Ep. 14: Personal Mastery & Leadership Hacks for Emerging AEC Leaders

Personal mastery and leadership development are essential for success in any field, especially Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC). Katie Goodman, VP of Education and Leadership Programs at ACEC National, joins your hosts, Emily Lawrence and Jen Knox, to provide valuable insights and actionable strategies for emerging leaders seeking to grow personally and professionally within the AEC industry.

The AEC industry is experiencing a significant shift towards valuing soft skills or power skills alongside technical expertise. Embark on a journey of self-awareness, self-management, and self-motivation necessary to excel in leadership roles and learn the importance of peer networks for support, guidance, and fresh perspectives.

By investing in yourself and building strong relationships with your peers, you can unlock your full potential and become a true leader in the AEC industry.

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Transcript

Emily Lawrence: Welcome to the AEC Groundbreaking Growth Podcast. 

Jen Knox: Hosted by Stambaugh Ness.

[Opening Credits]

Emily Lawrence: I'm your host, Emily Lawrance, here with co-host Jen Knox. 

Jen Knox: Hello, everyone. We're fortunate to talk to our next guest today, Katie Goodman, the VP of Education and Learning and Development at ACEC National. Katie has a ton of insight into learning and development leadership programs. I know you've been integral, Katie, in aligning all those leadership programs at ACEC. We would love to hear some key learning and development trends you're seeing and implementing in your leadership development programs at ACEC.

Katie Goodman: Absolutely. First of all, thank you so much for having me on today. This is obviously a subject that's near and dear to my heart. I appreciate the opportunity to talk about what we're doing at ACEC. So, trends in AEC, it's a very interesting time to be involved in learning and development.

First of all, in general, our firms are investing more and more in leadership development and career advancement for the individual than they ever have before. It's been a wonderful time to explore that topic with our firms and learn a little bit more about what they're looking for, their people and what the people are responding to the most across generations.

One of the trends I've certainly noticed, regarding the people aspect, is that our firms are more and more dedicated to the individual employees and their culture than ever before. And so where the leadership program may have been heavily focused in the past on looking at client services and business development, while we still do have that focus in mind, we're spending a lot more time talking about diverse teams, a lot more time talking about firm culture and making sure that our people are happy and day to day satisfied in their roles rather than focused so, so heavily on the business side, which still gets our attention, but maybe a little less than before.

Jen Knox: It's interesting because focusing on that cultural side helps the business side. We always talk about AEC being service-based. You're selling yourself to some extent, as well as the people in your firm and how they interact with clients. From a marketing perspective, when we think about how we engage with clients and our counterparts on projects, it's people-to-people. Those people skills are so beneficial to have and invest in developing young leaders. 

Katie Goodman: Absolutely. More now than ever, it's been so much the business of people and engineering, not just the business of engineering.

So that's taken on a tale all its own more than anything else.

Emily Lawrence: Yeah, it's being a consultant and a trusted advisor that we talk about on our team. Clients are going to hire people they like, and that they trust, so you have to be able to connect with them in that way.

Jen Knox: Katie, when we first started chatting, I loved the term you used for those leadership and people skills; it was personal mastery. Can you explain what that term means to you as you develop your trainings and its importance to AEC?

Katie Goodman:  Yeah, absolutely. This is something I'm really proud of when it comes to ACEC's leadership development approach. Personal mastery is the idea that anybody can be a leader in our field. But it is much more beneficial for a leader to understand their strengths and what they can harness best to be a leader, not only for their people but for themselves.

So much of the work out of ACEC's leadership programs focuses on understanding yourself. So, whether that be looking at self-assessment or typing yourself against others, because we believe that understanding yourself and your vulnerability begets that in others. Truly understanding where they lie with other people, whether it be "I am more of an extrovert, and I should harness that to make my people more comfortable" or "I am more analytical, so how do I use that to benefit my projects?" It's about harnessing that self and understanding yourself to be the best leader and team member. 

Emily Lawrence:  I love that. That's so important. Our industry has a hard time, it's just that we have so many technical professionals who are amazing at what they do, and when they step into a leadership role, they haven't had a lot of experience. They don't really know their leadership style. You can take pieces that you like from leaders you've had in the past, and that certainly is what I've done, "I like this approach, I would do it this way," but to have a learning and development program that teaches you that and is investing in your personal development of leadership skills, that's game-changing, especially for our industry. 

Katie Goodman:  You hit the nail on the head there. It's about intentionality, recognizing the self, and harnessing your best qualities so that we take that role more seriously when we are leaders. We're using it to ensure that our people become better leaders. Many of our programs were born from the fact that we're lucky enough to be in a very technical profession where that skill is consistently appropriately rewarded. This will certainly serve us in how we serve our clients and our projects.

