2017 Emerging Leaders Discuss Firm Leadership

City Square was kind enough to host the April session of the 2017 Emerging Leaders Group. City Square is an impactful non-profit organization in Dallas that fights poverty by means of a community food pantry, housing provisions, career assistance, a community health services clinic, legal services, and community advocacy. City Square is the client for this year’s ELP class project, so the venue gave the class a great opportunity to visit and interact with the organization’s leadership.

Facilitator Pete DeLisle, Hon. AIA Dallas began the session by presenting us with an exercise in group decision making. To begin, we worked individually.  Later, we formed groups and re-worked the exercise together.  It quickly became evident that we were much stronger decision makers in a group than we were on our own. The discussion continued into a model for team building based on building trust within a group in order to spark creativity and reach interdependence. 

Our group was then joined by a panel of distinguished speakers to discuss firm leadership. The panel consisted of Larry James, the CEO of City Square, as well as the husband and wife principals of Mitchell Garman Architects, Kelly Mitchell, AIA and Sean Garman, AIA. The panel began by telling the group about their background and what leadership means to them, and then the discussion was opened to questions. All of the speakers were able to offer unique insight and past experiences that will help the Emerging Leaders for years to come.