Christopher Blanc
TBS 2022
Etudiant

MyIntern is a startup that provides companies with student profiles who are in search of internships or work-study programs, responding directly to offers from these companies. It was officially founded in January 2021 by Christopher and one of his friends, Alexandre Prunier, whom he met in preparatory classes. Thanks to a training course he had taken a few months earlier, Christopher quickly developed the MyIntern website himself, which was launched in February. Leadership that evolves over the life of the startup For Christopher, leadership is above all the ability to make decisions. To do this, the leader must know how to communicate with his or her team in order to better anticipate challenges and achieve his or her objective. Just like parents in a family, the leader or manager faces important responsibilities and must be able to drive his teammates by taking each one into consideration. In a start-up, this leadership is evolutionary. It expands as the start-up develops and grows

During the thinking and launch phase, leadership is less present and limited since the entrepreneur is alone or in a small team - which was the case for MyIntern with its two co-founders Christopher and Alexandre. Then comes the maturation phase where leadership takes on a more central role. This is when the idea is launched and the team starts to grow. Finally, in the scale-up phase, a milestone has been reached and the start-up is growing exponentially. Leaders have no choice but to delegate tasks and trust their employees completely.

Leadership is learned and shared

Christopher explains that a business school like TBS can be very valuable when it comes to management. By learning many soft-skills, the school allows us to exercise leadership more naturally and more quickly upon graduation, making us more likely to become thoughtful and socially, economically and politically aware managers.

However, for him, this leadership is also a matter of our experiences. Indeed, at the beginning of a career, mistakes are frequent. At the beginning of MyIntern, the sharing of decision making between the two co-founders was not always obvious. Each one tended to make their own choices without ever really consulting the other. Over time, real communication took place, allowing for better sharing and a real hierarchy of tasks. And in the event of disagreement, the solution is rather simple: Leave the discussion aside and come back with relevant arguments, having considered the other's opinion. Finally, a leader must also know how to question himself by taking into consideration an opinion different from his own.

Leadership in a startup, a modern and constructive leadership?

In general, leadership in a startup is very similar to what Christopher experienced during an internship in an HR incubator. With a small team - between 10 and 15 people - everyone seems to be on an equal footing. Everyone has a say, whether they are interns, employees or managers. Decision-making is horizontal: Surprising at first, but in the end very beneficial because everyone, regardless of their status, can have relevant ideas to share.

And it is in this sense that Christopher imagines the ideal management model that he would like to put in place for MyIntern. For the moment, and since November 2021, Christopher and Alexandre have decided to put the startup on hold while they finish their studies. Finally, the most important thing for a leader is perhaps not only to know how to make a decision, but also to know how to make this decision in an informed way - by the other actors of the startup or the company. Because a good leader, even if the decision always ends up being his or her own, never makes a decision alone. /span>