The | Intern

The twenty-one-year-old wanted to understand our strategy. The fifty-three-year-old wanted to understand our software. Both asked better questions than most of our full-time staff.

Not because they’re incapable. Because the territory changes faster than any of us admit. We’ve started pairing our interns—young and old, first-career and second-act. They teach each other. The twenty-one-year-old shows the fifty-three-year-old how to automate a report. The fifty-three-year-old shows the twenty-one-year-old how to run a meeting without an agenda descending into chaos. The Intern

We treated them differently. I’m not proud of it, but it’s true. The twenty-one-year-old wanted to understand our strategy

Both assumptions were wrong. The younger intern struggled with confidence, but he learned our analytics platform in one afternoon. He caught a bug no one else had seen. He just needed someone to tell him, “It’s okay to speak up.” Not because they’re incapable

With the fifty-three-year-old, we assumed the opposite. We gave him client calls, project ownership, and a seat at the leadership meeting by week two. We didn’t assign him a “buddy.” We figured he didn’t need one.