191 - Creating Architectural Masterpieces: The Role of Mentorship and Leadership with Studios Architecture's Marc Pfenninger

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show, and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started.

Mark Benninger, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are an architect, and you're also the CEO of an architecture firm with offices I think I know, I know we've got Paris and I know, I think we've got London, certainly San Francisco where you're based out of. Anyways, it's, uh, studioarchitecturestudio.com. Welcome to the show.

Well, thank you, thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here.

Yeah, we were just talking before, it turns out we have a shared passion for skiing.

Yeah, yeah, it's pretty amazing how, you know, things tie people together, you know. Absolutely know them and it's pretty amazing.

So you've been in architecture for a long time. Just give us a quick backstory of you and a little bit about Studio— Studio— Studio— Studios.com. A little bit. Yeah.

Well, actually, I think for my background about how, how I found myself becoming an architect and wanting to become an architect, it is kind of related to skiing in an interesting way. I grew up in Bristol, New York, which is the Finger Lakes area of New York. My dad, when he was a kid, he— and through his whole life, he dedicated his life of service service to others. His parents really wanted him to be a priest. He was in the seminary at a young age. And at some point, he decided that the priesthood wasn't for him. And in the '60s, he volunteered for the military and went off abroad into Berlin. And that's where he met my mom, who was at the time studying modern dance. And, you know, so my— and then my dad went on to become a a social worker, and he worked with troubled families, you know, families who have some of the most amazing problems that I think all of us hope we never experience. And my mom's family came from a family of artists. They were musicians, potters, painters, sculptors. My mom was into modern dance and movement. I have an uncle who is a violinist in the Cleveland Orchestra.

I play jazz violin. Yeah. Yeah.

And so, It's this. And then, so you put this kind of together, they decided they wanted to become hippies and move to rural upstate New York, bought a plot of land. They had chickens and they formed this community with this other several families and together they all built houses. So I'd spent my weekends going to the Leitzes' house to help them build a house, going to the Haefelis' house and helping them build a house. The Frenningers, our family, they would all come over and help us build our house and So my youth was, was around this sort of formed community, you know, with my parents really into this idea of serving others and the arts. And somehow naturally, that's how I found my way into architecture. When I was thinking about, well, what I want to do, I was just really fascinated by this idea of building things, you know, designing things, but also building community. And I went into architecture school and came out and I've never looked back. I'm so glad I'm in this profession. I really love it.

Wow. So tell us about— tell us about your company.

So Studios— I've been at Studios since '99, so I've been here for quite a while, 24 years. And I think the reason why I am here is when I first walked in the doors, it to me, it felt like college. It felt like Syracuse. It was diverse. There was people from all over the world. There was models and drawings everywhere. It was a little bit of a mess when you looked at the office compared to some of the other firms. But, but what I, what I got out of it was this, this creative energy. And, and from that moment, what, what hooked me was they talked to me about David Salovaro, one of the early principals, and Eric Subercrop, one of the founding principals, talked to me about the importance of designing for the clients and really, really paying attention to your clients and creating a unique experience for them. And from the very beginning, that hooked me into this day, that, that's really what, you know, we find our purpose to be is that we really believe that before you can design anything or come up with any idea, that it's about people and really getting to understand the people, the people who will be in your spaces, the people who experience your spaces.. And, and how do you create places for them that are really relevant for them that, that hopefully will transform their lives?

Well, you know, this just leads into a question that I have that I usually introduce later in the, in the, in our conversation, but I'm gonna do it right now. It sounds to me like when you, when you are going to serve clients in that way to, to build for the clients that the number one skill you have is not creativity, it's listening.

I would agree with you so much about that, that it's listening is the foundation of success. And I think my profession, but definitely for us here at Studios. And when I hear the word listening, I'm reminded of, I can't remember which TV show this was. I think it was Kung Fu where at one point he says to Grasshopper, like, your eyes see, but they do not perceive. Like you can hear but not listen.

Right.

