This is part of an ongoing series of posts about creating and strengthening an internship program. The posts are compiled on the Internships page.

There are ways to catch a new intern up to speed without killing your own productivity. If you don’t want to regret the whole intern experience, it’s important to take some of these steps to save yourself headaches.

Create training materials: Spend some time creating instructions for how to accomplish various tasks interns will have to complete on a regular basis. A shared set of Google Docs (docs.google.com) is probably the easiest way to share these sorts of resources. A set of word documents on a shared computer drive is also very easy to create and manage. Time invested up front creating instructions will pay off many times, especially since interns sometimes need to refer back to instructions multiple times as they get the hang of new tasks. (The alternative is being prepared to explain the same thing over and over again.)

If you have a microphone, it is extremely easy to record and narrate “screencasts” (videos of your computer screen) to show how to do certain things. There are many websites that allow you to create a screencast for free (such as www.screencast-o-matic.com), without requiring you to download software. If you can record these videos without revealing proprietary information, you can upload them to Youtube for easy reference, and link to them from your written instructions.

Rely on the expertise of veteran interns: If you take on more than one intern at a time, veteran interns can be an excellent training resource for greener interns. Interns generally enjoy sharing their expertise and knowledge with trainees, and they learn more through the teaching process than they otherwise would.

I promised myself I wouldn't do any work this week on vacation, either on Davis Dollars or for Senator Steinberg's office. Co-op Camp is a beautiful camp in the Sierras, and I only see most of my friends from camp once a year.

Well, I didn't quite end up doing work...but I also did end up getting involved in two different flavors of management while at camp (as the Teen Director, and in general camp management). I'm now involved in managing Davis Dollars, the internship program in Senator Steinberg's office, the Davis Cooperative Community Network, and Co-op Camp.

I've been the Teen Director at camp for about five years now, but this year I've really taken the program to a new level. While my role in previous years was really not much more than chaperon, this year I've been leading the teens in running projects and workshops for each other.

I met with them at the beginning of the week to talk about what activities they'd like to do, and particularly what skills they'd like to learn, and to share with each other. Emily led a workshop on handstands and cartwheels, for example. Keith led a handful of teens in getting video testimonials about camp from every camper, so we can share what makes this camp so special. I treated my job as director much more like my role at Davis Dollars and in Senator Steinberg's office - I'm focusing on empowering the teens to create programs they're interested in, instead of relying on me to entertain them.

I'm also making my first forays into general camp management, at the invitation of the three current camp managers. Because many of the campers come from co-ops of one sort or another, lots are interested in helping make camp a better place, but many I've spoken to have found it difficult to get involved. I know Heather, Chip and Victor (the three current managers) feel overwhelmed by everything they have to accomplish every year. (They're not paid.) I think everyone would agree that the three of them have become a bottleneck purely by virtue of the huge amount of work that has to go through them, and I think we would all like to share the work around a bit more.

So when Heather invited me to take on a management role, I took the opportunity to talk to her, Chip and Victor, and several others interested in getting more involved about how we could make it easier to campers to contribute to preparation for camp.

I started by creating a Google Group to replace our old email list so that we could have a small group of administrators authorized to email to our entire list. (Previously every email had to go through Heather, Chip or Victor, and it wasn't feasible for them to handle this all on their own.) This will make it easier for other campers to let everyone know about camper meet-ups during the year, fundraisers, and other important news.

I also created a set of Google Documents to help us coordinate on our various activities during the year. This way campers can log in and find out, for example, that we still need $1,500 in prizes for our auction, and can begin to solicit donations from businesses. (Before, this would have required prior authorization from Heather, Chip or Victor, and things get slowed down when 20 people who want to contribute in different ways all have to filter through three people.) In a lot of ways this isn't any different from all my other management experience - I'm trying to empower people to make a contribution. People want to get involved, and it's just a matter of making it easy for them to do so in a coordinated manner.

