Inside Shive-Hattery's Leadership Development Program | Jennifer Bennett

Hello and welcome to the Smarter by Design podcast. I'm your host, Christopher Parsons, founder and CEO of Knowledge Architecture. Our guest today is Jennifer Bennett, president and CEO of Shive Hattery. And our topic is going deep inside Shive Hattery's leadership development program. So here's what I find interesting about Jennifer. She didn't think she actually had what it took to be a leader. As a structural engineer coming up at Shive Hattery, she assumed that leadership required this kind of natural charisma that she didn't have. But in 2007, she was invited to participate in the firm's leadership development program, and that changed her mind. So today she not only runs the leadership development program, she leads the firm. In this episode, Jennifer takes us inside how Shaib Hatteri's leadership development program actually works. Its cohort structure, the way that she uses the Socratic teaching method, the 5 curriculum pillars, including business and financial acumen and negotiation and high-performing teams and culture and values, emotional and social competence. She talks about the strategic capstone projects each cohort tackles over their 15 to 18 months together. She shares how she builds the trust that a cohort needs to succeed, and now how the program is evolving as she brings her executive team in to teach some of the modules, so that the firm can double how many future leaders it reaches each year. At its core, Shaiv Hattery's leadership development program isn't just about developing individual leaders. It's about teaching people to lead change in a way that's consistent with Shaiv Hattery's culture and to carry that culture forward as they rise through the firm. That's the bigger act of stewardship that she talks about. Shaiv Hattery is a firm with more than 125 years of history, and Jennifer sees investing in future leaders as central to how the firm sustains, evolves, and will grow for decades to come. Past leaders invested in her generation. Now it's her generation's turn to pay it forward. So if you lead an AEC firm or are thinking about what it takes to build a leadership culture and an enduring firm, this episode's for you. Okay, so Jennifer Bennett, president and CEO, Shive Hattery, on Inside Shiv Hattery's Leadership Development Program. Here we go. You are Jen Bennett, President and CEO of Shive Hattery. It's an architecture and engineering firm with over 700 people across 18 offices. You've led the firm since 2020. And the thing that I've noticed is that you're doing something very few CEOs in our industry are doing, or maybe any industry, is you're personally running your firm's leadership development program. And that's what I want to dig into today. But before we get there, if there's folks that aren't familiar, with Shive Hattery, how would you describe the firm? Kind of like the work, the culture. If you were talking about Shive Hattery at a barbecue or something like that, how would you tell people about the firm?

Sure. All right. Well, 50,000-foot high-level overview. As you said, we're around 700 people, 18 offices across the Midwest. We actually started in 1895 as a single-person civil engineering firm here in Cedar Rapids. Iowa and have grown. We grew mostly as an engineering firm for our first, really most of the first 100 years, added architecture in the '80s. And now today we consider ourselves big A, big E. We're about half architecture, interior design, landscape architecture, and half mechanical, electrical, structural, civil, land surveying. So a pretty good, well-balanced, integrated firm. We started and grew in the Midwest and over the last 5 years have been diversifying into different geographical markets. So from 5 or 6 offices to 18, and then work in a variety of different markets and, and primarily concentrated in commercial, industrial, public infrastructure, public buildings, and higher ed and healthcare.

How long have you been with the firm?

I started at Scheibhattery in 2003 as a structural engineer. That was my plan. That was my growth path. I really loved my clients, taking care of my clients, taking care of their projects, and had joined the firm knowing that this is a place where I could do that and do that with some autonomy. Mm-hmm. And that's when I started.

So how did you get from a structural engineer who just wanted to take care of clients and design projects to being the president and CEO?

I think honestly, fairly reluctantly, what we call people leadership, positional authority leadership, was not something I originally thought, number one, I'd be good at. Number two, I had the patience for. And number three, just really just didn't see it as something I would enjoy doing. That first turn from individual contributor to really leading a small group of people happened within a few years of me getting here. I did that very reluctantly, almost voluntold. We don't do that anymore. Into that, I am very achievement-oriented and threw myself into that thinking, I am not going to fail at this. At that point, I participated in our leadership development program run by our president, at the time it was two presidents ago, and threw myself into really growing. And what I found was that I really, really loved helping people develop and that my impact could be far greater multiplied in that. So that was my leadership journey. It started there. I think each position I've approached since then a little less reluctantly, but more planfully.