And I I find so much of what I do is not only listening to my clients, but listening to, I'll say, the site, listening to sometimes the community, sometimes it's building officials or public officials, sometimes it's neighbors, and trying to perceive all of this, listen to all of this information rather than just one person, and then see the connections. That can lead to real solutions. And when you can demonstrate that you can listen and sort of understand your clients and their problems at a deeper level, you really connect with them. And it really demonstrates a sense of trust.

That's right.

And, you know, trust is the foundation of all relationships.

That's right. What I found in my work as a peacemaker is that when you validate somebody else's emotional experience and really hear them at that deep level, they calm down. And I have been astounded about how many people have never truly been listened to before. I call the process listening others into existence.

Oh, wow.

And when I look at your website and I looked at some of the stuff you guys feature on your website, I thought about— and then you were talking about listening. I was saying, how does this guy listen to all the different stakeholders that you just mentioned and then translate what they have said into some amazing piece of architecture, some space that when the clients see, they just sort of say, wow, you really got me, you really did what I wanted. And, and, and of course, in architecture, like in many other professions— my, my field is law— clients often don't know what they want. They they can barely articulate.

Yeah.

That they have, right? It's an emotional thing they've got. And what I, what you're saying is that, is that when you listen, you're listening at the deepest level possible that, that you can then translate into brick and mortar and turn it into a, a space that deeply validates your clients.

At our best, I think that's what we've been able to achieve. I mean, certainly I wish we could achieve it all the time, but it's definitely something I'm striving for. And I'm really lucky to be around a group of people that believe in achieving that all the time. And it's not easy because what I find is sometimes my own emotions or the emotions of my team get in the way of listening to other people's emotions. And I find it's really critical to— and I don't know if I got this from my father's social working background. But I often find it helpful to take a breath and step back and try to understand, you know, where are they coming from? What's their motive? Is there a motive or are they just reacting? Why are they reacting? And just to try to understand it, because it's— I find it's real easy to make assumptions about why people are behaving with certain ways. And then when you start to dig into it, you realize I was so wrong. You know, they, they just want to do something good like I do, you know, we, you know, and, um, I mean, I know some of what your work is in conflict resolution, and we architects, we, we're hit with conflict frequently. Sometimes it's with us and a contractor, um, or us and a public official, and sometimes with the client. And it's, it's real easy to get wrapped up in the conflict versus just to take a step back and say out loud often, hey, we're all trying to do the same thing. And once you can recognize the— I find once you can recognize that everyone really wants to do great work and feel rewarded at the end of the day, you can create a team. And a team that will suddenly start all rowing in the same direction. And when that happens, it's amazing what can get achieved.

Yeah, the conflict arises because people don't feel like they've been listened to. Yeah, almost always. Yeah, I would say 99% of all conflicts arise from people not being heard.

Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah.

And, and so, and, and what I've also learned is that it doesn't matter why they feel the way they feel. It doesn't matter what their motivations are. The very first step in any situation where there's emotions is to validate the emotions, because the emotions are real. Maybe the reasons for the emotions is not real or not legitimate, but we don't care about that. We can problem solve later. The first thing we have to do is listen to and validate the emotional experience of the people in front of us. Because the neuroscience shows that when we do this, all kinds of magical things happen in the brain. The emotional centers are inhibited. The right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex is activated. They can now think again. And now we can— and they feel, to your point, they feel trust and loyalty and rapport. Which now allows you to engage them in some kind of problem-solving process. And the secret is learning how to listen to what they're feeling as opposed to their words. And that's the great secret that I've learned over the years. And that's what I teach now.

That's so interesting. I've never thought of it that way, but it resonates with me.

Yeah, I have a—

it resonates because I think about part of our process that we like to do is, is, well, we like to start by, by just, I'll just gonna say listening. We ask lots of questions and sometimes clients will get a little frustrated because they'll say, well, where's the design? Why is it not? And, but it's like, we really want to understand you. And I think that that's critical. But the other thing we do is is we often put out all these different options and scenario test things. And we find that by giving people different options, we can start to understand deeper what they really need.

Right.

