Ep. 24: How to Find the Right Cultural Fit in AEC

Struggling to find a workplace that aligns with your values and aspirations? Join us for an inspiring conversation with Rachel R. Gresham, AIA, MBA, WELL AP, CDT—an architect, researcher, and expert in fostering positive workplace environments in the AEC industry. 

Rachel shares how she used the strategic planning skills from her MBA program to create a personal roadmap for aligning with a workplace culture that supports her well-being and goals. Along the way, she offers actionable steps for crafting your own strategic plan to achieve career success. 

Drawing on her thesis, “Relationships Between Organizational Structure and Culture in the Practice of Architecture,” Rachel provides a deep dive into how organizational dynamics shape culture—and how firms can leverage this as a recruitment and retention tool. 

Whether you're an emerging professional, a firm leader, or somewhere in between, this episode offers actionable strategies to help you thrive in your career. 

🎧 Don’t miss this chance to learn how to build—or find—a workplace culture where you can truly flourish!

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Transcript

Emily Lawrence: Welcome to the AEC Groundbreaking Growth Podcast. 

Jen Knox: Hosted by Stambaugh Ness.

[Opening Credits]

Emily Lawrence: Welcome back to Groundbreaking Growth, where we dive into stories, trends, and strategies of next-generation leaders in the AEC industry. I'm your host, Emily, and as always, I am joined by my co-host, Jen. Today, we are talking about navigating career decisions. Finding alignment with company culture and leveraging strategic tools for success in the industry.

Our guest, Rachel, has a fascinating journey that blends years of experience, business expertise, and a passion for firm management. And Jen, I will turn it over to you to introduce Rachel. 

Jen Knox: Perfect. Thank you, Emily. Um, So excited to introduce Rachel Gresham, who is currently the Senior Director of Professional Practice Programs at AIA.

Her focus is really on initiatives that empower firms to create better cultures, foster business prosperity, and really then enhance project management processes. Rachel has also over a decade in the industry, has her MBA, and has honed that business acumen, and developed a unique strategy for navigating her own career challenges and opportunities.

So, Rachel, we're really excited to have you on the podcast today. 

Rachel Gresham: Thanks, Jennifer and Emily, for having me. I'm very excited to be here. 

Jen Knox: Great. Well, we'd love to start out with your journey if you can go into a little bit of how you got into the industry and what has led you to your current role today at AIA.

Rachel Gresham: Great. I can do that. I think, like probably most of your listeners, early on in my childhood, I was very interested in art and was also good at math. So, that was one of those facts that led me to the architecture industry. I graduated from Virginia Tech Architecture School, and then I immediately went into practicing at a multifamily architecture firm of about 10 to 12 people.

After that, I went to a firm that practiced K through pretty much everything except healthcare. It was Ilk and, got to do some, higher ed, I did a parking garage while I was there, and a few other project types. And then, sadly, I was laid off from that company about 18 months after I started.

Of course, people always reminisce back on those moments, saying, Oh, what a great time. To really get a career together. So, after that, I ended up moving to Nashville, Tennessee, where I practiced at, a firm that I still love and support. And I practiced there for about seven years.

So, I think what was special about my career was being able to experience three different work cultures and business models very early on in my career, which is something that not everyone is able to experience so quickly. I was at three different firms in the first three years of my career. And I found that I loved practicing architecture.

I love design. I loved the daily aspects of what it's like to practice architecture. But the things that were challenging to me and the things I was frustrated with really had to do with the business side of things, the cultural side of things, and it wasn't firm specific. It was everywhere.

So back in 2019, after I got my license in 2018, and in 2019, of course, I was like, well, my license is done. Now what? 

Jen Knox: Need something else to learn. That's how I felt. 

Rachel Gresham: You know, I'm going another way to torture myself. Let's see what we can do. I was getting really interested in this neuroscience for architecture field that's emerging, and I ran into the Dean of Virginia Tech's Architecture School at the time at an AIA National Conference, actually.

And I just very, very passively mentioned, you know, Virginia Tech's a research institution. Maybe we should be leaning into this new neuroscience field in the architecture school. And he said, great, give me your business card. And then, a few weeks later, I'm getting a phone call from one of my former professors asking me if I was looking for a PhD candidacy.