So there's so much there. So it sounds like the language you're using around the term from individual contributor to people manager, that sounds like it's coming from a leadership pipeline. Book. Is that right?

Yes, yes, we do.

We'll get there later. Okay, that sounds— that sounded familiar to me. What, what did you— when you got voluntold that you were gonna move away from being an individual contributor, what was the part that you didn't think that you would be good at slash didn't want to do? And how did you get convinced that that wasn't— or did you get convinced that wasn't true, or do you still kind of feeling nervous about whatever that was?

Ah, no, I, you know, that's a great question. I think our leadership development program really opened my eyes. I think I came into leadership thinking, you know, you need a certain level of charisma and influence and really saw my role as a more boots on the ground partnership relationship role with our clients. So, Our LDP, I'm going to call it LDP just for brevity, really helped me help open my eyes to that.

Is what you're saying there was a model of what a leader looks like in your head and you didn't—

In my head.

And you didn't feel like you matched that kind of— Yeah.

Yeah. So I really prioritize quality of life and really enjoyed the role I had. So there's probably a little bit of a, do I want to do something I'm not sure, number one, I'm going to be good at and mess up a good thing here? A little personal growth.

So, so some of it was, am I charismatic enough? Do I have that kind of, kind of quote unquote natural born leader thing?

Yeah.

But then also, do I want to work as hard or give away as much of my life to work as it seems like I would have to as a leader?

Yes. To something that's more unknown. It's a personal risk-taking endeavor, right?

Do you— so I'm inferring this, that you now believe that you can't— there are different types of people who can lead that have different types of styles. And yes, do you still have personal life? Do you still have a balance in your life as a leader?

I do. I do.

Let's talk about different types of people who can be leaders and kind of like, how did you— how did that door get opened for you? Did you meet somebody through the program who led in a different way? Did you read about something? Like, how did you start figuring out that you could have a different style than the one that had been in your head going into it?

Hmm. I think it was the idea that, and we'll talk about this probably as the program goes on, but emotional competence, emotional intelligence, very eye-opening for me. Just the, the understanding that leadership, good leadership can be learned, that that's a journey that we can all decide to go on. It isn't some natural, necessarily some natural innate ability that some are born with and some are not. That if the heart and mind are willing, that good leadership can be learned.

What is good leadership?

Oh, I don't know if that is—

Sorry, we're not going to warm up at all. We're just going to get right into it.

Oh, I think it's complex. I think our emotional competency, emotional intelligence journey is a great part of being a great leader. Learning to really listen to, at least in our culture and our organization here in Cheyenne Hatteray, to lead through strong relationship building, primarily use that method. Yes, there are many different leadership styles. I think one of the things we need to learn in our leadership journey is how to pull out, how to keep the, however many leadership styles you subscribe to. Daniel Goleman, for example, uses 6. Keep those all in your tool chest. Be able to pull them out. But I believe the one that works here and most professional service firms are like an affiliative relationship-based leadership style that can be learned. It takes time. It takes a lot of one-on-one time.

Did you feel like you had some of that and you didn't realize that that was like leadership building blocks? Or did you have to really develop a bunch of new skills?

So I believe that one is my natural leadership style. So it comes easy to me. That one, democratic, sometimes pace-setting. I can use that one a little too often. It comes very naturally to me.

Wait, hold on for that one. What does it mean to use pace-setting too often?

That is, let's get moving. Let's strive. Setting schedules, just keeping the pace of movement.

It means it's too fast for the firm's metabolism or you haven't brought people along enough before you kind of set a tempo? That one.

That one. Exactly. That's where I can err pretty easily. Mm-hmm.

What, what does it mean to lead a firm of 750 people that's big A, big E? What's, what's uniquely hard about that, do you think?