Nonprofits and community organizations are often chronically understaffed, and I'm wary of getting involved in Co-op Camp management because I don't want to be drawn into a huge tangle of tasks to get camp coordinated for next year. As I get involved, I'll insist on being given specific responsibilities, and the freedom to accomplish those responsibilities with minimal interference. As I've found from managing my hordes of interns, people are a lot more interested in doing grunt work if it's in the service of a responsibility they've been given than they are in doing grunt work that has been assigned to them.

As with my interns, my ideal contribution would be to enable campers to share their talents to improve camp. There are lots of folks who want to help put on the carnival, or bring new campers, or offer a great workshop. Right now the centralized management structure has made it difficult for some people to contribute. Heather, Chip and Victor recognize this, and were happy to hear that the Google Documents might encourage people to put their heads together outside of camp to prepare for next year.

So now I just have to figure out how to share information and responsibility in a meaningful way, while helping coordinate everyone’s contributions so collaboration doesn’t turn into chaos. Wish me luck!

I once heard a story about a plant manager in a World War II airplane factory who radically increased his employees' production. The factory operated around the clock in three eight-hour shifts, and he achieved the improvement by writing on the wall the number of airplane engines completed by the previous shift. Each shift wanted to beat the previous shift's performance, and they worked harder to make that happen.

Whether the story is true, I don't know. But it illustrates an important point - that people want to do well, and it helps to show them how they're doing, and give them something to work toward. I personally believe that the competitive element is useful, but not necessary, for this point.

I heard this concept described another way recently. I was listening to a podcast about activism (I think on the excellent Big Vision Podcast, by Britt Bravo). The guest explained that people are often apathetic because they feel that their efforts are just a drop in the bucket. She said that drops can fill a bucket pretty fast, though. What's important is being able to see the bucket, and see all the other drops from other people, so we know we're making progress.

So the important thing is to provide some context, and show people what other people are working on, so you know you're not the only one working on something.

It was with this in mind that I printed a graph of our progress with our response letter backlog. My intern team does a great job of writing letters, but I think the seemingly-endless assignment of response letters must wear down on some of them. To use the metaphor from above, I wanted to make the bucket more visible by showing how many responses we had left. We have been making steady progress through our backlog, so I figured showing our team how we're doing would give everyone a bit of hope - we are doing well, and we're almost done!

I printed out a graph and showed it to the three interns in today, and asked them all to think about how we're going respond to everyone. I explained that I would show the latest graph every day to keep people aware of where we stood. I had expected a few more letters to come in, but was surprised to have nine letters in my inbox in the next half hour! What an effect!

We'll see whether this sort of effect is sustained over the long run, or if it is only a short-term boost that only occurs the first time I show someone the graph. But I have hope that it will really help give people an understanding of where we are, and remind people to focus on what they can do to help us get to our final destination.

A few days ago I had the odd experience of mentoring one of my interns on leadership development. Odd because I'm so new to leadership development myself, but also because I felt I actually had things to teach. Much to my surprise, Lauren didn't immediately say, "Yeah, yeah, I already know that." Instead, she was nodding and taking notes. Also, I was reminded how much I learn when I teach - it forces me to articulate ideas that only exist nebulously in my mind.

Here are the basics of what I've learned so far, and what I told Lauren.

Involvement is a continuum. It doesn't help to think of infrequent volunteers, team members, and leaders as separate categories of participants. These types of participants belong on a continuum. Every volunteer should be seen as a potential team member, and team members can and should be encouraged to lead.

Leadership isn't a one-way activity. You can have lots of team members acting as leaders because leadership isn't a one-way activity that only occurs when someone leads her subordinates. Participants can lead laterally when they work on projects together, and help each other overcome obstacles. They can also lead upward - people higher in an organization should be open to the contributions of those below them. Developing leaders is less about grooming someone for a position of formal authority, and is more about developing abilities like critical thinking, communication, confidence, teamwork and a willingness to take risks.