But it's very hard to wake up one day and be a manager with little guidance as to how to manage others and even how to manage ourselves. And so many of our programs address that. We see our leadership development as a two-pronged approach. ACEC's focus will always be the business of engineering, but how can we use personal mastery to help firms thrive on the personal and people side as well?

Jen Knox: Personal mastery is often based on tools that you can leverage, whether they be personality tools or strengths-based, etc.; it can be empowering to learn that about yourself and have a common language to talk to your peers in your company or the industry about your strengths and how you can best show up. That's what I've found when I do assessments like that. It's very empowering because they give you a language to talk about - maybe what you've always felt inside. 

Katie Goodman: I completely agree. It gives you a familiarity with yourself and others because, as you take an assessment or go through a process of self-discovery, you can recognize where you're at and how to work with others better.

It's easier to understand our teams when we know ourselves. When teams work on assessments or can sit down and "type themselves," you can recognize more about yourself, which, as you said, is incredibly enlightening and can be very helpful in our personal journeys. But then you can type others, recognize the type of employee or teammate they are, and say, " How can I be a better teammate?" "How can I be a better leader or employee to work with them?" It's a rising tide; sail all ships in that situation because we're all a little bit more familiar with each other. 

Jen Knox: Yeah. It gives you ownership and power to impact how engagement goes with an individual or the team rather than putting the onus on the other person when there's some strife in a relationship. But this gives you a little bit of power to say, "Hey, let me look at this maybe through a different lens of how they're coming to the situation or their strengths." So, yeah, I love that. Yeah, absolutely.

Emily Lawrence: So, Katie, as far as the curriculum that you dive into before this leadership development, what does that look like? How does someone jump in? At what point in their career do they start? Would you recommend it? 

Katie Goodman: Yeah. Our approach at ACEC is that leadership development, personal development, and learning are career-long experiences. I'm happy to say that we have a pipeline of education so that an individual at any level in their firm can jump in and experience development at what we believe is an appropriate stage for their space in the firm. We have an early career course called the Business of Design Consulting, and that's a four-day course where an individual can understand the business of engineering, but also, what does leadership development look like across my firm? That four-day course runs the gamut of everything from business development to teams to human resources to understanding risk management in our firms. It lends itself to individuals who may not spend as much time outside the office because they're still billable. That will be your project manager, that 5 to 7 year individual who may be earning their PE or starting to manage a few projects but they need to start understanding the business on a more global level. 

Then, our mid-career course, which I like to call our youngest course, is our Pathways to Executive Leadership Program. That course is for mid-career individuals who have been in the industry for 12 to 15 years. They're running offices and teams and are looking for that next level of leadership development related to personal mastery. That individual is doing a self-assessment to guide a little bit about who they are as a leader, but they're also participating in a more client analysis review. So, "How can I earn a client for life?" "How can I learn to use my business development skills to make sure that our firm's business is healthy." We also have three types of topical webinars in between our in-person sessions, where maybe you can't travel for all content, so we're offering that content virtually, and that's going to be focused on, again, the business financials, understanding ownership, and understanding the CEO's role. We all have a CEO in our firm who makes daily decisions for us. What does that mean for them? What did their personal journey look like? It humanizes that position as well. 

Finally, we have our Senior Executive Institute, which is for the individual who's ready to run the firm. That's our longest-standing course, which will be your Senior Vice Presidents, maybe even existing CEOs. That course is five sessions, five days each across the country, and it's far more intensive and a very deep dive into the industry and how our firms fit into the communities in our world. We look at change management, polarities, and strategic planning, and we even take time in Washington, DC, to visit the Brookings Institute to understand globally where the world is as we firms are serving it.

I'm proud to say that all of our courses are available to every level of the firm, and we make an enormous effort to create a peer-to-peer network in all of them. So, certainly, for Pathways to Executive Leadership and the Senior Executives Institute, which are limited in size, we want to make sure that in addition to the content, you're connecting to the individuals in the room.

In many cases, individuals walk into these courses and have not done leadership development or personal education outside of their firms in a professional capacity. The ability to make those courses very intensive but also psychologically safe allows the individual to make sure that their journey is not only being formatted by the content itself but also by the individuals with whom they're working in the room.

Jen Knox: So, I did an executive MBA and got the most benefit from connecting with other peers and seeing how we may have had similar fears and struggles. It was not just engineering-based. I saw consistent struggles across industries, businesses, and various companies because often, as you rise as a leader, it can be a bit, I don't want to say isolating, but you may have some concerns and struggles you may want to avoid discussing with a colleague, you might want to bake those ideas out more. A peer network in the industry is a great way to do that. Talk through some of those concerns as you develop yourself as a leader. 

