The Five Conversations That Drive Growth in Creative Organizations

A The built environment is changing fast. If you want to be one of the people leading that change rather than responding to it, join me this summer for Innovation in the Built Environment, a professional intensive from the University of Michigan's Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. Learn more@beradicallybetter.com that's B E R A D I C A L L Y B E T T E R.

B Welcome

A to Practice Disrupted, a podcast exploring how architects can build better businesses, embrace emerging technology, and create more sustainable, fulfilling practices. I'm your host Evelyn Lee, architect, angel investor, and founder of Practice of Architecture. Whether you're running a firm, starting your career, or reimagining what's possible, this podcast challenges you to think differently about the future of architecture. Hello Disruptors. Welcome to this week's episode of practice disrupted. Season 12 has kept returning to one uncomfortable is the profession actually changing, or are we just getting better at describing the same problems? This week's conversation gets at something that sits underneath strategy and tools entirely the quality of the conversations we're willing to have. Laura Weiss is an architect who left traditional practice three decades ago and spent the years since building a body of work that architecture keeps needing and rarely asks for. She spent a decade at IDO as a practice director and associate partner, co leading the original service design practice.

A She went on to serve as a principal at Korn Ferry's Leadership and Professional Development practice, and today she's an ICF certified coach, mediator, and facilitator, and she's returning to teach at Yale. Her framework centers on five conversations she believes determine whether people, firms, and projects actually grow. What she brings here is a long view shaped by watching architecture from the inside and the outside. Her read on why feedback collapses in creative organizations, why conflict avoidance is a leadership strategy that always costs more than it saves, and why the profession's investment in human capital development still lags so far behind its investment in everything else is both precise and unsentimental.

B Let's get into it. Hi Laura, welcome back to Practice Disrupted. I'm so glad to have you here.

C I'm great to be here. Thank you.

B So I haven't had you on since season one, and before I make everyone go listen to that episode, I just want to say I often encourage people to network through LinkedIn, and you are definitely one of those people where I was looking at what am I going to do next? And I was looking at architects that have gone on and done interesting things, and you had this long career at IDO and had since moved on since then. And I reached out and asked for like a coffee and I said, I remember thinking, this person's never going to get back to me. But you did.

C I like to get back to people promptly.

B And then I got you more involved in the aia and we've pulled each other in different directions ever since.

C Yeah, you are a great connector, for sure, Evelyn. Good person to know.

B Well, thank you for that. I know I've had a few frantic calls to Laura over the course of my career saying, like, what do I do about this? So why don't you tell people or the audience what are you doing right now currently?

C I guess what I would say is that I am an ICF certified coach, so a leadership and executive coach. I'm also a professional mediator and a highly experienced facilitator, designer and educator, working with organizations who seek to strengthen the leadership capacity of their rising talent. And I do that sort of in three specific ways. As I mentioned, I do individual coaching, one on one coaching, and some 360 assessment work. I do conflict coaching. Sometimes I call that facilitated dialogue, depending on the context in which I'm working. And then finally, I do love to design what I call learning experiences that focus on some of the things I think we'll talk about in this podcast. Five specific conversational typologies that tend to be critical to leadership.

C Leaders and leadership. So that's what I'm doing these days.

B I'm looking forward to it. When we were talking, you've built a lot of your work around the fact that transformation in an organization or a project or a career doesn't necessarily happen through strategy or a new tool. I would like to say that a lot of people talk about doing things that never actually do come to fruition, but equally important is it happens through conversations and moving people forward. So what did you have to witness fail before you were kind of ready to say that out loud as a professional?

C Yeah, when I, you know, when I was thinking about this, I stopped at just having to think about what did I have to witness. And I immediately was transported back to about 20 years, maybe a little over 20 years when I was in a leadership role at IDEO. And for the first time we were starting to take on strategic work from clients that had previously worked with firms like McKinsey, some of the biggest management consulting firms, and a colleague. And I realized that we needed to start acting differently with these clients. Right. Their experiences of working with outside consultants was different. It was much more. Their expectations was much higher.

C They expected more sophisticated Interaction. I mean, we were great at what we did, but we realized it was a whole other level. And so we ended up coining this crazy term that kind of stuck called consultantship as something we realized that we needed to up our game around. And we, the two of us, prototyped an internal training on how to work better with clients. And believe me when I say that at that particular moment in time in an organization like Audio that looks at design with a capital D, that is their legacy, this was pretty fringe. I mean, it turned out to be sort of prophetic and incredibly valuable, but it was not where anybody's mind really was when it came to what you needed to do well, as an expert and designer in the design field. I would also add that in addition to all that, at the time I was a co leader of IDEO's original service design practice. And so we were in the habit of looking at things as a service journey and identifying opportunities for innovative interventions along that journey.

C And I started to think about professional services, you know, at what we were doing for our clients as something that was also, also had a service journey. So in our own work, we were essentially producing a service experience for our clients and it really could, could have improved and also be a differentiator. So this is probably when I started to think back to my experiences as an architect, you know, many years prior to that, and how we never really gave that any thought to the experience the client was having. How were we establishing and building relationships with our clients, which when I think back, always felt a little contentious at times. So I'd say those are the things that came to mind that really started to shift my focus to the importance of conversations and sort of human interaction as a key part of the design and innovation process.

B Yeah, I would say having now been in tech, it's not even the customer journey, it's the employee journey too.

C Both we used to talk about it as front house and back or front stage. Backstage. Right. Front stage was your clients or consumers or customers. But there was always that backstage, like the people producing in quotes, air quotes, producing that experience, those are your employers or other partners or stakeholders.

B So absolutely, I talk to a lot of architects who, one always think they're good communicators and always having a lot of conversations. But I also talk to employees of these individuals separately and you know, it's clear that they are not being given all the information that they need or it's a one sided conversation. So how do you begin to talk to firm leaders about communication and what it's like to have actually meaningful conversation that begins to move the needle in one direction or another.

C I kind of would take a step back for a moment and share something I've discovered that's a common issue for almost every leader, like senior leaders in almost any organization that I'm familiar with. And it's this. They stop working on their own growth. They've reached the top, right? Whatever that might look like in their particular organization or field, they've made it, they're done. And they rarely get feedback from anyone, nor do they ask for it. But the reality is that true leaders, the ones that can be effective doing all the things you were just describing, are those that see themselves as unfinished products, really. They know their role is to enable others. Right.

C We'll talk hopefully in a moment about what a good definition of leadership is. But their role really is to enable others who then serve the business they're trying to grow together, enable those people to thrive. And true leaders realize that they don't know everything that it takes to do that, especially given the rapid pace of change, just thinking about the technological changes, the number of generations in the workforce, et cetera. Right? So things are changing. No one can know everything or how to do everything about everything. So true leaders really need to be these incredibly vulnerable people. And that's counterintuitive to our vision of a leader.

B Right.

C And then, of course, rising leaders who are watching how senior leaders are operating are modeling their behavior after those. So the tradition kind of continues. And I'll just say that more than once I've coached someone. These happen to be people in architecture firms. I've coached someone because their manager felt that that person needed some kind of help. But in reality, the manager probably needed some coaching as well. Right. They were sort of blind to how they contributed to the situation their direct report was trying to navigate.