Get participants working together. You'll have real trouble developing someone as a leader if you only assign him individual work. Even when tasks can be completed individually, get participants to work together on tasks so they can learn how to lead laterally. If tasks cannot be easily split up, ask participants to choose how to distribute a bundle of tasks, and ask them to talk to check up on each other's work. This will also help you recognize which participants take the initiative, and may be ready for more responsibility. Assigning work to groups also builds morale and team spirit, and takes a load off your shoulders, as you are no longer solely responsible for assigning tasks - you can ask a team to figure out the best way to accomplish something.

Assign responsibilities, not tasks. To engage a team member's passions, assign them broad responsibilities rather than narrow tasks. People want to feel they have accomplished something, and it's difficult to feel ownership of your work if you can't see how your work connects to everything else. Almost everyone has to do some tedious groundwork; a team member will be a lot more cheerful doing that work when she decides it's necessary to accomplish the goals she's responsible for than if you tell her to do that work. Sometimes you'll have to step in to remind a team member what sort of groundwork is necessary, but even in these cases, make sure to put the groundwork in the context of her overall responsibility.
When someone first gets involved, you should probably find engaging tasks to assign them, because they may not be interested in taking on responsibilities. But as people get more involved, you should give them the chance to take on responsibilities.

Gauge a participant's interest by suggesting they invite others. People who are really interested in the work they do will probably be enthusiastic about asking others to get involved, if you have ways new people can contribute without a large time commitment. If these opportunities exist and your team member isn't interested, it may be because he doesn't feel very engaged in what he's doing. Think about how you can engage him more. If you're already doing everything you should be doing, keep in mind that he probably won't be interested in getting any more involved than he already is.

Leadership development takes time. Leadership development not only takes time in the sense of needing weeks or months; it also takes real time from a leader's day. Don't shortchange your leadership development effort by assuming it will happen as a natural byproduct of management. Keep in very good contact with anyone you're developing as a leader, and anyone who is a potential leader. Don't drop the ball!

I'd love to hear your own suggestions - how do you develop leaders?

I feel like our office's intern program is on the verge of a growth spurt. We usually have between 4 and 16 interns, maxing out over the summer (see this graph). But I feel we're on the verge of being able to take on a lot more. I came to this realization yesterday after a series of interviews with prospective interns, and after talking to my district director, Susan, about our program. I left the office feeling elated and empowered.

Interns in our office do great work. In the past, they've enabled us to do a better job of things we already do: writing response letters, assisting constituents with casework, organizing district events. But with the start of the Ownership Initiatives and the leadership development program, our intern program will start to take on an entirely different character - it will allow us to do things we have never been able to do. We'll be able to proactively reach out to constituents (more than we already do); we'll partner with organizations to run health or safety or environmental programs; we'll put on educational workshops; we'll help neighborhoods organize. This is the vision of the intern program that motivates me.

I still need to grow as a manager and leader to make this vision a reality. I feel that I'm on my way down this path, but we also need to be thinking about what factors limit the number of interns we can handle. These are the factors I've been thinking about:

Space/resources: Our office is pretty big, but we do have a finite number of desks and computers. We'll have to figure out ways to fit more interns in here, or find ways for them to do work outside the office. We have a wireless network, so interns could work on laptops. We have a couple of other offices interns might fit into, but only after they've had significant experience in this office - this program works in part because I can help train interns. This brings me to the next limitation...

My ability to manage interns: I'm not quite at my capacity yet, but I may reach it yet, and I really need to ramp up the leadership development aspect of things if I really want this program to take off. I need experienced interns to be able to lead newer interns - I can't be the bottleneck through which everything must pass.

Our ability to find work for interns: As I see it, this is only an issue as long as we have interns working on our existing functions (letters, casework, events). As we develop the ownership initiatives program, more interns will just mean more projects we can take on. This will depend on successful leadership development, though.