I don't know that there's any difficulty, at least in this point, at leading a firm that's big A, big E. I think the challenge comes today through, we're relatively fast growing. We are expanding our locations. So the challenge today comes in connectivity and keeping a one-firm feel and just the travel required to really do that effectively when we bring on a, whether it's a completely new warm start or a new firm by acquisition. Onboarding into our culture, helping them feel very soon that it's us and we and not us and them.

Yeah.

So that's a, you know, that's a big, that's a challenge.

I'm glad. Okay. That's great. That let's, let's use that context. Thank you for, for diving right in as a way to kind of talk about the leadership development program and maybe we can just start with how it works. Today? What is this thing? Yes, that you've been doing.

Okay, so our leadership development program, just, I'll go over the mechanics of it. It is a 15 to 18 month long program. We meet quarterly. Today I lead every session. So we meet quarterly in one of our offices. We rotate around our offices usually, and we try and pick offices that the cohort is, are in. So somebody, at least one person doesn't have to travel during that session. And we meet for 2 days at a time. We, in advance, read 2 to 3 books ahead of the session. I, I produce some questions that I send out a month or 2 in advance of the time we meet, just thought-provoking questions. We use it during our time together as a framework for getting discussion going. So then we'll discuss, we'll discuss the books that we read together and discuss how they apply to Shrebhatori, things that we aren't doing that maybe the author suggests. You know, some of the books we read are thought leadership pieces, which are great. You know, pick up a thought, chew it up together, examine it from every perspective, decide what fits, what doesn't fit for us, and move on. It's an interesting and very effective way I've found to really look at our culture of leadership, which is really what ends up being the culture of the firm. So it's a great way to preserve and drive your firm culture.

This is 10 to 12 people per cohort, something like that?

It's 10 to 12 people per cohort, yes. And I have been running recently, one per quarter, or actually, 3 cohorts. Since we meet quarterly, it's 1 meeting per month for me. Yeah, for me. So I can get 3 cohorts going, which gets, you know, 30 people maybe through every year.

So essentially, 2 days a month.

Yes. Plus reading time and plenty of time thinking.

Are you talking about you or are you talking about the cohort members?

Me. Hopefully both.

Hopefully both, right? Yeah. So for 2 days, you talk about books?

Yes, talk about books and how they apply, talk about Cheikh Hatari. It ends up being a discussion.

Yeah, so if it's 3 books, something like that, you'll kind of like do the morning, you'll do book 1, in the afternoon you'll do book 2, and day 2.

Yeah, yeah, yes.

Do you do that all as a large group? Do you break into small groups? Like, how do you, how do you navigate?

We do not break into small groups. I will say we have begun, so our past president introduced a leadership project, a project that the class would work on together and then present on at the end of the class to a board, which was our president. Today we do a class project together. They get it on their first meeting day and they present on their last meeting day. It's usually something out of our strategic plan, a real life issue at Shive Hattery that we want them to apply what they're learning to and then present a, as if they were the CEO, how would they solve this too? And they present to our senior leadership team. Past president would use a Harvard Business type problem situation, which was also very effective, but we've got all these great minds in the room. Why not work on one of our own internal issues? Sure. Yeah.

So you can have 3 of those projects going concurrently.

Yep. And they do do some small groups sometimes and they're working on that project on their on the side, they do break into small groups for that. But for our 2 days together, nope, it's all, all together.

Are they working on that project outside of the quarterly meetings too?

Yeah.

So how do you start? What is, what does meeting 1 look like?

