2017 Emerging Leaders Explore Team Leadership

The class began with us responding to a survey of questions passed out by our facilitator, Pete DeLisle, Hon. AIA Dallas. This series of questions placed us in our own category based on our personal reaction to situations.

Once the surveys were complete and everyone learned where they landed in three categories (innovative, bridger, and adaptor), we lined up to see the correlation to each other in the class and to see how we fell on the spectrum. This process was the most interesting and informative part -- while figuring out your own characteristics, it was fun to see how everyone in this ELP Class related to each other and how those personalities you were starting to now get familiar with aligned with that designation. There was no congratulatory handshake for being the most “innovative” in the group, which is often the mindset of young or practicing architects in the field, but a nod to the importance of everyone in the room and how projects get accomplished because of the diversity that existed with us all. 

I think the larger lesson from the class was also to understand how to place yourself on the spectrum to be able to better work and collaborate with peers and co-workers on projects. The ability to give language to that process will help guide us in our approaches to solution-driven problems we see daily.

The guest speakers for this class, Jonathon Brown, AIA from JHP Architecture/Urban Design, Doug Hix, Athletic Director of Coram Deo Academy, and Michael Hellinghausen, AIA, COO at Omniplan, brought a very enthusiastic approach to how they viewed team leadership. Doug Hix, coming from a coaching background, could dive into commitment to the process and leading his team to the point of elevating his players to an extraordinary level. Jonathon focused on the anti-leadership approach – exploring whether or not to chase being elevated in the profession and taking on more roles leads to leadership roles. He described the need to delegate and that it’s not so much about simply tasking people with jobs, but engaging them in the process. Michael brought a more practical mindset to the word leadership and discussed how he sees his role in teams as a principal, which often means one on one conversations about their value to the firm and the projects they contribute to.

The end of the class was reserved for a class project update, which we used for presenting sketches and ideas for the Columbarium at CitySquare. Several class members presented site plans that laid out how the Columbarium walls would be placed, and schematic material selections. The ideas were all very focused on user experience and pathways through the space. Since it was clear several concepts had overlaps, and the class chose to condense down these fundamentals, and present two or three ideas to CitySquare for selection. Stay tuned for updates!