C So, you know, we say in the world of conflict resolution, we're all complicit in the situation that, you know, we're trying to correct or make better. So the one other thing I will say on this topic is that I hear a lot in creative organizations, not just architecture, is this idea that. That they operate in a culture of nice. I'm also making air quotes again, which is, I think, an excuse for why nobody gives feedback or has tough conversations, because it's a culture of nice. And I even heard that when I was at ideo. Right. The idea being that, well, innovators and designers are very future oriented because they're innovators. And so they're very Optimistic.

C And I'm like, that's not mutually exclusive with having productive, constructive, growth oriented, difficult conversations. Right. So this is the myth about conflict that it ruins relationships. And in fact, the exact opposite is true if you have the skill set and the mindset to navigate them. Well.

B Well, I just wanted to go back and talk about that definition of leadership because you kind of, you alluded to two different types of leadership too, right? Like the leader that when I was younger and I'm Gen X for frame of reference, but when I was younger

C and I'm tail end baby boomer, just so you know, I'm like, right the second to last year.

B But this, you know, the notion of the leader that we, we saw, right? The one that was not able to have honest conversations. So I have, you know, I've seen my definition of what it means to be a leader change, especially having been at Slack through the pandemic and having very honest and emotional leadership, emotionally intelligent leadership at that time. So what is like a definite, like a good definition of leadership these days, or how would you tee that one up?

C Well, I'm going to steal one from Frances Fry, who's a professor at Harvard Business School. And I've been. She does these Wednesday office hour podcasts that are just, they're web, they're live webinars that are amazing. And she's got one of the best definitions of leadership ever I've ever heard. It's that leadership at its core is about making other people better as a result of your presence and making sure that the impact lasts in your absence. Right. So it's this idea about, you know, literally enabling other people. It's not about you, it's about, you know, helping everybody get better.

C And then collectively, you're actually driving whatever enterprise it is you're all working on together forward and that you don't need to be present all the time for, for that reality to take effect. So I. That's my favorite, that's my favorite definition.

B You're saying that out loud. And I'm just thinking to myself, the amount of architectural leadership that have put their names first and forefront on their firms and what is, what is that representative of from leadership from a leadership perspective?

C Yeah, an interesting test of that. Well, first of all, I think, and this will come up in other ways that, you know, ego is a, you know, gets naturally cultivated as part of just being in an innovative or design field. That doesn't mean you need to lead with that ego. I also think an interesting test of the, you know, name on the door is what happens when that, that founder is no longer with us. There have been some notable deaths in the architecture world this past year, very well known brand names. And it's interesting to see what happens to the firm, you know, does the firm succeed, you know, without missing a beat when that person is not there because they've set up an organizational structure and culture that can succeed without them? That's the leadership when you're, you're absent, not present. And I know others, so there are some that have, and I know others that have, as a result have been acquired or have had to close down. And there could be economic reasons for that as well.

C But I think, you know, it's interesting to look at what happens when the name on the, the person behind the name on the door is no longer physically present.

B But I wanted, I was thinking about how to transfer, translate this conversation from like an overall leadership conversation to talking about like the five conversations and this arc of the project. Because earlier you talked about, and I believe this, like, I definitely believe I am a work in progress on so many different levels. As an, as an individual, I'm learning a lot about just learning to love myself again and as a mom and trying to figure out what life after AIA presidency is and where I fit into that leadership trajectory, but growing, you know. So you mentioned that conversations are so essential to development and growth within a leader, but also there's important conversations that can happen over the length of professional service firms that help them grow and develop even through the project timeline. And you've kind of identified these five different conversations, and I'd love to dive into what those five different conversations are.

C Yeah, yeah. So I'll start maybe with a little bit of background. The idea for the five conversations started to take shape as I was gradually getting involved with talent development. Right. I had sort of come out of this world of being on the design side and then being in the world of, you know, for 20 years in innovation and innovation strategy and specifically service design. But I started to take much more interest in, you know, what it took to be a leader in those efforts. Right. How to actually develop the talent to do these things and quite frankly, make change happen in the world, positive change.

C So I was getting involved with talent development initiatives and I started to witness, you know, traditional training that seemed to be mostly delivered sort of out of context. Right. People would go to these sessions and you'd learn about things like public speaking or, you know, executive presence or whatever it was. And I started to think about what it would Take to build skills in the context in which they would be most likely to be useful and applicable. And naturally coming out of mostly time spent in the professional services. The context or the vehicle for delivery is a project or an engagement. So I came up with. I don't remember exactly how the five sort of coalesced, but it became clear to me that there were five distinct conversation types that.

C That capture the most critical skills or utilize the most critical skills across the timeline of a project or an engagement that actually contribute to driving growth. And so the layout of this, you know, we've talked before about sort of this. This has a graphic. There's a graphic associated with this. And the layout is actually based on a tool we used a lot at audio called the Mood Meter, which was essentially a horizontal timeline, above which is another horizontal line. And on the upper side or just above that horizontal line is like a happy face or the sunshine. You can use different icons. And below it is the opposite is a, you know, an upset face or, you know, lightning bolts coming out of the clouds.

C And the whole idea of that graphic is that it recognizes that over time, specifically over the timeframe of a project or an engagement, we will engage in conversations or experiences that are alternately fun and energizing. Right. Things that we would map above the line and those that are not, quite frankly, and those you map below the line. But we're going to have all of them. Right? You can't just avoid the below the line situations. There are going to be times when things happened. Right. So we would actually use this technique to set expectations for our clients at the start of a very ambiguous design project and with people who weren't familiar with the design process.

C And it always worked because it set their mind at ease, especially when they realized they were about to or they were starting to encounter something challenging in the process of working with us. And it was okay because they were on par with other clients, Right. We had told them, yep, this is going to be the hard part. But sometimes they'd be doing great. And then they're like, we're better than other clients. So it didn't. It worked brilliantly. Right? So I just always loved this structure and it lent itself really nicely to mapping these five conversations.

C On a completely unrelated note, I always like to. I would want to add that this tool is also used in coaching. I've used it and colleagues, and I've used it to discover personal values. Because you can map a week in your life or your entire life. There's a tool called the Lifeline which is, you know, because you're recognizing, you know, when things have been going great, when you were energized, when you were not. So this is not a unique tool. It's. It appears in different ways.

C In the case of the career, it's more diagnostic. In the case of the five conversations, it's more descriptive.

B I can just see clients saying, we're doing so well. We managed through this rough spot.

C We're awesome. We worked with a lot of what I'd call type aaa, like highly competitive financial services and telco and areas where that was the culture. Right. So if you can make them feel good, it worked for everybody.

B Yeah. So before we dive into kind of what those five conversations really are, I feel like architects always set themselves up differently for whatever reason. So like, for instance, you just talked about financial services. So I'm just like, inevitably there's going to be that leader partner that was just like, oh, well, architecture professional services are different than financial services. How are these five conversations going to work for our body of work?

C Right. The context for these has been primarily in professional services. That said, that's where financial services are different. Right. Professional services I think of as architecture, law, accounting, consulting, things of that nature. However, I have discovered, because I've worked in a coaching capacity, I've worked with organization, with people in organizations that are like a design unit inside of a larger, like fortune, you know, 50 company. Like, I've worked with people at Walmart or Salesforce or whatever. Right.