Okay, so meeting 1 starts with the history of the program, why we do it, why it's important to Shive Hattery. We talk about management versus leadership. This is not a management program. This is not a program on how we run the firm. This is not a program on measuring our KPIs and how to push on what number to, to get a result we want. It's, it's really about leadership, how to create and lead change at any level in our organization. This is not a program for only people with positional authority. People in our leadership program come from all walks. They may start and finish their career here as client leaders or technical experts or certainly people with positional authority. We really don't value one type of leadership hat over another at Shave Hattery. We need them all to be healthy and resilient and so So that's what we do. We teach, we teach how to effectively lead change in our organization while preserving our culture at Cheyenne Pattery. So we talk about that, why they were chosen for the class, and then there's a promise that by agreeing to participate in this, you have agreed to prepare, prepare, prepare, read or listen to your reading assignments. Think about the questions, come prepared to discuss. This is not, you're going to come and listen to Jen talk for 2 days. I do actually do very little talking. I ask questions. And if they start to go kind of off, I'll ask another question. It really is teaching through the Socratic method, you know, and it works really well. People prepare and read their information and then come together to discuss what they're reading and with some guiding questions, it is just a really powerful way to discover and grow.

Have you given them the idea that, or some questions to think about how to apply that reading to Shive Hattery in advance?

Yes.

Or is, okay.

The questions are really tailored to how does this, okay, this person said this, do you agree? If so, how does it apply to Scheipat? Right there, that kind of flavor really tailored around our firm.

Can we get an example of a book that you have taught multiple times and the kind of questions you might ask them to think about?

Hmm. Day 1, we almost always read The Advantage for session 1. Advantage, Patrick Lencioni. Yes. He has a concept in there. He introduces the first team concept. And First Team applies to multiple levels of the organization. It's the concept that your first team is the team you're on, not the one you lead. And to really have a truly healthy organization, your alignment and loyalty, if you will, needs to be to the team that you're on. We cannot have leadership teams that come together and discuss something as a leadership team and then go back to their individual teams that they lead and say, okay, this is what we discussed as a leadership team, but we're gonna do this, or have some other message that, that team, the team you're on, one of the rules for participation is an agreement that, hey, we might not, we are going to disagree. We are going to get that out on the, out on the table, and eventually we need to align. Around a decision, even if we are still in disagreement with that decision, we're going to align as a team. And I think that is one where I might ask, you know, what's the first team? Who's the first team at Shive Hattery? Often I'll get, well, it's our senior leadership team. And then we are able to talk about their individual roles and the teams that they're on and what that means in their role.

So if I'm the marketing director, for example, my first team is which is the kind of—

The team I lead, right?

The team you lead.

Yes.

Yes. And so my fidelity has to be to that leadership team so that when I go back to marketing, we're all like, they're hearing the same message that HR is hearing and that IT is hearing. And yeah.

Yes. And we're not building silos in our own team. Does that make sense?

It does.

It's been really important for us. It's a really important concept as we grow. But that's one example that maybe takes an idea that's easy to visualize at the top of an organization and it takes a little effort to get it down into how does that apply to me in my role as a leadership development program participant.

What are the kind of things that people learn about through this program about the company that they didn't know coming in? Because the way you described it is people are coming from all across different levels within the organization and different teams. What does this do for them in terms of helping them learn how Shive Hattery operates?

I did do a deep dive into our culture. This is my third firm that I worked at, and when I came here, there was a noticeable difference. In how we lead, the autonomy that we, that is provided to our staff to make their own decisions, to create their own career path. And it is a bit, it can be a bit of a culture shock for somebody that comes from maybe a top-down organization or an organization that puts a very, very ultimate value on people that bring in work. This is a very different culture here. And it was quietly and through a period of time in LDP that eventually I thought, I get it. I connected.

Through taking LDP or through teaching LDP?

When I took it in 2007.

Yeah.

You know, I had been here 4 years and knew enough to know that this This is different. I'm not sure it impacts me very much because I'm off here doing my own thing. But this is different. And I, I didn't understand it until I made the connection through time in LDP that I get it now. I get the culture and I get why this is important to the long-term health and of our, our company and why it is, why this is a great place to to grow my career. And I didn't— prior to that, this was probably more a career/job, right? It's give and take.

You didn't know that this was your kind of forever home when you—

at that point, right? Yes. Like, this is it. And this is why we are the way we are. And this is why we do things a little differently. It all started clicking into place. So it's maybe a little hard to understand, but that was the big light bulb. Moment for me.

