Here are the 4 most common pitfalls of summer interns:

1. Not getting good / meaningful work
2. Not knowing how to do the work you do have
3. Not knowing how well (or poorly) you’re doing
4. Not meeting the right people

Not Getting Good / Meaningful Work

If you’re still fetching coffee every morning and spending more time by the photocopier than in team meetings, then it’s probably a sign that you’re not being challenged quite enough.  Think about what you set out to learn this summer and approach your supervisor or mentor to ask for some good practical experience learning how to do X, Y, or Z.  

Suggest a few ideas of how you might spend some time advancing your cause in the next few weeks to learn any of those particular skills (“Would it help if I put together a first cut of the presentation for you?”  “Would you like me to review the project plan?” “Is there anything I can do to help on the Seagram’s account, I’d love to learn more about the sales process.”

Alternatively, if you know you’re a great writer and you haven’t been given an opportunity to show off your stuff, think about creating an opportunity to excel.  Offer to draft a memo, edit a presentation or review a document—anything that will play to your strengths and show off your natural talents and abilities before summer is through.

Not Knowing How to Do the Work You Do Have

If challenging assignments are a dime a dozen and instead you suffer from the opposite problem of having great work but not knowing how to do that work, than you’ve got to learn to Ask for Help.  One good way to ask for help includes asking for an example or template of a given assignment—you’d be surprised at how much institutional knowledge usually exists in organizations.  Another idea is to ask for recommendations of people to speak with who can help your cause—perhaps Anthony from accounting worked on a similar project last fall.   Don’t be afraid to ask for the resources you need to get your job done well.

Not Knowing How Well You’re Performing

There’s always someone who finishes up at the end of August thinking they’ve got a full-time offer in the bag or certain they’ve knocked the ball out of the park in terms of their performance, only to find out instead that, contrary to their own rosy assessment of the summer, they actually didn’t quite make the cut.

The only way to know for sure whether or not you’re meeting expectations is to Ask for Feedback.  Don’t wait for a final conversation with your boss at the end of the summer to ask her how you did—by then it’s too late.  Take the initiative now to inquire about your performance.  Be specific about what areas of performance you’re looking for feedback on and give her some time to think about it in advance before scheduling the actual conversation.  Once you have the actual conversation, be sure to solicit concrete ideas about how to improve or contribute more to your teams over the next few weeks.

Not Meeting the Right People

If you’re halfway through the summer and the only person in the office who knows your name is your mentor, than it’s time to step it up and make the rounds.  You don’t have to start dropping by everyone’s office and chatting them up in the middle of the day, but pick three or four people and make a point to reach out to each of them in the next few weeks.

You can email people or stop by their office and ask if they’ve got a few minutes of time to speak with you.  Then ask them some smart and pointed questions about what they do for the organization, how they got started in their careers and what advice they have for newcomers.  Everyone’s busy, but people love talking about themselves.  If you show a genuine interest in their work and career progression, you’ll find that most people are pretty generous in terms of sharing their stories.

It’s hard to argue that a primetime network T.V. show that debuts after the Super Bowl has any mission other than to entertain the masses. It’s perhaps unfair then to ascribe any responsibility to the “Undercover Boss” other than the blatantly obvious—we all knew what we were getting—another reality show.

In reality T.V., however, there is an endgame separate and apart from mere entertainment. The Bachelor promises love, American Idol fortune and fame, and The Apprentice, a dream job with The Donald. In the case of the Undercover Boss: the chance for an executive to “garner an up-close look at his company and workforce to see how and where improvements can be made.”

And so I found myself hopeful that Larry O’Donnell, President and COO of Waste Management might provide both entertainment and some real lessons on management and leadership. Unfortunately, Larry missed the boat on the valuable learning of the day—namely the importance of a feedback loop within an organization.

Initial praise for the show ran deep, with the New York Times quoting executive producer Stephen Lambert “Anybody who has had a boss, or who has worked in a company, will understand this show…and for the person in charge, to be able to see what their employees are really doing seemed like an exciting idea.”

Exciting isn’t exactly the word many would use to describe a manager’s responsibility to know what his employees are doing. Shouldn’t it be expected (or at least aspired to) that leaders know what their front-line workers are up to?

With the five employees Larry shadowed on candid-camera, he proposed tailor-made remedies to each of their complaints—a task force here, a new policy there, a modest wage increase for another. Larry was genuinely touched by the challenges his employees faced and was humbled by the dignity and respect with which they carried themselves and contributed to the organization. Yet it’s not what Larry learned that was disappointing—it’s what he didn’t learn.

Standing on a podium presenting his “findings” to a raucous crowd of WM employees, Larry failed to consider the issues facing the remaining 45,000 employees of Waste Management. Larry didn’t look at the big picture of what the show revealed. Instead of fixating on the individual problems that surfaced during the show, Larry should have realized that WM appears to be an organization in which no effective feedback loop exists. To be sure, the five lucky employees who spent a day with Larry weren’t the only ones suffering at the hands of the productivity missives barreling down from the top.