And I was like, Whoa, wait a minute. I just said that this was cool and we should be doing it. But I listened to what he had to say. And I went from zero to maybe I should go back to school in a matter of 30 minutes. So, that instance really got me thinking about, okay, what would it look like for me to go back to school for something?

Do I want to take my career in a different trajectory? Do I want to climb this very linear ladder that's available to me now? Or do I want to enhance my skill set and the things I'm passionate about in a specific way? So after a couple of conversations about that with my mentors, one of them had an MBA, and one of them wished they had an MBA.

And so, we sort of chewed on it for a little while and realized I had a sort of fork in the road here. If I'm going to go back to school, if this is plausible, do I go down the road of getting a PhD in neuroscience for architecture, or lean into sort of that narrowed down niche area of practice where that skill set would be valued by firms doing lots of research, which tend to be larger firms.

Or do I go down this servant leadership path, which I'm also super passionate about through my work with ACE mentors, and volunteering for AIA committees? Do I lean into that where an MBA would be more valuable? It would put me on a track that's quite a bit broader, and would lead to firm management types of roles.

So, every day, I voted after talking with them. I had a little sticky on my desk, and I would go through a day, and I would vote. Do I feel like PhD is the right way, or do I feel like business is the right way? And very quickly, the answer became super clear. So after, it became clear that a Master's of Business was the right avenue in my heart.

I started looking into programs, and I wanted to go to the best program that I could afford. Part of that decision was I want to go to a reputable school, but it doesn't have to be so reputable, like, I'm not going to go work on Wall Street after this, right? 

Jen Knox: Don't need to take on a ton of debt for X, Y, Z reasons.

Rachel Gresham: Exactly. I don't need a Harvard MBA. If I'm going to continue to stay in the architecture industry, I felt like an MBA is often seen as a degree where you can completely jump ship and change your entire career overnight. But that's not really what I thought was right for me.

I'd invested so much time and so much energy into being an architect that it's not something I wanted to set aside. So I ended up going to Belmont University here in Nashville, Tennessee, and it was supposed to be an in-person program, but I started a few months after the world shut down in 2020. 

Part of that strategy was making sure that I was lined up for job roles where I could pay off that debt very quickly and I did. So that was an important part of the decision. After I finished my degree, I took a breath for a little while, because I continued to work full-time while I was getting that degree.

So, the burnout was very, very real. I knew that the self-sacrifices that went along with that were going to be very intense, and they absolutely were. It was the hardest thing I've ever done. And honestly, COVID probably helped because I didn't feel like I was missing out on much on Friday nights when I had to do homework.

But I took an opportunity to think very strategically about what my next steps were. And I know you guys are curious to hear about what my tactics and tools were for that, but ultimately, after I did that thinking, I got a call from a trusted mentor and said, I have the perfect role for you.

It's at the AIA national component where your skillset as an architect with 10 years of experience folds together very well with your new business expertise and your Master's degree. So ultimately, that is what led me to be here at AIA, where I am today, and I get to inject business acumen into the profession and help other architects run great businesses.

That's the long and short. 

Emily Lawrence: I feel like your story and your journey, there are so many pieces to it. I mean, while it's very specific to you and your expertise, there's pieces of it that I think a lot of next-generation leaders can relate to. A lot of people our age can relate to when you're several years into your career, and you're faced with a crossroads, and you're trying to figure out the next step, what you want to do, probably have experienced burnout at some point. 

And like you mentioned, you've had to make several decisions within your journey. Can you walk us through your decision making process and maybe offer some advice to people that are at a similar crossroads in their career? 

Rachel Gresham: Absolutely. So after I finished my degree, there was definitely my Master's degree, there was definitely a point of recovery, and that was in 2022.

Because of what I had been through, I wanted to take a step back and not really jump into anything immediately. I needed to rest. But one of the things that I thought was important to do during that rest period, and at the turn of 2022 to 2023, I thought, why not use some of the skills I learned in business school for strategic planning to write a strategic plan for myself and pretend that I'm a business.