C So they are essentially, most of those design units are essentially service organizations inside of a bigger entity. They are serving other parts of the organization. So I, I do think this holds water. I mean, I'd love to test this someday, but as I've thought about, you know, I don't just work in the professional services world. I find that's where a large body of the opportunities are right now, especially around creative services. But I, I have a very strong hypothesis that it's applicable to internal consulting entities, if that makes sense.

B No, I don't think it would be. I just like to point out that sometimes architects feel like they're an overly special case. And I don't necessarily think we're.

C Yeah, they're not. I'll just say it. And we'll. We're going to get to that when we talk about business model, because I know that's an important topic for you also. We'll get there. I know just from thinking ahead about how I want to talk these five conversations, but yet they're not as unique as they think so.

B I want to start talking about self awareness with the importance of the first conversation, which you call the internal conversation. Why do we need to start with ourselves?

C Yeah. I will just say that this is where leadership begins and ends, period. Right. Because if we can't lead ourselves, meaning we're not aware of what we value, what we believe, the things that motivate us, the things that, you know, set us off and make us crazy, if we don't have an understanding of that, it's very hard to lead others because everything that's going on inside of us. What the leadership Circle organization calls our inner game directly informs how we engage with others, which is our outer game. That's how it works. Right. We can ignore it, which is, you know, a lot of people, unless they've gone through coaching or they've done some kind of, you know, programming or had some kind of experience where they really do build that a self awareness and understanding of essentially what you could call our own, their own internal operating system.

C Right? And iOS just like, you know, a piece of software. If we understand that, we get a great deal of insight into the most impactful development opportunities for us. If we don't, we can still be successful. There are a lot of leaders out there that are successful with complete lack of self awareness. The problem is you will forever be feeling like your work is an energy depleting struggle. That's the difference is are you burning energy and probably burning other people out as a result, including yourself, or are you being more generative in how you operate? So that self awareness is the game changer? Right. Because once you have that awareness, you're like, I know what I want to do or how I want to evolve and it'll be different for different people. So if we want to change the way we engage with others on a project or in any kind of relationship we have with any other human being, we do need to start with ourselves.

C Because everything that we're doing behaviorally is sourced from something going on within us, whether we're aware of it or not. And then the one other thing I'll say is quite simply, but perhaps more profoundly is we need to start with ourselves. Because we cannot change anyone else. The only thing we can control, and this is actually also our true source of power. Regardless of where we are on our career path or what title or role we have, the only thing we can control is how we show up and how we respond in any given situation. And when I first sort of got that insight personally, I was like, wow, your Ability to do that comes from knowing who you are and what you're here to do or what you're being motivated or driven to do. So you cannot control other people. You can only control yourself.

C You can influence other people. That's a different topic, which we'll get to, I think. But yeah, that's my case for the internal conversation.

B Well, it's been interesting to me is I actually had a lot of more conversations with recently about that because I speak about, like, what as we as architects can control, but more specifically, what we as individuals can control. And that even being a parent, that even comes down to my children. So I've tried to internalize that a lot more and understand what it means when it comes to what I can and can't have control of and what it means to influence.

C This is why you have to let, like, kids make their own mistakes, right? Because that they figure it out. We're all, you know, at the end of the day, I always say this comes up with the topic of feedback, which I know we'll get to in a moment. But if you're just telling people what to do, they might do it because they feel that they're under pressure to do that or there's some dire consequences, but you're not actually motivating them to fundamentally change their behavior like that. Telling someone to do something as a directive is really only useful in an emergency situation, like with your kids, if your kid's going to put their hand on a hot stove. Right. But if they're going to do. I've heard stories about people whose kids want to go out and wear shorts in the middle of winter. You let them do it, and then they're going to figure out, yeah, shorts in the winter.

C It depends on when you live, like in California, that works. On the east coast, where I am now, not so much. That's maybe getting into the conversation about feedback and how you actually do compel people to want to change.

B I feel like we could spend a whole episode on every single conversation. But before we do, let's move on to conversation two, which is a developmental conversation. Do you want to tell us a little bit more about that?

C Yeah. So developmental conversation is all about giving, requesting, and receiving feedback. And in a way that actually develops people over time. I'm specifically talking about developmentally oriented feedback. And by the way, back to the graphic of the five conversations. The conversation number one and this one, conversation number two, traverse the entire. Like, you don't stop doing either of these over the course of a project. I Mean the internal conversation goes on forever.

C But feedback is something that could happen at any point in time. So, you know, I already mentioned the culture of nice concept, and I didn't come up with that, by the way. I had at least three different client organizations all use that term. So there's something out there. And I don't think they're all talking to each other. I think they're all saying, this is why feedback's hard for us. The reality is that feedback is hard for all human beings because when it's delivered and then received poorly, it actually triggers our natural threat response. Feedback directly challenges our identity, our sense of self, or where we think we are in, you know, our place in the world, or our place in this organization, or our place on this team, or our place in this relationship.

C And, you know, it's not, of course, a physical threat that we're responding to. It's more of a social one. But here's what's so interesting. As I learn more and more about the neuroscience behind all this. Our brain doesn't know the difference, right? And so when you think about it, when we were all living in caves back in prehistoric times, being rejected by our tribe probably meant we would die because the tribe was our source of safety and food. And so negative or, you know, neg or poorly handled, constructive feedback can be and often is interpreted by our brain as the pathway to rejection. Our brains have not evolved all that much. It's.

C They still function essentially the same way. And yet we're in these radically different circumstances in our lives, right, where we're not being threatened by the proverbial saber toothed tiger. But there are social threats constantly that we need to navigate and be aware of. So I equate feedback, I talk about feedback as being conflict. It's conflict adjacent because it triggers the same response in us as if we were being in direct conflict with someone. So the solution, without getting too far into solutioning, but just touching on a little bit, I've actually developed a whole workshop on this now because the solution involves reducing that threat response by reframing feedback as an opportunity for learning. And I actually, in reviewing patterns across all of the coaching I've done over the years, I actually discovered there are four hurdles that need to be cleared, and they need to be cleared in sequence to give feedback. Successfully receiving feedback is a whole other art form, but they're kind of two sides of the same coin.

C And this could be a separate podcast, right? Because it's delivery, clarity, remedy and accountability. And what's interesting is the first two, delivery and clarity, are all about co discovering what the issue is and getting aligned on that. And the last two, remedy and accountability, are about co creating the way forward. So instead of it telling your kids or whoever, you must do this, that's not co creation and therefore you're not necessarily addressing what that person values. So what's so interesting about this to me is that it has the potential to transform what is typically seen as a dreaded event about performance feedback into and something that happens. I use the word event deliberately because it's like your twice a year performance review or your quarterly whatever, and transform it into a continuous conversation about growth. That's, that's when it becomes more about learning and less and less performative. So feedback to me is fascinating.