Do you feel like once you had that light bulb moment, it would be— so that took you 4 years to get to that insight. Do you think you could get, or have been able to get, other people to that light bulb moment faster without going through LDP? Or do you think it takes going through this like deep immersion with potential leaders to get to that?

No, I think it's— well, I'll answer that two ways. I think it's very easy to, it's easier to onboard a brand new, never been in the workplace, never been in a professional service firm workplace, new grad, and have them get it than it is for somebody like me who spent some time in two other firms with very different cultures, very similar to each other, but thought that, I mean, that's the way I learned. I went from. Coming out of school to this is how engineering firms run, the engineering, and this is, this is how you are successful at an engineering firm. And I needed to relearn some of that, and I didn't quite understand why until, until the leadership development program. So I do think we do prioritize if somebody's coming in with some experience and are likely to be a leader somewhere in our organization of any kind to prioritize that. So we'll put a priority on, you know, new acquisitions and getting enough of that culture.

By prioritizing that, I'm assuming you mean prioritize getting them into a cohort as soon as you can.

Yes. Yes.

I was gonna ask you about how cohort selection works. So that's great. So we know that there is a slight bias towards if this person has been in another culture and learned another way of doing things, we want to get them into the Shive Hattery way as soon as We can. How else do you pick? Like, how do you get the 10 to 12?

Okay, that's great. They are nominated by their leaders to our leadership development program. So a nomination goes in and then a little bit about them, why they are nominated, and that's all from their leader, why this program would be good for them, where they're at. You know, I can look up all the demographics and then I get to really kind of craft these cohorts. There's a little bit of art to them. There's a little bit of matchmaking. There's a little bit of trying to group people that maybe need time on a, maybe there's a group of people that really needs time on, maybe they are brand new positional authority leaders, like they've made that first turn recently or will soon, and we'll spend more time on coaching, on mentoring, on one-on-ones. So we'll craft, craft those by role. And then I look for diversity. And one of the things we look for is the relationship building across the cohort. It's an incredibly powerful team that forms, that usually sticks together after, long after their class ends. But so try and build that from across the organization, different locations. And, but maybe similar roles so we can gear the content to be more relevant to what they're doing or what they may do soon in the future.

That makes sense. How far ahead do you plan out your cohorts? What's your backlog look like? And are there more— I'm assuming there's more nominations than there are slots. And so—

Oh, there are. Yeah, there are. So I start planning for the new cohort about 6 months in advance because I want the invitation to go out 4 or 5 months in advance of when we might start because it is a time commitment. They have the ability to say no. Yes, absolutely. I lay out the time commitment and not to participate if, if you just really can't commit the time. And, and some, sometimes people take us up on that. Usually one in every cohort, I'll have one say, you know, I just had a new baby or there's stuff going on and I just cannot. Whatever's going on on my, you know, with my clients, I cannot pick this up now. Please ask me later. Nobody ever says, no, not interested. But I do get a, can you ask me again later when I have more time to commit to this? So I do like those invitations to go out 4 or 5 months in advance and give them a, a month or so to consider and then look to book the first meeting time 3 months in advance. These are very busy people. It is a very difficult group to schedule if I get any, any closer, closer than that.

Do they have any kind of applic— is there any kind of responsibility on their end to apply and say why they want to do it? Or is this literally, we picked you, we want you to do this, here's the time commitment, are you in? Yeah. Is there any part of them that's kind of closing you on that they're a good candidate?

It goes both ways. Yeah, it goes both ways. I get asked about it all the time and then I will follow up with with their leader and say, hey, is this a good candidate now? Not now, wait a little bit. What do you want them to work on? And just ask. So certainly people can ask and I will follow up on that. I can't with today, 24 to 36 people going through every year.

Yeah.

Can't get everybody in, but.

Yep. The 5 topics. So this is what I have in my notes. Tell me if I've got it wrong. Introduction to leadership. Business acumen and financials, building high-performance teams, culture and values, and ESG and crucial conversations. We kind of touched on introduction to leadership a little bit. I'm interested about the business acumen and financials because on one hand you said, look, this isn't an operational program.

Yeah.

But on the other hand, there's this topic that's business acumen and financials. So how does that fit in— that topic fit into this leadership development program?