Katie Goodman: Yeah, and that's something we emphasize for our participants. I can't tell you how often I host the leadership program, and I hear the words, " I didn't know others were dealing with this." Our firms and companies become like our families in a lot of ways. And that is a beautiful relationship to have with your coworkers and your leadership. But at the end of the day, it's hard to know what else is happening out there without those conversations. Certainly, if all you're dealing with are competitors or clients, those aren't exactly spaces where you're going to be able to talk about some of the things that keep you up at night in both your company and your career.

When individuals relate to others, they see this as a normal issue. Alluding to what you said, Jennifer, it's lonely at the top. As our CEOs run their firms, it can be incredibly difficult to have a major decision on your hands and nobody else to relate to about it. Those peer networks developed in the Senior Executive Institute become their lifeline. For many, it extends their entire careers because picking up that phone and knowing that you have somebody on the other end who will give you honest, educated feedback can be really healthy.

Emily Lawrence: As a marketer, having a peer network is so important. A lot of times, you are one of the only marketing people in your firm. And so you need to have some peer network, and it's an intentional thing to build. I'm involved in SMPS and have learned so much from my peer network and then in leadership development to have that sort of program and that sort of lifeline. Like you said, Katie, that's huge for any leader. 

Katie Goodman: I've also found that those lifelines are essential as we explore multiple generations in our workforce. We're at a time when more generations are in the office or, to some extent, working in our companies than ever. And so that difference between your oldest employer and your youngest employee will be vast.

Not only is it helpful to work with others at your level, but how do I work with the generation that maybe sees this differently or values something differently but also for our generations to relate to each other? 

We have a Young Professionals Forum where we say these are the challenges in our industry. You may view them differently than those in the industry for 25 years, which can be for many different reasons, but I find that these networks are helpful at sussing out what we view as differences in our industry may really not be that different at all. 

Jen Knox:  Yeah. One thing we always talk about internally is that at a diverse generation pool in a company, there are amazing things to leverage from each generation. And not everyone fits their generation. There's so much individual diversity in their lives and whatnot. Right. But there are strengths to leverage from every single one. And if we can see that and layer those strengths on top of one another, it can benefit companies and organizations as a whole. 

Katie Goodman: Yeah, and that focus on the generations and how they all work together is something that we're constantly bringing up in our programs because it's on all of our minds. Like you said, it can be a massive strength. We must learn how to harness it appropriately and make sure we're seeing it for what it is and using it correctly.

And that's another way that relating to others in the industry and hearing the best practices out there can also make us a lot stronger as firms. 

Katie Goodman: So Katie, put you on the spot. If you had to give some advice to a young emerging leader within AEC who is at a small and mid-sized firm, they might not have a ton of resources at their hands. What would you tell them? How should they go about developing themselves as a leader? What are some of those best practices or things they can leverage? 

Katie Goodman: Yeah, I have a lot of ideas on that. For one thing, joining local chapters of national organizations can be huge. We're acutely aware in each city that a young person will need more time and funds to travel. So, national conferences can be unattainable, especially when you're billable and, again, limited in those areas. The local chapters, whether it be ACEC itself has local chapters, and I know other associations do as well; depending on what your interest is in terms of what you're pursuing, it can be enormously helpful in not only connecting with other young people, which I think is paramount, as I said, these peer networks make a difference in how we view our leadership journeys—but also connecting with some individuals who may be more senior in the field. And I say that because I think everybody at all levels is looking for kind of that mentor relationship, whether it be a seasoned employee looking to hear what young people out there are interested in or a young employee looking to hear about the journey again of that CEO or that senior vice president.

I encourage joining organizations and participating to the extent that you can. To those who are limited, again, even more so on time, or they want to do less on the organization side because they're limited in funds or money space? Always, always. I am a huge proponent of reading Harvard Business Review or McKinsey, or even the resources offered by Stambaugh Ness, where you can go to these websites, see whether it be a periodical or a blog, and see what's out there. There are unbelievable tips and information on the direction our industry is going when you go to these resources that offer research and anecdotal information about what's going on in the field. 

Emily Lawrence: Yeah, that's great. Katie, thank you so much for joining us today. This has been an incredible conversation. Learning and development are key to next-generation leaders. And we hope- well, I know this conversation is hugely helpful for every national leader who listens. So thank you so much, and we hope to have you back soon. 

Katie Goodman: Any time. Thank you so much for having me.