I love the term kitchen cabinet, so I'm the CEO of me and then I have my kitchen cabinet. And that includes friends and professional colleagues that are super supportive. So, I thought, why don't I start this? So, January 1st of 2023, I sat down with my little coffee and some dotted paper, and I started to use that skill of strategic planning that I had learned in business school to write one for myself.

And the first thing I did. Which is the first few things you do in any strategic plan for business is write your core values and your mission and vision statement. So, I identified my core values. I have six of them, they are integrity, compassion, forever a student, balance, entrepreneurship, and then culture and connection.

So, I'll explain a couple of these in depth. The entrepreneurship one is: I believe in what's next. I like to make things. Explore. Stagnation and comfort are wasteful. Change is the only constant. Try things, meet people, connect people, places, and things. And then the culture and connection value. The description behind that is: I believe that human connection is the foundation of life.

Art, dance, music, and culture are the best ways to connect to myself, my feelings, and the hearts and souls of others. So those are sort of an example of the little sub, sub-descriptions I wrote for each and every one of these core values that can guide where my mission and vision statement go. So, my mission statement is: I exist to bring my skills, strengths, passions, and unique perspective to the world around me in a spirit of service. And, my vision statement is: I aspire to maximize all that life has to offer, to take the lemons I've been given, and always be making the best possible lemonade. 

 Jen Knox: Awesome.

Thanks! The next step in any strategic plan is writing goals. So, I wrote one, two, three, four, five, six, I wrote seven goals, and I wrote it in specific categories. So spiritual, financial, career, intellectual, fitness, family, and social goals. And so, if your viewers are watching the stream, I've got bullet points under each of those to explain what do I really want to accomplish in the next three to five years in all of those categories. And then, the next step after writing goals in a good strategic plan is: tactics. So you take those goals, and you write down specific actions that you're going to take in order to reach those goals. So, it gets really specific. For my spiritual tactics, my first one is meditate three to five nights a week, practice deep listening.

Rachel Gresham: Some other ones, like my fitness tactics, for example, I've written out what days of the week I'm going to exercise. And those are the things that can start to become measurable and you can start to see progress. So that's the drill down. Another analysis I did, which is another thing that I learned in business school, was a vario analysis, and it's short for valuable, rare, easily imitatable, and then organized to execute.

So what that analysis is, is an analysis of core competencies. So, just like an organization might have core competencies in things that they're good at, I thought, well, I have core competencies and things that I'm good at. So how can I use those core competencies to help me filter out what the next best step is for me?

So, for example, one of my core competencies that I wrote down was big-picture thinking. And then, in the next few columns, I broke out, does this bring the energy? Does this take away energy? And would I want this in my next role? So, for big-picture thinking, I put a big check mark beside "Brings Me Energy."

Yeah, this is something that excites me. And then, do I want that in my next role with a big goal? Yes. I want the opportunity to leverage this core competency of mine in the next role that I have. 

Jen Knox: Mm-Hmm. 

Rachel Gresham: And then, I also put down towards the bottom, what I want more experience with. So not only the existing core competencies that I have, but the core competencies that I'm looking for.

And the first one I wrote is accountability for results. So that's something that I really wanted to stretch in this next role of mine. No idea if that brings or takes energy, you know, 

Jen Knox: Yes!

Rachel Gresham: But definitely something I wanted in my next role. And then I also did a pros-cons list when opportunities came up.

But I think one of the things that I think people skip in this process is what do you actually want? So that was a big question I wrote and I put a question mark and an explanation point behind it. The things that I wrote there were a seat at the table, to use my education, to line up for my future, play to my strengths. And then I wrote, pay off my loans. That included big-picture things, but also very practical things. And this plan, I was reviewing this before we got on the line. Y'all. There's so much science behind when you write these things down, your probability of reaching these goals grows exponentially if you write it all down.

I was reflecting back on this, and these core values I had a little moment of pride; I was like, you know what? I really have stuck to this plan, and I've grown into it, and it feels really good, but it took me all day. But 

Jen Knox: Yeah, well, it's amazing to hear you explain the process because it seems like you are a very self-aware person, right?

When you think about your core competencies, what you're really good at. But I'm sure it took you time to learn that about yourself, right? What are you good at? What is the value you add? What brings you energy, or what pulls you down? I felt this way when I started a similar journey. How do I figure out what I'm actually good at?