That's some, and it's, it's interesting to suggest that once you, the emotional side of that, like, how do you validate the emotional side first and get, you know, get it out and talk about it. And how can you use that as just a way of, you know, just leveraging cooperative effort moving forward?

Extremely powerful. The, I could see in your process where you could engage a client, for example, supposing you're in a situation where you, you've done your first round of different design, you know, sketched out design ideas and you start asking them, describe for me what you feel when you see this. You look at this design, describe for me, tell me what it feels like to look at this. Tell me what it feels like. Describe for me what you feel when you see this.

And then you validate.

I'll see you. You're feeling a little anxious, you're feeling a little concerned. This one, you get— you see potential, it's a little exciting, but you're— it's— you're still not— it's not quite right yet. And you can feel that there's some— something you— and you just do that process. Then they feel heard, right? Helps them. It helps them articulate what they are feeling.

Yeah.

Because once they can articulate what they're feeling, then you can dial in on, okay, so let's talk about What's the cause of this feeling?

Right, right. Oh, that, that, that, that is powerful. It's one we don't, we haven't done that, but we've done something recently where we try, we call it visual programming, where we'll give people really evocative images.

There you go.

I'll say things like, what do you want your office to be like? And we'll show them a picture of New York from above or a picture of Siena from above and all these different cities and, and, or a picture of a pasture and a mountain and a cave and like just, and it's, and it starts to get at a similar thing, an emotional thing about how, what do they want to feel when they're in the space. And, and then when you, when you really highlight that for them and say, hey, you really, you want to feel like I'm going to make it up. You want to feel like you're kind of in a cave and there you go. You want to be protected and focused and they immediately light right up and then you get this energy, which is so fun to be a part of.

'Oh yeah, no, that's really good what you're doing. That's exactly right.' And, you know, people feel like they're being listened to. They feel like they're being heard, even though you can't hear emotions. I have a— recently I've kind of worked on a new kind of way of thinking about this. I say abandon reason.

Right.

When you're working in relationship, abandon reason. And it's so interesting in the professions, whether it's law or architecture or medicine or engineering, We're all taught to reason, right? We've got all these critical thinking skills, problem-solving skills, technical skills that we've applied to our particular disciplines. But in relationship, none of those work. And so what I'm now telling people to do is to have strong business relationships and strong personal relationships. Abandon reason. Do not use any kind of reasoning skills in your relationships. Now, when you're doing your work to provide the service that you're providing, obviously you've got to go back to your technical expertise. But relationships are not based on reason. They're based on emotions.

Right. Right. It's, it, yeah, it's when you say abandon reason, it makes me wonder, is, is reason an emotion? I mean, I don't, you know, of sorts, you know, like, is it an intent to force?

It's a set of skills that we learn. You know, when you think about reasoning, reasoning is the process. It's a, it's a cognitive. Yeah.

It's being rational.

Information, analyzing information, applying critical thinking skills to that information to do one of 4 things, either learn or make decisions, solve a problem, or create a strategy. And that's what reasoning, that's what reasoning is. That's basic. That's what it's all about. And none of those have anything to do with relationship.

It's, yeah, that is interesting. It's, it has a lot, it does have a lot to do with the, um, you know, the work that we do. I mean, there's moments where we have to be highly rational. We have to be highly logical, have to explain, here's how things go together, right?

And you've got to do the detailed drawings, which, you know, I mean, obviously skill set involved in that. Not, not to mention the aesthetics of it all and the interior exterior look and how it's like— I mean, lots and lots and lots of technical considerations. But before you get there, you got to have the relationship with the client to understand because only the architect can translate the feelings into something substantive.

Right.

And that's really the art of architecture, is being able to do that, I think.

Oh, I, I think it's that and the ability to create those experiences. Um, you know, we use the word oftentimes that choreographing the experience, you know, we're not, we're not just creating form, we're actually shaping people's experiences. We, we mean, there are decisions that go into when you walk into a building, this is the first thing, and then you do this. I mean, that's,. And it can be thought about and it's important to think about it.

Right.

