Bondit Community, part 3 of 4
Managing people I could not order around
Fifty student interns, most unpaid, many older than me. Structure didn't create alignment. Getting to know people did.
Context
At Bondit I was a paid, part-time employee. I recruited and managed a network of more than 50 student interns and creators from several universities, working on research, outreach and operations. Most of them were unpaid and part time. Some were older than me.
The problem
The unspoken question was simple: why should an unpaid intern take direction from another student? There was some skepticism from the start. I had no formal authority. I couldn’t pay anyone more, promote anyone, or give orders the way a manager at a large company could.
As the team grew, the problems grew with it. People joined with different motivations, different amounts of time, and very different ways of working. Then engagement started to slip, in small ways at first: replies came back unevenly, deadlines were missed without any warning, and group discussions got quieter.
It came to a head on one outreach project. People were working toward different ideas of what “done” meant, and the work stalled.
What I did
Admitting what I’d been doing
I had started out acting like a manager: assigning tasks and expecting them to get done. Looking back at how I had been running the team, I realized I had been trying to create alignment through structure. With people who are mostly volunteering, that doesn’t work.
Starting with why they joined
So I had short one-on-one conversations to understand why each person had joined in the first place. Some wanted something for their résumé. Some wanted startup experience. Others were there for marketing, social media, leadership or research. The answers were different, so the work became different.
| Who they were | What I gave them |
|---|---|
| Needed experience for their résumé | A project they owned, with something measurable at the end |
| Creative | Content |
| Analytical | Performance tracking |
| Self-directed | Open-ended projects |
| Short on time | Clearly defined tasks and more frequent check-ins, so they always knew what was expected |
Two speeds of communication
I split communication into a weekly written summary people could read when they had time, and short check-ins for things that needed a conversation. People who disliked long meetings got concise updates by email. People who liked to talk things through got a call. And I told everyone the same thing: if anything comes up, just text or call me.
Pairing people up
I paired people whose skills and working styles complemented each other.
Changing my own role
I stopped acting like a manager and started acting like a peer whose job was to make other people’s work easier, not to control it. I made myself easy to reach, and spent more time asking what people needed than telling them what to do.
What happened
More than 85% of the interns completed the program, meeting or exceeding expectations. Our content output rose by about 40% over the same period.
- 85%+ Completed
- under 15% Did not complete
What I learned
At first I thought leadership meant setting clear expectations. Now I think it means adjusting the structure to fit the people, not the other way around.
Without formal authority, leading isn’t about control. It’s about trust, and about getting people pointed in the same direction because they want to be.
The differences in how people work turned out to be something to use, not something to manage away. The moment I stopped trying to make fifty people work the same way, the team started working.