B The interesting thing about that is, and I had a boss and I had to have an honest conversation about a boss, about this idea of continuously learning because, because there was this also this feeling that the goalposts kept getting moved. So it's like, like, am I so bad that I'm continuously failing in a way because I'm, I'm continuously learning, but I felt like I wasn't learning fast enough or I wasn't. So how do you kind of create that balance?

C This is the co. Co discover and co create, right? Because oftentimes we're not in alignment about, well, what's it going to take for me to. Like a lot of times this is an issue with, with promotions and people who don't get promoted and who are completely flabbergasted. That should never be the situation, right? Someone should never be surprised that they don't get promoted because if they've had a collaborative, a truly collaborative ongoing conversation about growth with their people, manager, whoever it might be, it should be clear what they need to do. And then if they're not hitting that mark, it should be clear what they need to do next. Now, there's always going to be a limit to how much you know. At some point it might be this isn't the right role for you or this isn't the right organization. But rarely do I hear about that cycle.

C And it is a cycle, right? Because you need to be. Get clear on what it's what either is holding you back or what you're not doing enough of or not doing yet to move you forward. Identify ways in which you can actually accomplish those things. It can't be just like, good luck, Evelyn, you need to get better at coding or whatever it is, right? You need to co. That's the co create. And then the accountability piece is like, you need to circle back and see how it's going, which leads you back to. It starts that iterative cycle again, right? Because you're delivering a new piece of feedback or an update. And so that's why none of this should ever be a surprise to someone.

C Because at some point it's either going to be clear that they're advancing or clear that this isn't working.

B I think it was also, honestly, the lack of celebration of like, when I did hit a milestone, right. Because I didn't feel like I had accomplished everything. Because it's like, okay, we got you through this. Now we need to like, this is the next thing I need you to learn.

C Well, or, you know, again, this could be the whole. The art of asking for feedback. There's, there's research that shows that in fact, organizations where that is a common part of the culture where people ask for feedback outperform every other kind of organization. And you can kind of understand why. Because if people by their own volition are trying to get better and you've got managers or bosses or peers who want to help you and vice versa, you would never be wondering that question you just asked, like, what do I have to do next? It would be, you would either be able to ask for it or someone would offer it to you.

B Talk with us about the third one, which is an exploratory conversation.

C This is where I'm going to be a little bit provocative with you. So this is the one that identified is all about working with clients, right. Which I realize is not something any of us really learn how to do in design school, but is so critical to the business model. So this really is back to the idea of having a service mentality, which again, I spent a lot of time in, after my, you know, time in architecture because I was doing service innovation. And this is where I will challenge, respectfully challenge some of the rhetoric around the business model of architecture being the problem. I mean, it's a fee for service business model that's common to other professional services such as law, accounting, consulting. And it doesn't mean it's easy. Right.

C It's highly erratic. But I'll be provocative here by saying part of the issue is that we focus our attention both in school and in the firm on the final result, right? On the portfolio, on the improvement or addition to the built environment. And like heck, that's why most of us, including me, became architects. That's what's so miraculous about this field. But I'd argue that that's not our primary value proposition. We create value for our clients by guiding them and orchestrating many other stakeholders through a whole series of complex and hugely unfamiliar decisions. Most people don't really know what architects do unless they've worked with them before. Regardless of whether you're building a home or you're building a complex of some kind.

C And those decisions, everything from aligning on scope of work, agreeing on design trade offs, dealing with unexpected events, budget overruns, et cetera, et cetera, I would argue that those have the biggest impact on what ultimately gets constructed. And the only way to influence those decisions, you know, having an influence on decision making that yields positive outcomes is by having these, being able to have these kind of conversations. More specifically lead these conversations or not shy away from them when a client brings them to you. So that's the whole idea around the exploratory conversation which is really about like, you know, the care and handling of clients. And I mean handling in the best possible sense of the word is realizing you are a service provider. And it's hard work. But that is where a whole lot of value by building that trust based relationship with a client who either can refer you to other clients and or bring you more work in the future is critical.

B Yes, and I was going to say, I don't know if you were necessarily challenged. It's not that I don't believe in the business model. Other people are very successful on the business model, but we don't charge enough for the value that we are delivering. But I think that goes back to that is true. The fact that people don't fully understand the value because we are constantly talking to them about the end product and they are not seeing the value of these, for instance, these exploratory conversations that we're having along the way and, and the multiple decisions that I just helped you as an owner make given my expertise to get to that end product.

C And I think that that's on architects and I'll say us because I was one and still feel like I'm part of that community. There's a, you know, when you think about other professions or other services or products that you are sold, there oftentimes is a whole lot of education around that. I work very briefly in enterprise software as you have, oh my gosh, the amount of time that customer success or account executives would spend on education. I mean there was value in that. It wasn't just sales. So yeah, again, a whole other conversation, I guess I agree with you. It's a yes. And I think there's a lot of value to be unlocked if we paid more attention to the service side, not just the product side of, of the architectural profession.

B You just kind of made me think of a whole new product. What if we could begin to quantify the value of the answers that we give to our clients over time, if that makes sense. Because I feel like they get an invoice and they see schematic design, design development, CDs and they're like, what? Part of I have one, they're missing out on like the whole co collaboration, but two, they're missing out of like, this is why I needed Evelyn, this is why I needed my architects to help me through these. If they are just seeing these very static kind of line. Anyways, I totally digress.

C Yeah, another conversation. Totally.

B But let's move on to conversation four, which is the generative conversation.

C Yeah, so this is another one of these universal truths I believe in most organizations is the useless meeting. And here I'm going to distinguish between what I'll call transactional meetings, like standing meetings, report outs, things like that. But it's more of like, let's just check in and transformational meetings. And so the latter type, transformational meetings, are what I'm calling generative. In other words, a group of people are coming together to harness their individual skills, experiences, whatever it might be, perspectives to create new ideas, and often make decisions on how to take action on those ideas. This is the classic ideation or strategy workshop. It is generative because you are creating new knowledge and new information together. And these transformational meetings need to be highly inclusive.

C That means in terms of behaviors, not demographics. Right. Like it isn't just who's sitting around the table. It's like if all those people were invited to the meeting, they're there for a reason, because they have something to offer or a critical perspective that needs to be considered. And so this conversation type requires very strong facilitation skills, which is one of these things that's completely taken for granted or missing altogether. Having had to facilitate some really what I call high stakes situations. They're not like hostage negotiations, but more like there are at least three. I could again, if we went off on a tangent, client, real client situations that really required knowing how to navigate it because they came completely out of left field.

C So this is why I call it out as a distinct conversation type that requires skill. So just to maybe offer a visual for this one, I love the metaphor of like the cycling peloton. I love watching the Tour de France and, and like a sometime weekend cyclist and in professional cyclists, like if anybody's familiar with the peloton, you know, it's the string of riders and there's, you know, the person taking the lead that you could argue would be the equivalent of a meeting facilitator. And they're setting the strategy, they're, you know, telling everyone what to expect, et cetera, but at some point they fall to the back and others take the lead. Right. And there's a whole strategy of how and when you do that. And so, you know, that's about as far as the metaphor can. I can take that metaphor, but.