But you're building experience and at, at the highest level, you can do that in a way that starts to create emotions, you know, with, with design or starts to trigger emotions. You know, you can transform people's experience and transform their emotions. And when, to me, the most rewarding, the highest reward I've ever gotten in my profession is just to a client to say, something like the transformation that's happened here has made something possible I had no idea was possible.

Right. And you guys are able to do that because you listen.

Yeah, it's, it is, it is a critical thing. And it's, it's interesting because it's not something we learn in school. Meaning I spent 5 years in at Syracuse University and another couple years at UC Berkeley. And in none of those courses were there courses on listening. And what's interesting is you come out of school with a very idealistic idea of what an architect is. It's my ideas. It's, it's all about what I want. And it's a very idealistic approach to it. And then suddenly you're faced with a client who wants something different. And for some, they really struggle with that. But we're the artist, we're, we're the, we're the professional. They should just, they should listen to us. And we've always had it. No, it's the other way around. We need to listen to them. And what, what our real job is to, I think it's sort of like, I mean, what excites me the most is our job at its best is when there's terribly complex situations, it's just really helping guide a client through that and show them that there's actually a clear way through this. Right. And it's going to be— hopefully it's something that on the other end just transforms their experience.

Yeah. Yeah. That's got to be really satisfying when that happens.

It's the— to me, it's the ultimate. You know, we've— it's happened a few times in my career and I hope it happens a few more.

So you've got a pretty good size firm. How many people do you have?

We are just under 200 people right now. We have offices in San Francisco, LA, New York, D.C. Paris. We had an office in London, but not anymore. And, and, and those are our offices.

And how do you, as a CEO, and we've spent a long time talking about listening and how important it is, how do you create a culture of listening within, within an organization that is all over the United States and also in Europe?

Well, you know, one, one thing that I have done, and this actually came at, at the advice of, I, I spoke to a CEO of another architecture firm who, who had, you know, done— taken over the reins at about my same age and at the same, you know, that their firm was in a very similar spot. And he advised me that the very first thing I should do is actually go around and talk to the other, the other owners. We're a privately owned company. We have our principals in our company, our owners. And so the very first thing I did is I I went around and I spoke to every owner, every principal, and just listened to them about what do, what are their aspirations for the future of the firm? What do they want? And I try to do that if I can every year. But, but what, what came out of that was the, the ability to, I'll say, reshape our purpose and our values. And we did it in a way that we didn't, change anything. It was what we had before. We just put, we put words on it that resonated with us today. I really believe it, it sits on the foundation of our firm. Our firm has always been around every client is different, and therefore you have to approach every client with that understanding that they are unique and find out what makes them unique. That hasn't changed, but it's, it's really by listening to the people who are leading our company today you know, how do we put words that they can use, that they can go out in the world and they can use, and we're all speaking a common language and building our culture around our values.

And then how do you, how do you push that, those ideas down to your younger people? I see you got a whole bunch of younger people you're bringing along.

Yeah. Well, one of the things I, I, I wish I had, I had learned early, but was said to me when I first started studios, is to be really blunt and honest with the young people about how our business runs and what the lifeblood of our business is. I mean, the lifeblood of architecture or my business is my client relations. It, it, it is what makes us successful. And to— when there's someone new on the team, to actually take them aside and say, hey, this relationship is critical, and anything we do that builds that relationship is valuable. It is what feeds the business. Even if, if they're on the team and they're having interactions with the client, you know, to, to, it's their opportunity to build relationships that they'll take through their whole career. And they don't need to wait until they've moved up to a management or a senior level. They can do it right from day one. They can start building that career of relationships then. I mean, I wish when I was fresh out of school someone had opened that door for me. It took me, you know, it took me, you know, a while before that really opened up for me. And so I, I try hard to convey that to the youngest staff right now that, your future as a leader and listening to people starts now. And you build it now. Don't wait till you're 20 years from now to realize that.

And they obviously gravitate towards that because they see the success of the senior people.