Sure. So our CFO joins us for half of this session, and we are really blessed with an amazing CFO who's not just all about the numbers, but we certainly, we share financials pretty widely in our firm. So he starts there. He starts, you know, this is what our financial statements look like. You've probably seen these either up on a screen or maybe you're in a position where you're getting them hard copy. He'll go through what everything is, but really that's a, that's a, it's not about here's what our metrics are and here's how, here's how utilization impacts the firm. It's really not about that. It's about, okay, but what do we do with this? What do we do as leaders with this information? If we see, I'm gonna use Utilization's an easy example. I hope we're, we're all moving away from, from hourly work, but it's such an easy example cuz it's a, it's, it's, it is really easy to manage utilization.

Mm-hmm.

Right? You get a report, you see utilization's going on, you tell people, hey, you need to be more chargeable. You'll get short-term impact on that. You can manage that number and improve the, improve the metric. But you're really not solving the problem by doing that. And you're probably creating additional problems by perhaps making people feel like they're measured by numbers or what does a new grad think when you say, hey, you've got to get your utilization up when they have no control over their workload or very little control over their workload. So it's really about, okay, so what, what should we do with that? How would it, you know, how would a firm that's looking more long-term than I need to do better next month. What is it? What is a long-term? How does that, how does this impact our long-term decision-making? So it's, it's more of that look. And, and he just, Jake just opens himself up for questions. It's really an ask Jake anything. And it gets into all kinds of things like what are we looking for in our employee owners, our shareholders? How we reinvest our profits in the firm to reinforce culture and create resiliency longer term. So just beyond the mechanics of business, financials, it's really, okay, we have all of this information. What should we do with it?

In order to lead change in Shive Hattery while also preserving the long-term culture, right?

Yes.

But the, yep. What this is the money piece in the, of that.

Yes. Yes.

Yep.

Exactly.

What books do you read as part of business acumen and financials?

Oh, there's been several. I am just test driving another one and I can't think of a, I can't think of it right now. It's written by, it's written by a CFO in, in AE and I just can't think of her name right now. We did read one called Financial Statement Statements. I'm not going to tell you who wrote that because we dropped it from our curriculum. It's just very dry. Instead, we, we don't do a lot of reading for Jake's part. We do a lot of definitions. So kind of defining what we mean when we're talking about gap, work in progress, the way we value our projects month to month. It's that kind of definition type, type stuff. And then we do Jake's session. I think on the business acumen, we also get into negotiations. So we may read two books that are favorites. You, you can negotiate anything or Getting to Yes. It's both of them are really centered around relationships. But in our industry, you know, we are not negotiating with terrorists. We are negotiating with clients. We're negotiating with each other. We're negotiating with people we want to be in relationship with. So it gives us a perspective on let's just make this about relationships and not winning whatever position that we're associating with. So we'll read one of those books. They both do a great job and give a lot of things to talk about.

What surprises people about the negotiation piece of this, the new people coming through the program?

I think People fear negotiations because they, whether it's maybe because what's taught out in the world today in negotiations is more positional negotiating that we must win. We must win our position. I think it's what's eye-opening is, hey, this is just an extension of the relationships that we already have. And part of, you know, this isn't about winning. This is about finding a solution together and not winning our position. I'm not doing this justice right now, but I think that's eye-opening. It takes the fear out of, oh, hey, I know how to talk to my client. I know how to talk to people I work with. This is just a continuation of that conversation and not they may feel like they have to play hardball or to like win at all costs. And it kind of takes that off. Both books do a great job giving, you know, some scenarios and techniques and just start to make that a little easier. And eye-opening that, you know, we negotiate every day with— when stakes are low and when stakes are high. Every single one of us negotiates at home, at the office. Yes. Yes. And it's Something we can all work on and get better at.

Where did you, like when you went through LDP, did you, was this part of your program too?

No, that negotiation, no. No.

Yep. Did you add it?

It's not, it's, I did.

Yeah, why'd you add it?