C But that's what great facilitation looks like, right? It's knowing when to step to the front and take control of the situation. It's knowing when to step back and enable others to do it. And I predict this is going to be a superpower in a, you know, in terms of a skill set. I already believe it is, but I think it's only going to come more so in a world where there's more information than we can possibly manage through AI and other sources and more and more disparate communities or individuals that are trying to collaborate around that information. So that's why I call this one out. It's one of my favorites. I love facilitation, the gnarlier the better. And most people don't want to touch it with a 10 foot pole and sit in meetings where nobody does.

C And so they're a massive waste of time.

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B E R.com so it's interesting because I'm thinking about the overall arc of the project. Right. And how you said some conversations run the length of the entire project. Where is it most useful to have these generative type of conversations?

C These ones, and I probably should have said it for the exploratory. You know, exploratory is usually at the front End, but it could also be later on, right? You know, at the end of the project, you know, do we need to add to this project? Do we, you know, do we need to continue it? Do we need to, do we want to do something more together, whatever it is. The generative, I think is when you're really in the middle, where, you know, you're at just to use the language of architecture in schematic design or design development. I mean, probably maybe not so much in construction documents. I mean, in the world of innovation consulting, it was definitely right in the middle, right where you'd come out of research and you'd be identifying insights and then you'd be using those insights to start to identify concepts. And so when you're at the point where you're, you're starting to work with lots of material and, or lots of people who are bringing that material or needing to work with it as well, that's where the generative conversation, it's not at the end because the decision making should have happened such that the end becomes more about setting yourself up for execution, whatever that looks like. So, yeah, great. I'm glad you asked that.

C So I think of the generative conversation as being one that can happen usually multiple times in the middle of sort of a creative problem solving exercise or project.

B So the fifth conversation then is what you call the challenging conversation. You just said that the generative conversation is already challenging enough for some people. So what is the challenging conversation?

C This is, you know, I was going to call it the difficult conversation, which tends to be the term that lots of people use. I think this is the one where things really go sideways, right? Where there really is some kind of noticeable tension or overt conflict. Right. And so this is, I think I love all of these topics, but this is one of my particular favorites because it's the one that's the hardest for people to deal with and the one they tend to either avoid or, you know, they fight. And the, the reason why the challenging conversation is so challenging is it goes back to what I started to talk about a little bit around feedback, which again, feedback I think of as the, it's conflict adjacent if it's not handled well. And it all goes back to again, the neurobiology of how we connect with other people, other human beings. So I started to touch on that with the threat response. The reality is that our, you know, our brains were designed for one main purpose, which is to keep us alive.

C Right? So we're instinctively moving towards throughout our life. And our brain is we're not conscious of this, but it is constantly scanning our environment, the people we're interacting with, et cetera, for things that are either rewarding to us or pleasurable or painful and threatening. And obviously we're going to move towards the things that are pleasurable. So people who say nice things to us or we love working with or we love them or whatever it is, and we move away from all the other stuff. And so we are actually, I think I read this once that we're like, we're making an initial judgment about other people, people we don't know. Right. In a fraction of a second, milliseconds. And it's informed by our accumulated experiences over time.

C Like I've seen this movie before and this is how bias is developed. Right. Our brain is incredibly efficient. It's sort of on autopilot so that we're not having to stop and make the type of decisions that happen in our prefrontal cortex all the time. We're just making decisions. And so the problem is where we are defaulting to this threat response by usually either running away, avoiding or fighting back. And there are actually five different distinct conflict strategies or conflict behaviors. And it's like this comes back to conversation number one.

C Once you're aware of your own default modalities, you can deliberately learn, recognize them, and then learn how to step into others. Right? So this is why we need to become more self aware in order to disrupt our default behavior around conflict. And now I'm talking specifically about conflict where we just want to like fight someone or say something nasty off the cup. Right. We just need to engage differently. And running away is not any better because there's something called another consultant. I love this term. I wish I'd come up with it.

C But another consultant calls conflict debt, which is exactly what it sounds like. It accumulates over time and it compounds if we don't deal with it, just like financial debt. So the one other thing I'll say on this is that we can learn to start using some somatic cues. Like when we feel. Usually our body tends to feel stress, anxiety, concern, worry long before it registers in our brain. So when we start to feel, whatever we learn is our own sonar for conflict or something where we're about to say or do something we may regret later. The key is to learn to get curious, not furious. And I didn't make up that term either, but it's a great one.

B I've heard that.

C Yeah, it's, it's out there, but it's, it's so Apt for this because we can learn to interrupt what we're just going to do by default and instead, you know, learn to create the space to try to understand what's going on with ourself and what's going on with the other person or the situation. And just one thing I will offer because this is again a whole other skill building activity is one of the fastest ways to de escalate anything is to just learn to pause, like throw a wedge into that conversation and just if you're, if it's a situation where you're talking with another individual is to reflect back what you've just heard them say in a way that's non judgmental and may even have like a question attached to it that that's around what you think you're hearing or seeing or sensing them that they're trying to tell you. Right? Because humans, when they feel that they've been seen or heard that threat response tends to start to lower. Right. Because we're sensing the other person actually cares about us and maybe doesn't actually want to hurt us back to that social threat. So conflict and a lot of this comes from my training as a mediator. But it's stuff that you can learn and learn to deploy with practice because it's about overriding these default habits and behaviors. But it can make a world of difference in how you build trust, how you make decisions, how you just get stuff done and how you can just have a generally more enjoyable work life.

C If we're talking about this in the context of work and that difficult conversation can happen anywhere along that spectrum also, hopefully not at the beginning because it might derail things prematurely, but it tends to happen when you're getting into some kind of. You've been working with people for a while and something really starts to get on your nerves or there's a decision that came out of left field that nobody's really prepared to handle or you know, things like that.

B I've definitely worked on projects where, or even on teams where I felt that, that debt accumulation where I was like either waiting for a leader to step in and kind of managed the situation and I couldn't manage and I was just like this is just getting worse and this is just getting worse and worse.

C So yeah, and then it's hard in an environment where then you know what are you never going to work with that person again? You know, that's the problem. It isn't like I'm never going to see these people again. I mean sometimes that's the situation but you can operate under that assumption, especially within, with internal teams, because you are going to see those people again. You can't just be systematically checking off your list, like not going to work with them, not going to work with them, you're going to run out of people to work with. So yeah, it's tough.

B So I want to focus more specifically on what this means for architecture because you've kind of worked across multiple different disciplines. Is there an area, if you're thinking about the five conversations or the need for even more self awareness, where we seem to struggle the most as architects?

C You know, this is also something that I don't know, that I would specifically attribute to architecture. I always think about anything in any of these fields where you rely on interactions between people. Right. Because people are fundamentally imperfect. You know, most of us again are. We're operating on autopilot. We're not self aware. And even if we are, it takes a lot of practice to, to manage a lot of these more tricky conversations.

C I think the one thing I, one critique of the profession that I think I recognized from my time on the AIA Strategic Council was how insular the profession could sometimes be when it comes to learning. And this may come out sounding like a gross generalization, so apologies to anyone listening where they've seen a different version of this. But my experience was that there was very little exploration of other organizational types, business models, ideas that came from outside of the field. Not when designing a building. Right. The whole tradition of precedent is big when you're designing, but when you're designing, you know, the structure or whatever it is you're designing. But when designing an operating model or cultural norms, I don't think there is any exploration of curiosity about what happens in these other fields. And I think this is because back to something you said earlier that architects tend to see themselves as being, and I think a lot of lawyers are like this also.

