Citations:  All photos on the poster were taken by Marina Peric with the Nikon D3100 SLR Camera. 2013.

All photos can be found on b96.com, Chicago, IL. Personal photograph by author. 2013.

I have had a variety of experiences within my internship and have had the privilege to work with many different people with all sorts of different leadership styles and personalities. So far I have worked at a haunted house, the Toyota Park Soccer Stadium, Brookfield Zoo and the Scion auto show (just to name a few).

            There are different levels of leaders with different levels of experience. My co-workers who are other interns try to observe and follow more than take the initiative to lead and make their own decisions. The promotions and sales staff are very demonstrational with their leadership techniques.

All of them are very hands on and give me a list of things to do in the office and out of the office, but they all show me exactly how to set up the cords for the off-site broadcast or how to talk to winners and double check their information.

            I love working with the on-air personalities because they have a silent kind of leadership, where they do not dictate or shout out commands at anyone, yet everyone looks to them for direction of what to say and where to go. They are very good at thinking on their feet and entertaining the crowd, which is more of my type of leadership. For example, at the Scion auto show I was with Gabe the Producer, who is an on-air personality for the morning show. He was taking the lead and getting the crowd to increase their energy, but at the same time he also wanted me to step up to the microphone and hype up the crowd.

            All of the people that I work with in the radio industry are naturally outgoing and extroverted, so we are all really good communicators, so naturally some take the leadership role and others are good at following and are content with taking direction from others. The interns and I realize that we are ultimately there to learn. So even though we want to show that we can be leaders, it is more important (for now) that we just listen to what is being told to us and take direction to learn as much as we can from the intelligent people who we work with.

            I thought that the best way for me to demonstrate my leadership abilities was to make a poster online via smore.com. The thing that I do the best at the internship, other than communicating with listeners, is that I have been told to set the bar in terms of taking pictures at all of the events. Pictures are very important because the sponsors (such as Scion and Pepsi) want to see the listener interaction with their products, so it is critical that the pictures look fabulous. I am the only one with a professional camera and everyone has been really impressed with my pictures, so I definitely consider this to be a leadership strength because other interns ask me all the time what my techniques are when taking pictures at my events.