internship or Self Discovery?

After almost six weeks of interning at NXT Enterprise, I have discovered more about myself then I thought I would. I assumed I would be learning about the company I am working for, however as it turns out, I am learning a lot about myself. I have learnt about my writing style, the best way I approach and solve a problem and how I most effectively achieve a task. Strangely enough I didn’t know this about myself until I started this internship! I have never worked in a corporate environment before, so I have found I have learnt more than I thought I would!

I have realised that I am good at working in a team, but I also need time and space away from the team to arrange my ideas and thoughts. Being thrust into a team environment when I need to collect my thoughts was no good. I couldn't offer any ideas until I had time to go away and think about it. However, I found that for some of my colleagues, they worked better when they were in a team environment, rather than on their own.

I have discovered that everyone thinks, acts and learns differently and that you need to cater to these needs in order to optimise your team’s skills and abilities. Everyone has their strong points and their weaknesses, and it is important to arrange a diverse team to be able to utilise everyone’s strengths. 

I have also discovered more about my writing style. Before I had no idea what type of writing style I possessed. All I knew was that I wrote! Now, having worked with a variety of different co-workers, each with different backgrounds, skills and abilities, I have found that I have a very structured style of writing with a corporate tone. This actually works quite well where I am doing my internship as some co-workers have a very creative and emotive tone and style of writing. This has been useful for writing speeches where emotive language is often needed, whereas my style of writing is perfect for website content and development. 

Please take a look at this YouTube Video, it helps with some simple mistakes many people make when writing! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIVwFRco28Y  

I have learnt so much about myself and my strengths and weaknesses as I have been doing so much writing and working within teams and groups. In terms of writing I have learnt that tone is so very important. You must have the correct tone in your writing to appeal to your audience, and for me this is our investors! So it is very important to know what to write and how to write it. Another aim is to get the key messages across in your writing, which can be done implicitly and explicitly in many cases.

Sam