C I have done work with law firms and they're remarkably similar to architecture firms, which sounds bizarre, but they struggle with a lot of the same things. And these are highly trained individuals that need deep technical expertise in their particular profession. And I think that leads to the belief that it's this myopia that anything outside of our profession is not relevant. And it is, you can be inspired by all sorts of things you eventually need to make it relevant to your ways of practicing towards regulatory issues, whatever they might be, or code issues or et cetera, et cetera. But in the time I spent in both management consulting and design consulting, it was a regular practice to seek inspiration from other sources instead of just thinking, well, this is the way it's always been done. And I think that's what I do hear now through my coaching and consulting around leadership and talent development is that like, well, we're making it work, right? Buildings still get built and this is how I got trained. And it's like, that's probably not going to be good enough if there's a cost associated with lack of engagement with more junior people these days. I hear a lot of that retention is hugely costly if you're constantly having to replace people and things of that nature.

C So I think, you know, paying more attention to, you know, the fact that there are ways to innovate. And I know this is a big topic for you and I, this is one of the things I really appreciate about, you know, your, your, your areas of exploration is that you can innovate these things. You just need to put, put the resources behind it.

B I was thinking about my own development when I was in an architecture firm and what my leaders or managers would tell me about what I need to learn to become the project manager and what I need to learn to move into leadership into a firm. And so much of it was task based. But this entire conversation has been really around emotional intelligence and people management. I don't think we do that.

C Well, that's exactly where I was going to go next. You're reading my mind. So another professor who's no longer with us whose work I really admire is Edgar Schein, who was at MIT Sloan where I went, and he distinguished between relationship driven leadership and transactional leadership. So what you were just describing is transactional leadership, right? That's about roles and rules or here are the tasks you're responsible in, you know, for, you know, stay in your swim lane. This is, you know, in this job description or this role description. Right. Relationship driven leadership is what he, you know, he's a proponent of and it aligns with that Francis Fry quote I said earlier about leadership is making other people better. Right.

C You know, he, his a definition of relationship driven leadership recognizes that leadership really is about connecting with people by building, building trust, which is, you know, the foundation for all productive relationships of any kind and then enabling those people to thrive. Right. So this is not a unique idea and it's been around for a long time, but it's, it's hard because it requires all of this interpersonal stuff, which is tricky and we're working against ourselves a lot of the times because by the time we're an adult, we've developed habits and ways and beliefs and values and ways of operating that come directly out of our childhood when we were figuring out how to make sense of the world. So a lot of those things have to be unlearned, Right? I'd say back to the relevance to architecture. The little bit of the legacy of traditional architectural education, which is focused on producing individual works, is more of that ego driven individual, not relationship driven, sadly. Right. So you said a really important thing a moment ago around eq, right? To become skilled at relationship driven leadership requires EQ or emotional intelligence. And in my mind, and I've done certifications in eq, the easiest way to think about what EQ is is it, it's about being present.

C And here's the definition of presence, because I've gone on a rant on my, in my blog post essays about this thing called executive presence that everybody you know is obsessed with. It's just presence because what presence is is the ability to simultaneously hold attention on yourself and others. And you're doing it both in terms of having an aware. This is the high wire act. And if this is where required to do that kind of group facilitation to navigate conflict, if there isn't a mediator helping you out to give feedback because you need to manage what's going on with you, that internal conversation while you're trying to effectively engage with the other person and they're having their own version. I call this the three realities. When I talk about conflict, there's a reality of what we're all saying to each other and the words we hear coming out of each other's mouths. And that's one reality.

C But the two other realities that are more important to coming to some sort of optimal resolution is the reality inside of me and the reality inside of you. And unless you have a conversation that explores those two, you're never going to know those things. You're making assumptions, you're relying on bias that you've developed over the years. And we are all biased, no matter how well educated or liberal we are. So EQ becomes, you know, actually foundational to every one of those five conversations. And that ultimately aligns with these leadership definitions we've been or I've been sharing. Because it all comes down to the relationships you have and how those relationships, you know, play out when you're present with each other and when you're not. So it's, it's, it's like, it's as easy and difficult as that.

C Right. Is learning this, the emotional intelligence piece.

B Well, this even the difficult part, because I'm, well, I'm like, I'm asking myself, like, how do I know I'm growing? Like, how do I know that I'm growing as an emotionally intelligent person? But when I've been talking to a lot of firms that are saying, especially Gen Z needs to understand what is the career trajectory, what does the career ladder look like? And if I think about the outcomes of what those career ladder looks like, it's still a very transactional conversation. So how do you begin to say, like, how, like to measure the career and growth of emotional intelligence and the conversations that they're having with their team or are growing and changing over time to help them progress along or even how do you visualize that, you know, along a career ladder that like, everyone's like, I want to know. I don't. I want to know what I have to do next.

C They want the playbook. There is no playbook. I mean, and here's the thing. Now I'll preface this by saying I do not run an organization. I'm not a people manager. I don't pretend to know what's going on other than what I hear through the lens of my own work as an outside partner to organizations. But I think if we look at career as just a, we're skipping from one title or role to the next, that's when I, when I do talk to people about career as part of coaching, and oftentimes that's the entree point to seeking out a coach is something having to do with someone's career. I never start there.

C I always start with values. Right? And I start with what do you want to learn next? And that should, in my mind, should be the conversation that's happening inside the organization when someone is someone's people manager. And back to that, those four hurdles, that framework I described around feedback, sometimes that feedback is being given in the context of the how are we advancing someone? As you were sharing your experience. So you really need to be thinking more in terms of, like, what really motivates and energizes people. This doesn't mean you're making up your job trajectory as you go along. It means understanding those things so that they can be aligned with wherever you are right now and where you want to go. Right? Not starting with the, well, what are the five magic checkboxes I need to check off for five major tasks or I need to get licensed or whatever it is that doesn't speak to what really motivates people or energizes Them because it's going to be hard. The whole point of looking for understanding values or having a purpose like I want, you know, I was.

C Did a thing with a group of 35 HR leaders in the largest architecture firms a few weeks ago as part of a biannual offsite. They do, you know, these are senior people and for some of them, they want to become a chro somewhere. Right. And so, you know, getting there could be really hard. And so knowing what, why you want, you know, what are the values behind serving in that role that makes that role interesting to you is going to be a key part of staying motivated when things maybe get difficult, right? When maybe, oh, you know, my promotion is now being delayed or they need me to focus on something else or whatever it might be, right. This is true in any role you might have inside of an organization. You know, you need to be. Have a lot of conviction about why you're on that path as opposed to just like, well, it's because somebody told me that's the paint by numbers approach to, you know, to, to moving forward.