And that can be talking to a mentor, right? Talking to a trusted advisor, someone that you've done a lot of work with, and what they see in you. There's several tools out there that you can leverage to help you learn about yourself, but it's a journey. Like Rachel, you just said you sat down and got this done in a day.

It may take you six months to really refine what you're thinking about for yourself. And it can mold and change and I'm sure, those goals come up in different priorities at times in your life. Right. So, it's amazing to hear you walk through that process. If you had to give advice where to start or what to do first for someone, that maybe is just building that self-awareness. What piece of advice would you give them? 

Rachel Gresham: I would tell them to lean on the tools out there that exist. Not everyone has the privilege of having a strategic management course where they've learned how to write a strategic plan for themselves.

Right. So where, I started back before grad school when I was thinking about that decision between neuroscience and MBA. I leaned on the CliftonStrengths Finder. So that's a survey and personality test that you can take. And of the personality tests that I've taken, I love a personality test.

I always get the same results when I take this one. And it's something that you might be able to get reimbursed by your company if you ask nicely. It does cost a little money to get the full survey. But it helps you identify the things that you're innately good at or innately lean towards as things that you enjoy and that you have strengths and CliftonStrengths Finder, right?

My top five CliftonStrengths I've never changed. And they are strategic, ideation, responsibility, activator, and communication. And it was very validating to hear those results. And they also helped me filter where I wanted to concentrate building my career because the whole, philosophy behind CliftonStrengths Finder is that you don't need to waste time developing your weaknesses into mediocrities.

Develop your strengths into superpowers is the philosophy there. The other personality to us that I layered on top of that was the Enneagram, which is all the rage in Nashville. We love the Enneagram here. And my type is 1 wing 9. So, if your listeners take that test, they'll know exactly what that means.

But what I love about the Enneagram is that it's a personality test based on the fact that you're not the same person all the time and that you grow into different personality traits at certain times, and you exhibit different personality traits when you're stressed out or in an unhealthy state.

And the personality type that I am in the Enneagram is the Advocate, the go-getter, the champion for the underdog. And there's tons of other traits that go along with this personality type. And when I started to think about the CliftonStrengths Finder and the Enneagram together, it started to give me a really good sense of what direction should I take in my personal and professional life to lean on these things about myself that, you know, a test says that I'm good at them.

Well, let me take that with a grain of salt and take what feels true for me and then apply that. So CliftonStrengths Finder was actually a big part of helping me decide between neuroscience and business as well. 

Jen Knox:And the one thing I love about CliftonStrengths too is that, to your point, it's not about developing your weaknesses, but it can be about finding the right team members that fill in your gaps, right?

We all have our unique strengths, which is great and amazing. And combined in different ways on different teams, that's where you really see, I think, the power. So think of it also as a collective way to think about your team's strengths overall. So. 

Rachel Gresham: To your point, I think it's just as important to know what you're good at versus what you're not good at.

And often, what you're not good at can give you more direction than what you are good at. I think it's also important to note that there were things when I was thinking about my core competencies and what I'm good at, that doesn't always align with what I like to do. So, just because I was good at project management when I left practice, I was managing 80 million worth of construction projects.

And I was good at it. Just because I was good at it does not mean I wanted that level of pressure. It took energy away from me. Now granted, looking back on that, I do a lot of project management now, but it gives me energy because it's manifesting differently. It's manifesting in a role that has different expectations, that's different content.

It's just a caveat that I would throw out there is something I've learned in the last 18 months being here at AIA. 

Jen Knox: Yeah, yeah. I think that's a great point, and oftentimes, the culture that you're sitting in, right that manifestation. what you're doing depends on that culture you're sitting in.

I know when you did your Master's, your thesis was focused on those organizational structures and the culture that comes along with that. Would you be able to dive in a little bit into what your thesis was and, I guess, how you see it being applicable in the industry and for emerging leaders, next-gen leaders to leverage as well? 

Rachel Gresham: Absolutely. So back to that, you know, three years, three different firms. I definitely had this thirst to learn a little bit more about what that looked like and had the opportunity in grad school. One semester, there just weren't any electives that interested me.