The capacity of other staff members to help handle the interns: I do the bulk of the intern management, but other staff members play important roles. Karen reviews every letter after I review it. At the moment she feels well below her capacity, but as we have more interns, this may change. I can try to address this by having interns mentor other interns, and check each other's work before sending it to me, which will hopefully lead to a higher level of quality by the time it reaches Karen. This may decrease response times, though. Staff also do some managing when I'm away at class. This can be addressed somewhat through leadership development - interns can lead each other. It will also help when interns have more self-directed projects - at the moment, I assign them tasks, and once they've finished those tasks, there isn't much they can do. With self-directed projects like the ownership initiatives, they can come up with their own tasks.

I'm ready for our program to take off! I'll keep writing as things develop.

I've been slowly trying to get interns to work together more. I've been doing it both with my Davis Dollars interns and with my interns in Senator Steinberg's office, with different strategies.

I think it's important for a lot of reasons.

• It develops the interns' skills, initiative, and responsibility to be accountable to each other.
• Two heads are better than one - they can think of more ideas together than they'd be able to think of working alone on their projects.
• This allows me to tap into the creativity and intelligence of every intern. I can't think of everything. That fact is obvious, but assigning tasks unilaterally only makes sense if I believe I can think of everything we should do, and how we should do it. By allowing interns to talk about what to work on and how to accomplish it, they can come up with ideas I would not have thought of.
• It removes me as a bottleneck - when I need to assign tasks for everyone, it means interns are stalled if they need to wait to hear back from me. By delegating some authority to the intern teams, they can bypass me. This requires some watching, however, to make sure I approve of what they're working on.

There are different ways I'm having interns work together. My Davis Dollars interns work in small teams (2-3 people per team) to focus on different things. Two interns work on business outreach. Another is working on community outreach, which is broad enough that she helps other interns out as well as doing her own projects. Another intern works on our Gardenscaping project to create gardens for people in Davis, and she has some auxiliary interns helping her out, which I've helped recruit. Yet another intern helps other groups by working on design issues (creating publications, logos, etc.). Grouping them up this way has been tremendously successful in that it capitalizes on their good ideas and reduces pressure on me to think of everything.

In Senator Steinberg's office, I've been a bit less successful in thinking of ways to get interns to work together. They work together on their ownership initiatives, but I’ve had more trouble finding ways for them to work together on their core tasks of writing response letters and working on casework. Many of these core tasks are (to my mind) highly individual tasks that are difficult to split up.

I’ve been thinking of broader ways to get interns to work together, though. Working together doesn’t necessarily require splitting a task down the middle. Rather than assigning individual tasks to interns, I could allow them to create a division of labor by assigning a block of tasks to a group of interns, and allowing the interns to split the tasks between them. This would give them more initiative and make them partners in figuring out the best way to get through all the tasks. My current method commoditizes both the tasks and the interns by making piecemeal work out of something that could benefit from more creative thinking.

I did notice yesterday that two interns who were just starting out spontaneously started helping each other with tasks. Lucy, one of the interns, has already shown more initiative than average, so I wasn’t entirely surprised when she started helping Rochelle (who is a bit newer than Lucy). But I could also encourage teamwork by assigning each new intern to a more senior intern, and ask that senior intern to be responsible for guiding and mentoring the younger intern.

What are your thoughts? Do you have suggestions? How do you work with interns?

I manage all the interns at my job in Senator Steinberg's office, and have recently implemented a leadership development program called Ownership Initiatives. I'll write more in the future about how the program is going, but it's best to start with the description of the project I wrote, and which I ask our interns to read:

We believe interns should be able to take on projects of interest - what we call "ownership initiatives", because we want interns to take ownership over the projects.

Nick will talk to you about what sorts of initiatives you're interested in. (See some initiative ideas below.) You, he and Susan will meet to talk about which is the most feasible, how best to accomplish it, and what deadlines are reasonable.

Nick will also assign you "core tasks" each day, which you must finish before working on your initiative. These are the tasks that it is important for our office to complete, such as writing response letters, casework, printing certificates, addressing constituent inquiries, and answering the phone. Nick will give you a fixed number of tasks each day, plus a share of any tasks that come in that day (e.g. new cases).