C That's not going to keep you engaged when things are tough, right. You really need to have sort of that eye on the prize. And that prize has to be something you've defined as important to you, not because someone told you this is what you need to do or this is what's important to you or should be important to you. Right? So I don't know. I think, I feel like I went on off a little bit of tangent there, but I think the conversation around career pathing, in my personal opinion, should look really differently than the one you were describing. Like what's the playbook? And now I also understand the need for transparency and I'm a total advocate for that. Right. Like people who are like, I don't even know what I do after the role I'm in or, you know, the people I tend to coach a lot are the people at that critical inflection point where they were a really talented individual contributor, like a, an amazing designer, let's say if we're talking about an architecture firm and then they've been promoted to being like a frontline manager or someone who now has responsibility for other people and, or part of the business.

C Right? And it's like somebody just hands them the car keys and say, yep, you're going to do this. Now that requires a lot of conversation, a lot of transparency about what the role is really like and are you ready for it or what does it take to get to that role? So this is going to become an issue with firms that haven't done any kind of succession planning or all of a sudden realizing, you know, we've got partners or founders that want to retire and our bench strength is not there.

B And even when they do think it's there, I don't think they realize what they have or haven't told the individuals below, which is equally as scary. Just because I've been talking to a small firm owner who recently like transitioned into ownership and they actually, they're like, I had no idea about half of the things that were going on. So.

C Exactly. This should be part of a conversation, right? That's, that's an ongoing, you know, it's outside of that project context that I used for the five conversation framework. But it's essentially a derivative of the, the feedback conversation. Because if you really do believe, as I do, that a feedback conversation is really a conversation about continual growth, that's the context in which the where am I, where am I now? Where am I going in this particular firm? Should be happening on a regular basis.

B So I want to talk about your work. You're going back into academia and working with first year students at Yale. Well, I'm just going to say what are you doing there and why is this so like critical at that time and period of their academic tenure?

C It's an experiment right now, but I think it's also indicating a shift in the academic side of things. So I just wrote a blog post that went out yesterday or today on LinkedIn because I've always had this debate in my head about where just I, as an individual could have the biggest impact. Is it in like an academic environment where you're free to take risks and experiment, but you don't yet have the real world context to really appreciate the impact of how you manage any of these kinds of interactions? Or do you focus on the professional environment where it's harder to take those risks, but you'll immediately see the impact of doing these things differently. I actually think it's both. But so as a result, I think you need to, if, you know, if there are schools that are progressive and I, you know, I will give a shout out to Yale because their leadership, I think the deans are very progressive around this and trying to make it work instead of an already packed curriculum as are, you know, all schools. I totally appreciate it that fact. But this is when these habits start to form, right? Habits, I mean, just of how we all learn to operate in now our, as we're transitioning out of an academic environment into a professional one. And so just to speak directly to the experience at Yale, I created and delivered a graduate seminar back in the fall of 2021 on design leadership.

C It was a total experiment. It was focused on versions of. I hadn't yet crafted the five conversations, but essentially a lot of the skill sets that are underneath these. And it was remarkably successful. But the realization I had was that a three credit elective in a program like all other architectural programs that are focused on the belief that you need to do everything you can to bolster your portfolio, this wasn't going to move the needle and that it needed to be. This is how grandiose my thinking is. But I'm old enough to where I'm just like, I don't care, I'm just going to say what I believe. It's so freeing.

C No, I mean this is what I was saying to my friends over there was that this needs to be a required course. And more importantly, I thought something that Yale does that's really unique is they have a first year building project. This has been going on for 60 years now. The Yale building project that first year students not only design, there's a very elaborate process, but they construct over the summer a single usually it's a single family home, it's a real client, a community based client, usually a non profit of some kind of. And it's an amazing. To me it's the closest approximation to an actual client experience because it is while you're still in a academic setting. And so my idea was that let's attach this design leadership stuff to the building project where they can actually because my belief and isn't my unique belief, but it's based on research about how adults learn and how to do learning and development effectively is it needs to be in the context of or in the flow of work, right in the context of where you're actually going to apply it so you can experiment, reflect on what worked or didn't work, figure out what you want to keep doing because it's working and do differently the next time because it isn't. So we're currently in conversations about how to make that work.

C It's really difficult because there's no room to squeeze in anything else. And my whole idea is you add this, these four conversation labs and then there's going to be coaching. It's an interesting design project into itself, but just in general, I believe this stuff needs to be integrated in a way that makes it immediately applicable and valuable and is supported by something that looks like coaching, whether it's group coaching or cohort coaching, because that's where you can not only hold people accountable, but they can do that processing of what did I try or what did we try if it was in a team context and what worked and what didn't work. Because that's the difference between how children learn and how adults learn. You know, children, you probably know this as a parent, but someone once said to me, I love this metaphor, that if you looked inside a toddler's brain, it would look like a construction site because they're assembling, you know, they're making sense of the world. Right. They have an experience, someone says something to them, whatever, and then they witness the, you know, or actually experience the results of them, what they do as a result, and that their brain is essentially assembling rules of the road. And then we don't examine those things again until we're much later in life.

C Usually. That's why I've talked about, you know, we need to unlearn and then relearn habits that served us quite well for a good chunk of our life. But now we're in these different situations. So, you know, when I get involved, when I'm been able to get involved with learning and development work, whether in the academic world or in the professional workplace, it's always with an eye towards like, how do adults actually learn? And your, the programming should be commensurate with, with that.

B Oh, I was just gonna say, you know, so if I'm sitting here and I'm, I'm a leader in an architecture firm and this is something that I want to work on, so why do I guess I have to start with myself? Where do I start to. How do I start thinking about what this means in the firm context, which I think is going to be a

A huge, which is hard in general for

B architecture firm leaders who run a business where people have to be billable 85% of the time and we don't provide professional development.

C Yeah, the time that's something I'm learning also is just having these great ideas about the golden plated version of what leadership and development should look like is never going to happen. Right. And so I've started to think about, again, leaning on what I. A lot of what I know from being in the world of innovation is like, how do you start with small prototypes? I mean, I'll just also say there's a lot out there in terms of off the shelf programming. Right. I mean, the AIA is starting to build things, the local chapters I know here in Boston, you know, I just, I've seen things come to my inbox about programming. There are private organizations like PSMJ and others, but these tend to be the. They I think are the out of the box kind of programming that addresses CCE or CEUs.

C I always forget the acronym. And so those things are useful and depends on how large the firm is also. Right. And whether you need to do something at scale. I tend to position myself more to work with small to medium sized organizations, although I have worked with a couple of the biggest architectural firms, but that tends to be around my specialty, which is the conflict stuff. But for the most part small and medium sized firms, which make up the vast majority I think of AIA membership and probably most firms in this country, if I'm not mistaken, they don't need, they don't have nor probably need an in house L and D function or a talent leader. And they're not going to, they don't need things that scale. You know, I spent a year and a half working at Korn Ferry and that's what they did with scalable programs for very large enterprises.

C That stuff's really interesting, but I don't think that's where these firms should be looking. I think what they need to do is find one or two good outside partners and pick one or two things that are going to immediately have some kind of impact. Whether it's like we just need to get everybody better on doing feedback. Honestly, I've actually tried to make that argument like let's just focus on feedback. I'm not a betting person, but I would bet that would immediately if people really committed to it and practiced it with the guidance of, you know, an outside partner or whatnot would, would move the needle and, and would start, you know, then you build on top of that, right. You can do a lot of these, the skill building and scaffolding and then selectively look at who could benefit from coaching. Right. If it's somebody who's being identified or has self identified as someone that wants to move into leadership down the line, like don't wait and until it's like two months before that's gonna happen, start investing in that person.