So, I thought, why not find a sponsor and do a small independent study or thesis of sorts? And I could study anything I wanted. So I was like, okay, well, I want to get to the bottom of what work culture really is and how structural systems impact that. So my thesis is called, the “Relationships Between Organizational Design and Organizational Structure and Architecture.”

And if anyone is a super nerd about this stuff, you can find the whole study on my website. But I wanted to not only research sort of the foundational knowledge that had been created many, many years ago when, the prevalence of the structures we see today were born, but how they manifest in architecture firms.

So, I interviewed several architecture firms ranging from very small business owners to, CEOs of multinational companies. Can't tell you who they are but, I got the full gamut. I got every time-zone. I got every firm size. It was really great. And you can see the results in the study.

But one of the researchers that I studied, his name is Fons Trompenaars, and I call him T-dog affectionately. 

Jen Knox: That's a long one to get off the tongue. 

Rachel Gresham: It's a rough name. But I talk about him, and I also talk about Charles Handy a lot. They're the two frameworks and researchers that I resonate with the most.

Today I'll talk a little bit about Trompenaars. He has four different ecosystems that he's identified in his and they are Family Culture, Eiffel Tower, Guided Missile, and Incubator. So, a Family Culture is something that has a strong figure. It's found in smaller business models. It's usually, a culture that has a father figure or a mother figure that is running the business that all of the decisions really go through this person.

An Eiffel Tower culture is very hierarchical, so if you picture the Eiffel Tower and how it's large at the bottom and skinny at the top, each level builds onto the next one. Very hierarchical. A Guided Missile culture, which I think the AEC industry can really relate to, is found in mid-size companies.

And it's very problem centered. It's made up of experts that have specialized knowledge, and it's focused on bringing those experts together in a project-based organization where you might have an expert in XYZ that plays a different role on this project than they play on that project.

And then an Incubator culture is process-oriented, creative, it's organized in an ad hoc fashion based on what the business needs are and what the clients are asking for. So, you'll find all of these in architecture, and you'll find them to varying degrees. So, it's not going to be a distinct culture manifesting very discreetly in one firm or another.

What I found in the radar diagrams and my research, you'll see, and like a mid-size firm, for example, it'll exhibit traits of Eiffel Tower, and it also will exhibit traits of Guided Missile. So, what's important to know about how these ecosystems manifest is that our relationship with them as human beings is predictable.

So, within a certain culture, we'll be motivated in a certain way or will get rewards in a certain way. And what we can use these to do is find a match. So if you have an emerging professional who is motivated by being loved and respected with an intrinsic satisfaction for their work, they're going to fit really well in a Family Culture.

If you are motivated by promotions, responsibility, your job title, you're going to find a good fit in an Eiffel Tower culture. If you are guided by solving problems and that brings you intrinsic reward, a Guided Missile is going to be good for you. If you are interested in participating in the process and creating new realities and improvising, like a startup mindset, you're going to find that in an Incubator culture.

So, these are the levels of self-awareness that I think people who are making decisions about what culture they fit into are important. You can ask about these in an interview to find a culture that fits right for you. So, if you are motivated by a promotion or a job title, you can start by asking about the hierarchy.

You can start by asking, what a job titles mean in this firm. How closely are responsibilities tied to a job title and how is that managed? If you're looking for a Guided Missile culture, which is where you're going to be rewarded or you're going to be motivated by problem-solving ask them how they staff projects, ask them, what kinds of people they're bringing together, how those projects are led.

I'll use an anecdote for myself as an example. After doing this research, carry this knowledge with me. So, when I was interviewing at AIA, it is a hierarchical culture. It's so large that sort of has to be. Um, I knew that when I was stepping into a hierarchical type of culture that, the folks around me would likely be motivated by promotions, their job title, and the responsibilities that came along with that, which are usually fairly narrowly defined.

I knew that the humans in that culture were going to interact in a certain way based on the ecosystem they exist in. And that a certain type of culture is going to come along with that, and the way that we interact with our colleagues is going to be different in a hierarchical system than it is in a more matrixed or guided missile system.

So that was the goal of my Master's thesis is to really understand how that takes place in the architecture industry specifically. 