It is expected that you will finish your core tasks in the first part of the day, and then move on to work on your initiative. You should talk to Nick if you are having difficulty accomplishing all your core tasks. It is also expected that you will set feasible goals for your initiative, and accomplish those on schedule.

Read this page, and browse through the list of initiatives below. Think about your own interests and passions, and how they might fit in to various projects.

Talk to Nick about your interests, and mention any projects you've thought of that aren't on the list already. He and other staff will think about what sort of project would be feasible to start with. We'll try to generate several options, at which point you have come to the Investigative phase of the process.

Like most real-world projects, your ownership initiative may not be well-defined from the start. It's possible you'll start working on an existing initiative, but it's equally likely you'll want to start working on a project that doesn't have clear boundaries. A big part of being successful is being able to (1) accept ambiguity, and (2) take actions to bring clarity to your efforts. Even if a project is already well-defined, your role in the project may be initially be vague. To begin your initiative, you'll need to do a bit of investigation and legwork to define the purpose and boundaries of the project, or of your involvement with the project.

You can consult with staff for advice on the investigative phase; here are some general strategies for clarifying your initiative:

1. Talk to the point person on the project - that may be a member of the district staff, capital staff, majority caucus, or even possibly someone else. Ask them lots of questions about the nature of the project and how you can get involved; try to pin them down on lots of details. You should have a very clear understanding of what you'll be doing - try explaining your role to someone else, and if you find difficulty explaining something, you should go back to ask the point person more questions.
2. Call other staff and offices working on the project (ask staff in our office for advice on who to talk to) about how you can help. This is important because you won't always be able to reach your point person immediately. It shows initiative that you're ready to move forward with the project even though your point person hasn't given you specific tasks yet.
3. Do some research on the project, to figure out what else we might be able to do to help the project. This could mean calling a relevant state agency, calling some organizations with expertise in the relevant area, or looking around online for resources. (Talk to staff in our office before calling any outside organizations to find out if there's anything sensitive you shouldn't talk to outsiders about.) From your research, you can make some suggestions to your point person. It's an important skill to be able to anticipate things the project might need, and generate options to choose from.

Some initiatives on the list below, and some initiatives you'll think of, have been dreamed up by interns, or by Nick. If one of these catches your interest, your Investigative phase will be heavy on the research aspect - you'll need to define not only your role in the project, but the project itself.

You'll also have to pitch the project and gain approval for it. For some projects, this will be easy - it isn't hard to get approval to run a tree-planting project in a neighborhood, for example. Other projects will require significant research beforehand before pitching. If you want Darrell to carry a bill, for example, you'll have to do a lot of research, some of which will be necessary before you even float the idea with staff (talk to Nick before embarking on anything).

Potential projects may not be approved, so talk to Nick and other district staff to get advice on how to improve your chances. This shouldn't discourage you from pursuing an initiative of your own design, though. Project proposals in the real world don't all get accepted, either. Even if your proposal isn't accepted, you'll earn the respect of the staff you work with.

Thursday was the first day of my Intersectoral Leadership class at USC. One excellent thing about the program I'm in is that we do lots of activities that force us to experience the concepts we're learning about. The Dominoes and Poker Chips game created a really interesting leadership dynamic I hadn't ever witnessed before - there was an abrupt shift, before which we were operating as separate teams, and after which the whole class was unified, and I was surprised to find everyone listening to me.

So on Thursday morning, Professor Callahan began stacking dominoes and three colors of poker chips on the front table. He explained to our five table groups that we were going to play a game.

Each one of us would start with two random poker chips. Our objective was to be holding a domino when one minute was up, and we could trade chips for dominoes. Here were the trading rules:

1. You may trade three chips of different colors for one domino; you will also get one chip (of your choosing) back.
2. You may trade three dominoes for seven chips (of your choosing) back.
3. No stealing from other players
4. Anyone who does not have a domino in hand when time was called was dead.

