“They say a person only needs just three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do and something to hope for.”
– Tom Bodett
Going Farther Together
We kicked off the third session of the Emerging Leader’s Program by talking about some of the introspective exercises we had done prior to attending the session. We assessed our core values, learned about ‘what is missing?’ with the help of Wheel of Life and most fun and challenging of all – we took the Trolley Exercise. The trolley exercise puts you in situations that most people won’t want to voluntarily be in. It makes you pick one of two bad options. If you would like to test your decision-making abilities, give it a try at Absurd Trolley Problems. There are deaths involved. You’ve been warned!
Teamwork
What separates a highly functional team from a dysfunctional group? Well, it’s really a stack effect. Lack of Trust, Fear of Conflict, Lack of Commitment, Avoidance of Accountability and Inattention to Results, all work towards limiting a collective impact and collaborative action.
It is important that everyone on a team knows their roles, their strengths, and their weaknesses. As a leader, it is important that you remain aware of your own biases and focus on building strong teams that have a mix of talent.
To test out our newly learned concepts of a functional team, we split ourselves into random groups of 5-6 sailors and set sail ready to encounter a rather interesting challenge at the sea – being Lost at Sea. We were all given a list of 15 items usually found on a boat that we were to rank from most important to least important. To add to the challenge, we were told our boat was on fire and we had only 15 minutes. We first ranked the supplies individually, then as a team and then finally compared both lists to how a coast guard would rank them. We learned that some of us were better off as a team while others had better chance at survival by going their own way. More importantly we learned that good communication in a tense and time sensitive situation is very important. You want to make sure you are heard but you also want to listen to everyone on your team for the best results.
Firm and Project Leadership
Adnahn Humayun, David Alvarez, McKenzie Watson, Shreya Jasrapuria, and Vidaan Tarkh with the help of ELP co-chair Omkar Lele were the organizing team for Session 3. As part of the session activity, the team invited three subject matter experts to discuss various topics relating to Firm and Project Leadership.
To continue the theme of 3’s, everyone was split into 3 groups based on their core assessments. After a brief introduction of the SMEs, each group circled around one of the SME and discussed specific topics. Then every 15 minutes the SME joined the next group of emerging leaders. Eventually, each SME had discussed their core strength topics with all the groups with the conversation developing more depth each time.
Amanda Key, IIDA, NCIDQ is the Office Leader and Interior Design Principal at Smith Group. She shared her experiences and career stories of how Trust and Ethics have played a huge role in her being where she is today. We learned how she stood her ground when it came to treating people right. And how she held the ethics bar high. All of which helped her build trust with her peers and leaders early on in her career. It was inspiring for some people in the groups to learn from her experiences and potentially will help people act on when they come across opportunities of displaying compassion, respect and building trust.
Ryan Schutt, AIA who is a principal at HKS Inc., brought with him a fun version of the game Pictionary. Three volunteers played the game as a team. The first person was supposed to act the clue similar to a round of dumb charades, the second person was to draw their understanding of the clue, and the third person was to guess the clue without looking at the person acting the clue. Some teams did amazingly well and guessed the clue in about 30 seconds. Some others spent minutes but could never get the clue. This exercise reaffirmed the learnings from the session so far – citing importance of proper and clear communication and importance of understanding everyone’s strengths, weaknesses and their roles.
Nicholas McWhirter, AIA, NCARB is a Principal/ Design Director at SHM Architects and he touched on topics of Managing Differences, Power-Sharing and Individual Values. He touched on how one’s personal values influence what kind of a leader they become and affect how they share power. He pointed out that people in the same team might have different individual values but it is important to identify what values push the needle on the common goals and that sometimes small sacrifices are necessary for achieving the bigger picture goals.
We wrapped up the session with some closing thoughts and shared learnings from each of the groups. The session was a success as representatives of each group and the SMEs expressed how the discussions evolved from group to group.
– Vidaan Tarkh, Associate AIA