Yeah. They gravitate towards that. And one of the things that we've done well here is we're very willing to give responsibility to people who are eager to take it. And it really presents opportunities. It did for me, and it has for a lot to get exposed to how to run a business, how to run a firm, how to deal with clients at a much younger age than I would have in other firms where I might have been departmentalized and had to work my way through departments. It's, it's a, we're a little bit flatter in our organization and that, that exposure to opportunities. Pretty critical to how we run.

So you've been at this for a while. What is it that gets you out of bed in the morning, gets you really excited?

Well, I, I think I, I think I alluded to it a little while ago. It's, it's complex problems. You know, it's, it's seeing things where people say this can't be done or this is not possible and just, just wanting to just, I, I have a stubbornness about, there's gotta, you know, creative mind. That's sort of that artistic side from my, my mother's side of the family. Like there's, there's a way, And if there's enough will, there's a way. And so it's, it's, it's really dealing with complex problems and situations. You know, it's, it's, you know, an example is I've recently had a client approach me and say, we're struggling because we have all these voices. We have 10 different stakeholders, and we're struggling to get some, some, some support behind that. How do you feel about that? And I just said, that excites me. You know, that, that to, to talk to these different voices, um, and be able to work on that. And, you know, I'll just say I view myself kind of as a guide, like to act as a guide, but get them to do it. I don't know if that makes sense. Like, sure, they have to find their— they have to be—

you're doing my job.

Yeah, they have to vocalize to me what they need. I, I can't force it down their throats, right?

No, you're exactly right. I mean, you're mediating and all these different voices and different ideas, stakeholder conflicts around what they want to do.. And the secret is finding out what are the underlying interests, needs, goals, and desires that each person has around which we can find common ground and start doing some planning.

Yeah.

And the gift is being able to take all of those different voices and they all see themselves as this and you this.

Yeah.

Getting into this, right?

It's very much like, and maybe the best example has been one of One of my, to date, one of my favorite projects has been, I, I was part of the renovation of California Berkeley Memorial Stadium. And that was a project where it needed a seismic retrofit, they, which they couldn't afford, but they also needed to modernize their facilities that they had no space for. And so every, every project we, every idea we came up with was, you can't do this because it's a historic building. You can't build a building in front of it because it's a historic building. You can't build a building here too far away because of the relationship of athletics and training. And one day I was working with this other designer from HNTB. We were two firm studios, and HNTB were working together. Fernando Vasquez. We're just sitting there and we're saying the building's a memorial to the World War I veterans. I mean, that's what it was built as. And they've given it no love and care for 80 years, and it's just a parking lot with fence. And we just said, what if we put the training center underground and put a plaza over the top that would act as a place to memorialize the people, but also on game day be an active— And it was in that moment of all of a sudden taking all these things that people said were impossible, dealing with 13 different head coaches who all wanted different things. And it was like, it's in this moment of this real simple solution that everyone just got behind. Everyone just said, that's the solution. And it's like, Those types of things just excite me.

Wow, good for you. Curious, you've been, you've been, you not only are you an architect and you have, you have your own clients and do have your own professional practice, but you're also running, uh, I think a pretty good-sized professional organization. What do you think it is that's unique about you that you bring to the table that makes it all work?

Um, I think one thing is, is I'm, well, I'm, I'm I have a passion for the firm. I have a passion for everyone in the firm. And it's really, I'll say I was very clear that one thing that I am passionate about is the future success of this firm, you know, beyond me, that the potential of our firm is in all of the people we have here. It's not me. I mean, I have some talent and I have some skill, but it's, I'm really excited about the people that we have that I'm working with on a day-to-day basis. And I see that they have, you know, if we can find a way to, you know, build what has been handed over to us by some really great founding partners, I think we can help them. I can help them, the next generation, propel this firm perpetually forwards and do bigger things. And I'm just excited about that.

So you see that you're excited about the firm and the future of the firm and the potential that you see.

Yeah.

People you bring along, and that gets you really, that gets you excited. And also, it's what it seems, again, based on your, your upbringing, service to others and artistic stuff, that here's an opportunity to serve by bringing the young people along.

Yeah, it's, it's being—

they may, they may not even be able to see that.