It’s not just a problem that female garbage collectors aren’t given the decency of bathroom breaks: it’s a problem that Larry didn’t know that that was the case. It’s not just a problem that employees were dashing out of the cafeteria, petrified of being docked pay–it’s a problem that their behavior had never reached him. If Larry heads back to WM and makes only incremental changes in a few of the company’s practices, he’s missed an enormous opportunity to improve something much more critical to his company.

The key lesson for Larry is that productivity initiatives are a two-way street. There’s got to be an information channel that goes from bottom to top as well as from top to bottom. Based on his week in the field, Larry might have realized that Waste Management wasn’t doing a good job of listening to and soliciting feedback from its frontline employees—hearing from them what was working and what wasn’t, what was helping them and what was hurting them. Making people happy, giving them ownership in processes and policies, and treating employees like valued and respected members of a community or organization—that’s the way to increase productivity.

Senior leadership has a responsibility to know what employees are doing on a regular basis—it shouldn’t be treated as a special event. I believe management has a responsibility to work the front lines of every organization. There’s a reason we have a “take your kids to work” day and not a “take your boss to work day.” It’s expected that the boss knows how to pick up trash, make a widget or close the deal. Many companies are on top of this: Zappo’s CEO spends time talking to customers and filling orders and the CEO of Burger King knows how to work a cash register. And even on Wall Street, you’re hard pressed to find a managing director who didn’t cut his or her teeth pulling all-nighters as a lowly analyst. Wouldn’t it have been great if Larry had taken his moment on reality TV to learn that lesson–and to show the rest of us what that transformation could look like?

To see the HBR comments, click here

But learning how to ask for help — and how to do it right — is critical to doing your job well and setting yourself up for success.

You may be afraid of looking dumb, but to be afraid to ask for and get the help you need is inexcusable, especially when the stakes are high. Asking for help in the workplace is a good thing. In fact, asking for help the right way can show how smart you are: it demonstrates that you’ve got good judgment and shows that you know what you know and what you don’t know. Moreover, getting help up front saves endless time, energy and resources on the back end; in the Madoff case, it could have saved billions of dollars and immeasurable heartache.

Of course, it’s not just asking for help — it’s asking the right way. I recently coached a young man in commercial real-estate who relayed a conversation he had with his boss about starting a new regional initiative for his firm’s brokers. Several times he asked, “How should I do this?” or “How should I think about this?” I cringed every time.

Instead, think about the following strategy to get the best answer — and show how smart you are — the next time you ask for help:

1. Start your question with what you know. Do your homework first. Get enough background information to put your issue or problem in context. Give the other person an idea of what you’ve completed to date or what you know already and then proceed to explain what’s outstanding, where or how you’re struggling, or what you need help with.
2. Then, state the direction you want to take and ask for feedback, thoughts or clarification. Form an opinion on what you think the answer should be. Don’t just ask, “How should I reach out to the brokers?” Instead propose a course of action and get your boss’s feedback: “I’m thinking of sending out a mass email to the brokers but I’m not sure if that’s the most effective format…what do you think of that approach?”
3. If you don’t know the direction to take, ask for tangible guidance. Instead of asking “What should I do?” ask specifically for the tools you’ll need to make that decision yourself, such as a recent example of a similar analysis or a template for a given task. Or, ask for a referral to someone who has worked on a similar initiative or project in the past.

In the vast majority of cases, you’ll get a lot further in your career by asking the tough, smart questions. Had the SEC junior staffers pressed senior management for more guidance and help, Bernie might have been stopped long ago.

To see HBR comments, click here

At the end of the commercial break, Cronkite was still on the phone getting the full story. Producers and newsman were apparently rushing to get him off the phone as the show resumed.  Instead, Cronkite looked straight into the camera, raised a finger as if to say “hold on a second here” and continued the call in front of the American public with the cameras rolling.

He then told America who he was on the phone with, and finally, after hanging up, shared the news that the President had died.  It’s amazing to me that in an era of deadlines and general rush, when everything is due yesterday (no less true in a newsroom of the 1970s), when everything must be scripted, polished, refined; here you had a newsman who took a call in the middle of a broadcast and stayed on the line until he had the full story, instead of rushing off the phone prematurely because the cameras were rolling.

Cronkite had the stature, or the judgment, or the wisdom, or the trust of the American people to say to them, “hold on a minute” I’m getting some important information here.  Let me get this right versus let me get this fast.   A valuable lesson for us all.

Cronkite Fans: rememberingcronkite

So I love this quote from Michael Wilbon, an ESPN commentator and sports writer, who was working on an article in the early 1980s and needed some help.  His boss ordered him to call former Boston Celtic’s coach and basketball legend Red Auerbach.  Wilbon said he might as well have been asked to call God.  Wilbon started off the conversation by apologizing for interrupting Red’s evening at home, to which Red responded “kid, if it’s a choice between interrupting me or writing something stupid, call.” 

What an amazingly generous response!  Wilbon went on to say that he took Red up on the offer periodically over the ensuing years.  Think about Red the next time someone asks you for help or assistance-if you’re in a rush, you’re on a deadline, you’re not interested, take a minute and remember that it could very well be you next time on the other end in need of help.  

Sports fan bonus: Boston.com Sports