He gave us two minutes to strategize. I was concerned people at our table would be competitive between each other, and quickly suggested that we all pool our chips to make some quick trades. I figured if we could convert our chips into three dominoes, then convert those back into more chips, we could convert our remaining chips back into four dominoes, and we'd all be set.

I don't know what other tables planned, but when he called for trading to begin, his table was mobbed. Everyone was calling for him to make exchanges for them. I had offered to be the trading rep for our table, and we got as far as our three dominoes, and exchanged them back into chips, when he called time. We had no dominoes; all of us were dead.

We all returned to our seats, and Professor Callahan counted the total number of dominoes throughout the whole class.  Only four people had dominoes out of a class of 21.

He reset the starting conditions (he took all the dominoes, and gave us each two chips), and asked us to take some time to plan again. We figured that, given the short amount of time, we should just hold on to our three dominoes and settle for one of us dying. I volunteered for that part, since I had proposed our plan, and knew I had to be willing to sacrifice, or they would distrust my call for everyone to contribute their chips.

We pulled this off, but at the end, the whole class only had seven survivors. We had done better, but no one else had. It still wasn't a very satisfactory result.

In the next planning session, and at the suggestion of one of my group members, I suggested to a group on one side that we could jointly pool our chips. They weren't interested, however, so we decided to stick with our original strategy - to no better success.

In the next planning session, Leila suggested again that we might want to coordinate with other groups, so the two of us approached two other groups that we had seen making plans together. I started talking to one of the two groups, and the other of the two started walking toward me to hear what I was saying. As the two groups converged on Leila and I, I raised my voice to be heard by both groups.

"We can all join our chips into one big pool," I began.

And in that moment, I noticed something strange and incredible. Suddenly the whole class was silent, listening to what I was saying. Everyone, including the group that hadn't been interested the round before, was suddenly a single group instead of separate pieces. There was a complete phase change, like ice cubes melting into a pool of water - a qualitative change in the nature of the group. The speed with which it happened was unlike anything I had ever seen in my life.

I don't know what exactly caused it. I'm sure it was a combination of factors:

• Everyone was frustrated, and were ready for someone who could propose a solution
• Other groups had been testing out the idea of coordinating, and were ready to try it on a larger scale when someone suggested it
• And we shouldn't underestimate the importance of someone speaking clearly and confidently - as Professor Callahan likes to say, a leader brings clarity.

We were sharing now, and everyone agreed to pool their chips, bring them to the front, and several of us would be in charge of making exchanges from chips into dominoes. We would immediately pass the dominoes back to others. When the time was up, Professor Callahan counted our dominoes. We had 9 - one fewer than we had had the previous round.

I sat down, frustrated, but fortunately was not allowed to give up, because immediately the de facto ambassadors for two other groups came over to me to figure out how we could improve. The game wasn't over, and our temporary setback didn't mean we had failed.

We planned again, refining and streamlining our process for assembling chips into piles. When we tried again, we earned 14 dominoes. The round afterward, we reached 17, and in our seventh round, we all had dominoes.

Afterward we reflected, as a class. Professor Callahan reflected that we had done relatively well (though not extraordinarily well) in terms of the number of rounds we needed to all get dominoes. He noted that every group sees a dip when it first joins as a group (which is pretty common for adopting any new strategy, not just in this game), which is discouraging, but that usually the drop is much more significant.

We also observed that once we had our strategy in place, a large number of people chose to be helpful by getting out of the way, and not clogging up the table area. Not everyone can be a leader; Professor Callahan talked about what he calls "followership," or the skill of being a good follower (even though you might also have the capacity to be a good leader), to allow things to get done. Too many cooks spoil the soup.

I noted that the task might have been significantly harder if, at the end of each round, Professor Callahan had totaled the score of each table, rather than of the entire group. We were already split into table groups, and totaling the scores in that way would have set us against each other even more.

At the end of the exercise, Professor Callahan told us to each keep our dominoes. Mine is now sitting on my desk, to remind me of that moment when we became one.