It's, it's something that I was, I've been fortunate through my career to have, I'll say good mentors. Sometimes they, they, they may have been a little bit hard for my liking, but I look back that they really changed, they, they changed the trajectory in my life, my career. I've been real fortunate to have really good mentors. And I think it's something that's critical in, in this profession, and my guess is any profession is is to find a mentor, be a mentor. It doesn't have to be someone you're working with. It could be someone in your profession. But it's important to be a guide to the next generation.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, one more question and I'll let you go. What's one thing about yourself, Mark, that we wouldn't know about unless you revealed it to us?

This is a hard one because I tend to wear my heart on my sleeves and I think anyone who works with me knows almost anything about me. I tell a lot of stories about my youth and my upbringing. But one thing that I think that a lot of people who don't know me well probably don't know, and I don't, is that, and this is related, it's a point of view about something we were just discussing about mentorship. I became a hockey coach 5, 6 years ago. And over the years, I've worked my way up through different levels of certification. I didn't grow up playing hockey. My son started playing. And, and it's, it's opened my eyes for a different way of where talent might come from, about where success might come from based on when you first what you foresee. And it, and part of this comes from USA Hockey. They have this program where a while ago they started, they asked this question, we have more people per capita than any other country that play, that, that, that, and potentially could start playing hockey at a young age. How come Canada and Finland and Norway put more people into the NHL than, than USA? And one of the things that they came back is they, they learned that These other countries, they don't really select on the highly talented people until much later in their hockey careers. And they try to let the most people develop for as long as possible because the person who's the star young may not be the star old. And so you've got to create the environment that keeps everyone moving along. And it's, it's sort of this idea of you don't really know where future talent might come from or future success might come from. And, and I'll just say over the last 5 years, it's really changed my thinking about how to work with people and be much more open-minded about, you know, where their value— that where there's hidden value that we haven't even realized because we're not, we're not listening to them. I mean, in some ways we're not really observing them or we're just probably judging them much too soon and not giving them the opportunities. And it's, you know, being a coach has totally changed my perception about what it means to be a leader. Wow.

Yeah. When you think about hockey, you don't think about people of color playing much hockey, and yet tremendous athletic ability out there that's untapped, or they're pushed into football or soccer or some other sport. Baseball.

That, you know, that's a real interesting story because last season we had this team And about November— our season starts in August and goes to March— about November, we had left this tournament that we couldn't make it into the championship game. And we were about a 50-50 team. We were winning half, maybe losing a little more than half. There's probably 4 or 5 Northern Europeans on this team. Everyone else is— African American, Asian, like, like all over the spectrum. We went into this tournament in January in Southern California, and at that tournament, there were some things said to some of the kids that were pretty, you know, a little bit, you know, racially slanted, and it really disturbed the kids. And as coaches, we, we were like, oh boy, we got to address this. What do we do? And the head coach, Leo is, he's, he's from Southern Russia and he comes from a very, um, very diverse part of Russia and he kind of got, got all the families together and all the kids together and he sort of sent an interesting message, which is like, this exists. We, we can't, we can't stop it. But what we can control is how do you, how do you as a team respond and how do you support each other, you know, in this moment? You know, how do you come, come around each other and with Leo and I, we started doing some visualization and we started doing some breathing techniques. We started doing some things with every game. We would start with breathing and getting the kids to talk about what they want to achieve and really like listen to each other like real as a group. And it, that team went on to win the NorCal Championships. Wow. And it was from that moment on, they lost one game. Like they went on a tear. And I think that moment sort of created a team in a way that I'd never seen gel, you know? And it was so fun to be a part of. It was so fun just to watch this group of kids go from, you know, winning every other game to all of a sudden, you know, there's moments where you're just like, no one's going to beat these guys. They're amazing.

Wow.

It was so fun to be a part of.

What a great story. And what a great way to end a great conversation. Yeah. Thank you, Mark, so much for your time today. It's been a great conversation.

Thank you. This is, I'm hoping, just the beginning of many conversations. This has been exciting.

Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnull.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag #ListeningWithLeaders.

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