Emily Lawrence: That's so interesting. And you talk about how that plays out in an interview. I wonder if you could share an example from your own career where asking the right questions helped you make a decision about a career move.

Rachel Gresham: When I was swapping from, the two firms very early on in my career to where I spent seven years, I was a little wiser; I been at two different firms. And point of pride for me was when the hiring manager called me back after initial interview and said, “Hey, Rachel, it sounds, you've got to ask a lot more questions of me than I got to ask of you.”

And I was like, That's right. I want to know as much as I can beforehand. And I think some things that are important to ask in that context and how you might learn to exist or how you might find yourself existing in this culture is a lot of how are projects staffed, what kinds of benefits are there for families if you want to go into policies like that? What criteria exist for promotion? What types of training opportunities are there? And those questions that are going to get you, I also frame it in this way. You got to ask the question in a way that they can't skirt it easily.

So rather than asking how many hours do people typically spend in the office per week, you know what, they're not going to tell you, Oh, well, you know, there's a few people back in the studio that are on week six of, you know, 70 hours a week. They're not going to tell you that. So, how can you ask those questions in a way that's going to get you the information that you need?

That's where I lean on questions like how is staffing handled? When a project feels like it's getting out of control, what's the protocol for bringing it back around? Those are the types of things that you want a firm to be able to answer because they've experienced this before. They're going to have experienced this before.

So, how do they handle that situation? Are they hiring someone just to put out a fire right now? Which is a position that you do not want to be entering a firm in, or are they intentionally growing their firm, and they need your specific skillset to plug in for a long period of time where they're investing in you, and you're investing in them.

So that was my adventure when changing firms for the last time. 

Jen Knox: Yeah. I love your thought there on why is this role open? Is it for growth? Is it to put out a fire? Is it because someone left, are there creative questions you can ask about a manager, the team dynamic within that smaller subgroup and culture?

It definitely is tough as someone looking to make a move to find out what the culture is actually like. But I think the questions you provided are really great ones to gain a bit more insight. Obviously you're not going to know until you're living it and breathing it. But the most, as curious as we can be in that interview process and ask those insightful questions, I think really does help.

Rachel Gresham: Yeah, I think the thing that I wish I'd really known was this information about ecosystems. And that the structure of the firm really does inform your human experience within it. And also, you're going to experience microcultures too. So not only is a firm going to be a mix of different cultures itself, you're going to find different ways of being and existing within a system on one team to the next.

Understanding the power dynamics that come with each ecosystem. They're very known. It's not made up. It's not anecdotal. The research is here to show that humans interact in a specific way in a specific system and that knowledge is extreme power when you're looking for a place to fit in. 

Jen Knox: And it allows you then to tailor your strengths and how you're motivated to fit on that team.

Right. And know what it is you need to get from it. If it's intrinsic motivation, extrinsic, et cetera, and you may have to tailor that and be flexible team-to-team, organization-to-organization. 

Rachel Gresham: That's right. That was something that I had to understand when coming to AIA is that I will exist very differently in this environment than how I existed when I was practicing. And I had to be okay with that. And I had to be willing to step into that culture and participate in it. Coming at it and saying, this isn't how it works for me. I'm coming in and not conforming. Uh, 

Jen Knox: I've done that. It doesn't go well. 

Rachel Gresham: It doesn't, it doesn't go well. No, it doesn't. Um, and I'm not saying go along to get along or be a conformist, but bringing this level of knowledge that these ecosystems exist is it's just helpful. 

Jen Knox: Yeah, yeah. Well, this conversation was packed full, I think, of great insights, tactical things to take away, for our emerging leaders and next-gen leaders that are facing those challenging career struggles, especially in mid-career.

You know, you can get that feeling of being left behind a little bit, right? You see your peers advancing, et cetera. Thinking about what you're truly, what you want out of your career, what are your values, what do you want outside of your career, can really help balance everything out. Definitely appreciate your insights, Rachel, and for joining us today.

Rachel Gresham: Thanks for having me. This was very fun. 

Emily Lawrence: Yeah. Thanks, Rachel, for sharing your journey and your expertise to our listeners. If you enjoy this episode, please be sure to share your thoughts with us and let us know if there are any other topics you'd like to hear about and be sure to subscribe.