A/E/C Firms Need to Develop Their Leaders. Where Do You Start?
You may already know your firm needs to invest in leadership development.
Perhaps founding partner is preparing to retire and a group of principals are learning how to lead the firm together. In A/E/C, client and vendor relationships, leadership consistency, and strengthening the next generation of leaders is crucial to developing a thriving firm and preserving the culture.
As a firm grows and changes, new associates are emerging and taking on more responsibility. They may be technically accomplished but less comfortable developing client relationships, coaching teams, addressing performance concerns, or navigating conflict.
You can see the need. What may be less clear is what kind of support would make the greatest difference.
Do you need executive coaching? Presentation or business development training? Manager or DEIB training? A leadership-team retreat? DiSC®? Crucial Conversations®? A complete leadership-development program?
It can feel overwhelming, but the good news is you don't need all the answers to begin.
Start with a design process to establish needs. What's the end in mind?
It can be tempting to begin by choosing a solution. However, as designers, we know to start with the end in mind. What kind of firm do we want this to be? What skills do we need our emerging leaders to have? How do we ensure we are strengthening relationships with our clients? How do we preserve our legacy and culture?
From this place, we can look at the current business challenges. For example:
A founder wants to step back, but important decisions still depend on them.
Principals lead their own practices effectively but struggle to make enterprise decisions together.
New associates have been promoted without preparation for leading people or developing essential client relationships.
Employees don’t understand how they can grow into leadership roles.
Difficult conversations are delayed until problems become harder to solve.
Leaders are so focused on project delivery that developing others keeps falling to the bottom of the list.
The firm is growing, but leadership practices vary significantly across teams or offices.
Each situation points to a different development need. Naming the challenge allows you to select support with greater intention.
Take a first step to building effective leaders, book a free Discovery Call with Hanna Richards-James to learn more.
Identify essential leadership skills for the firm to thrive.
Leadership development becomes more useful when it is connected to observable behavior. Using the term “Strengthen Leadership” or "Stronger Teams" is a meaningful aspiration, but it is difficult to design around or measure. What would stronger leadership look like during an ordinary week?
It might mean that leaders:
Delegate work more effectively.
Give employees timely, useful feedback.
Coach rather than immediately solve every problem.
Address tension directly and respectfully.
Agree on decision making pathways that don't depend on the founder.
Communicate priorities consistently.
Collaborate across disciplines, offices, or practices.
Spend more time developing emerging leaders.
Balance project delivery with responsibility for the wider firm.
Consistently build trusting relationships with clients.
This shift, from a broad aspiration to specific behaviors, is one of the most important early steps a firm can take. To learn more, check out our blog on how to develop effective leadership programs.
Make one small move
You don’t need to conduct an extensive process to begin. Bring together a few people who see the organization from different perspectives. That might include different levels of leadership, a marketing leader, associates, junior project managers and designers, interns, a controller, and an emerging leaders.
Ask four questions:
What is changing in our firm?
What will our leaders need to do differently because of that change?
How do we ensure our firm, and all employees, are continuing to grow and thrive?
What do we want to preserve, and we do ensure we continue to do impactful work?
The point is to see what emerges from the different perspectives, collect information, and listen for patterns. It isn't to try to solve everything during the conversation.
You may discover that the firm needs a shared set of leadership expectations. You may find that managers need a few foundational skills. The immediate need could be clearer decision-making within the leadership team. Or one pivotal leader may benefit from focused coaching during a transition.
That clarity makes the next step much easier.
Match the support to the need
Different desired outcomes call for different forms of development. While there are many options, you can build the skills intentionally and built over time. This ensures each skill is adopted and delivered consistently on the job.
A workshop like DiSC can introduce a shared language and practical skills for building stronger relationships.
Executive Coaching can give a leader confidential space to examine how they are leading and practice new approaches.
Leading at the Speed of Trust and Team development training can strengthen trust, decision-making, and accountability among people who must lead together.
And Crucial Conversations can give a clear roadmap to having productive conflict conversations.
Productivity training can provide new managers the skills to delegate effectively.
Business development and executive presence training can develop needed skills to build strong client relationships.
A larger leadership initiative may be appropriate when the firm needs to develop several levels of leadership, strengthen its succession pipeline, or create greater consistency across the organization.
The goal is select the right starting point and build from there. And, do it in a way that is measurable and specifically formulated to the need of the firm.
You can begin before you have a complete plan
Many firms wait because they believe they need a fully developed strategy before taking action. Others purchase individual programs without understanding how those programs connect to the organization’s needs.
There is a practical path between those two options.
Begin with one important challenge. Define what better leadership would look like. Choose a solution that is appropriate for the people, culture, and moment. Learn from the experience, measure what changes, and use those insights to determine the next move.
Leadership capacity can be built over time.
When an outside guide can be useful
It can be difficult to diagnose a leadership challenge from inside the system, especially when leaders are also managing clients, projects, employees, and the daily demands of the business.
An outside partner can support the firm in:
Identifying the underlying need
Gathering perspectives across the organization
Translating business priorities into leadership capabilities
Determining whether coaching, training, team development, or a broader strategy is appropriate
Designing a realistic place to begin
Connecting development to workplace application and measurable progress
Your firm still owns the direction. As a guide, I bring a process, outside perspective, and experience designing the path.
I'm Hanna Richards-James, founder of DesignWise Coaching + Consulting. I support the development of organizations, leadership teams, leaders, and employees who make the organization strong. I support owners to strengthen their organizational processes, build strong leadership teams, and prepare for the next generation of leaders to produce thriving firms.
I bring more than a decade of experience in the A/E/C industry, spanning marketing, business development, organizational development, team building, strategic initiatives, communication training, DEI, and leadership transitions.
I combine that industry understanding with leadership research, coaching, human-centered design, and systems thinking. The result may be a proven program, a customized experience, or a phased development strategy designed around the firm’s specific needs. I hold a Masters in Organizational Leadership and have more than 12 years building effective leadership programs, supporting growth, and developing leadership pipelines.
You don’t need to have the solution figured out before starting the conversation. Identifying the right place to begin is part of the work.
If your firm knows it needs to strengthen leadership but isn’t sure what kind of support would create the most value, let’s talk. Book a free Discovery Call here or send me an email at hanna@designwiseconsulting.com.
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