C And similarly, even with senior leadership, like I don't really think most senior leaders want to make the investment in themselves. And if they're starting to see the end of their career lifespan, the focus should be on I think two areas, people who are going to be transitioning into that senior level role. And I also think people who are more junior who are, I think at we're at risk of losing because it is such a, you know, the Gen Z versus the three others or four others that are right before them that there's the biggest gap there in terms of just, you know, if you think about generations as cultures, which is more of what they are as opposed to age bands, you know, they attach to age bands. But I relate to, as I said, I'm tail end of the of baby boomer. But to me I've had colleagues over my entire career who are Gen X, early millennial, late millennial. Gen Z is a real unique one because of what they have and are living through in terms of when they got educated and the technology that's available and that they are native. Right. And so I think you need to start thinking differently about how you engage with those people.

C And I don't think it's a matter of policies. I think like I, you know, people will say, you know, digital first versus you know, I don't know, human first or analog first. I don't personally care what the, the point is. It's just you're dealing with another area of differences which can create some friction. And all it does is point back to this need to be able to converse in a way that you figure out how to make it work if it makes sense for, you know, everyone to be in the organization they find themselves in together.

B I feel like feedback is always a good place to start.

C That's where I would start. I mean conflict is too heavy. Even though conflict has huge when you think of it, you can monetize the cost of all of these things and that's sometimes what you need to do to make the argument. I've started to experiment with that also because the idea of just like technology is the today problem that everybody thinks we need to focus on and the human capital development that's for tomorrow, it's the opposite I think because if you don't have the human interaction around the technology, which is just a tool, you're still going to have these issues. And so conflict is going to be present. But conflict's too hard a place to start and it's also very off putting. Feedback is immediately useful and it can be taught in a way that not too difficult to be able to understand if you look at it as both on both the side of giving and receiving. So yeah, I've started to, as I've started to in my ongoing, you know, business, my own personal business development efforts, thinking about putting myself and empathizing with the people in the shoes of, you know, whether it's a managing director or a, you know, senior HR person, whoever is making the decisions, you know, what's the thing you can start that's relatively small and manageable, but will deliver some kind of value.

C And then you treat it like a prototype, exactly as we did in the world of innovation, where it's like, what worked? What were we trying to accomplish with this? How much of it worked, what didn't, what does that tell us we need to do next? And at some point you'll get to a scale. There will be a need maybe to roll out, depending on how big your organization is at scale, but that's when you can, you know, now you've got almost like the specifications, to use the language of architecture, of what we need to do. Because every firm is going to need something different depending on where they are in their life cycle, where they want to go, how big they are, you know, how many offices they have. So, yeah, I think you guys sometimes just like, start small. I say start small, but start now. If I could be that bold.

B And I agree with you that the problems that we have ahead are not necessarily technically driven. They can be technically enabled or resolved, but they are people driven.

C Exactly, exactly. It's just a tool.

B You talked a little bit earlier about the need for architects to look beyond themselves. I mean, what I've always appreciated with you is that you are somebody who has an architecture background, but you've always been very excited, exploratory personally, but also career wise in terms of what has that background given to me to you and your own career path? But also, what can architects take from the other areas that you're learning? So what is the thing that architects most consistently, I would say, fail or struggle to see about themselves as leaders? And what can we do to begin to correct that?

C Yeah, So I always want to, you know, I wanted to preface this sort of final thoughts by saying that I left architectural practice 30 years ago, but I deliberately have remained engaged with the profession through board service, through teaching, through things like that. Because I really do believe architects are some of the most intelligent and creative thinkers, you know, in the world. Right. And of course, I still love, you know, the discipline of design. And yet I would say, you know, what I've coached, especially younger architects, people that are within, you know, the first three years out of school, I sense a sense of, like, helplessness and despair. Right. And no sense of agency. Right.

C I'm at the mercy of this profession that, you know, we get, we're Overworked and underpaid or whatever it might be. And I don't. Yeah, I don't know where my career path is going. And a lot of them are ready to leave the profession kind of prematurely. And I kind of, you know, my wish for all those things people is. And oftentimes, by the way, if I'm coaching someone like that, that's when we kind of broaden the aperture and think about, you know, opportunities for learning, not, you know, that oftentimes are things they can pursue while they're still in their current firm. It isn't like I got to leave, but I guess I. My wish is that everyone could really understand and be able to access their own sense of power.

C Meaning that we all have power. Right. We're not powerless because we're junior or we don't yet, you know, haven't reached milestone X, Y or Z. Power comes from how you show up and how you interact with others. Right. This is back to why conversation number one is number one. Right? And the way you show up and interact with other people within whatever piece of the system you're operating in. Right.

C We operate within systems and it starts with our own. As I said, that idea of an internal operating system, it starts with us. But then, you know, a system could be a project team or just a partner, and then there's a firm or a studio and a firm and then the client and the community, et cetera. Right. So we're part of a system. And if all you do is focus on how you can grow and continue to develop in terms of how you interact with within the system, you do have some control of because you're participating in it. Right. This is power with, not power over.

C That is where the mindset should be, Right. As opposed to the, like, I think of abdicating to the people in charge. Right. Well, they didn't tell me what to do or I don't know where my career is going or whatever. It's like there is no playbook and no one's going to tell you. No one's going to give it to you. So again, I was like, I say you have power and your source of power comes from how you choose to show up and engage with other people. Leveraging your talents and what you know.

C Right. And learning how to harness this will build your influence over time. Right. I heard someone say today, don't let the decisions of others influence your life trajectory. Right? Because you're going to get rejected from stuff or, you know, someone's going to give you terrible feedback that was completely useless. If it's good feedback, then figure out how to make sure you understand it and figure out how to work with it. But at the end of the day, you have complete agency to how you work with whatever information is presented to you and how you respond to it. Right.

C So again, organizations or systems are like spider webs. You touch one part of it and the whole thing can move. So anyone that thinks like I'm just a worker bee, think a little bit more creatively. Yeah, it might be limiting in terms of in the beginning what your influence can be, but don't think that you don't have any because if you start to, like I said, lean into your own personal sense of power and agency, it will come. So I kind of want people to think a little bit more holistically about their role and yeah. How what it means to interact with other people. Because that's what these five conversations are all about.

B And I guess I would just append to that that I have felt just as helpless as a senior leader in an organization as I have a brand new newly graduated individual entering their profession. So I feel like that that is good advice for everyone.

A This summer, join me for Innovation in the Built Environment, a professional intensive from the University of Michigan's Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, built for practitioners who are ready to move from thinking about transformation to actually leading it. Learn more@beradicallybetter.com that's B E R A D I C A L L Y B E t e r.com. Hi disruptors. Thank you for joining us today on an episode of Practice Disrupted. If you like the content for today's show, you can find all of our past episodes over on practiceofarchitecture.com podcast. Be a part of the conversation by joining me, our speakers, and other disruptors in our community@practiceofarchitecture.com community. Our social media handle is practiceofarch. That's practiceofarch.

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