I did in that, but that came out of a, so we assess our leadership pipeline and just every year to make sure it's healthy. And part of that is, okay, Now we've got who we think are our potential positional authority, at least replacement people who are next, you know, who might our next president, who might our next COO be, who might our next group leaders or studio leaders be. And then to assess their skills and negotiation was one that came up quite frequently as, hey, this person needs to focus more on negotiation. And we just realized it was a gap in our leadership development program, so we added it.

So interesting. How do you know somebody needs to focus on negotiation? Like, how does that show up?

If, well, if they don't push back on clients, you know, if we see maybe some not great contracts start to pop up and there's things in there that just really shouldn't be in there and Or, uh, uh, you know, I think you just get a sense as you're talking one-on-one to an employee, you know, how much pushback they're giving on, on, on some of the negotiations that we're, we're getting to every day, or how comfortable they are talking to a client about something difficult.

They ask someone to do it for them instead of doing it themselves or something like that. Yeah.

Yes.

That's so interesting. So correct me if I'm wrong, but what I think I just heard is, so in your, in Jen's mind, we've got kind of future of the firm, like at all levels, like what does the bench depth chart kind of like look like? Who's gonna fill these roles over time? They're kind of in, in aggregate strengths and weaknesses. Then you're trying to bucket them into cohorts that maybe have some similar struggles and challenges and then customize the curriculum in each one of these cohorts in order to kind of plug those holes. Am I close?

Yes, I think you're close. And when I say customized curriculum, the basics are pretty consistent. It's just we might emphasize one more than the other depending on the perceived skill sets in the group already.

Fair. Let's talk about building high-performance teams. What's a high-performance team?

Ah, okay. So, We read, we do that.

I'm trying to get a mini learning development, leadership development program for myself in here. I'm doing, I'm—

Well, a high-performing team trusts each other. They have relationship with each other and they trust. Trust is not, we start with trust, right? We don't earn it. It's something that you can whittle away at, but high-performing teams trust each other. They have no fear. Of conflict. And I'm not talking about the conflict where two people are getting up and beating their chests conflict. I'm— a high-performing team is a team where everyone around the table is comfortable sharing ideas, is comfortable questioning ideas, and is comfortable discussing— is vulnerable with each other and is comfortable discussing things that they disagree with. And But in order to do that, the foundation really is that relationship, that I can tell Nate that I don't agree with that because I know that he trusts me, trusts my motivation, and trusts where I'm coming from. So high-performing teams, I think that bottom foundation is relationship, trust, and then not having a fear of conflict with each other. And then it subscribe to the Five Dysfunctions of a Team.

Yeah, another Lencioni situation here.

Yes, yes, we, I promise you though, the LDP program isn't all Lencioni, but those are two books that are frequent flyers.

How, just if we can say that for a minute, 'cause I mean, the idea is that these folks are gonna take these ideas and take them back to their team. They're probably, many of them belong to more than one team. So if it's a new team that hasn't worked together before, How do they become, like, how do you build that relationship and that trust on a new team?

Well, we model that on day 1 of LDP in that we kind of attempt to strip off our surface that we can all put on and really get into, okay, this is who I am, this is what made me, and I start that. So we spend probably most of our first day on long introductions, kind of our background. And I go back, most people go back to their childhood. And the goal is to really get at what drives you, what makes you you, what gives you the perspective that you have. It's absolutely fascinating and it's vulnerable. And there's usually—

What you're afraid of. You know, like, yeah, things you've had to overcome, like all that kind of stuff. Yeah.

Yes. And I model that by, you know, just modeling the vulnerability myself that, you know, this is what I struggle with. This is why. And, you know, talk about my own leadership journey and what I'm still learning. And then we go around the table and bye. And then we have dinner together after every day one. It is incredible how—

It's an emotional day.

Yes, it is incredibly emotional.

Yeah.

But it just cements the team together. So it's a good example of what we can do in any new team and maybe not to that extent, but hey, before we start off on this new project, let's just get to know each other a little bit.

That's great. I mean, now I know why you start with The Advantage in the course. For people that haven't read it, this is an exercise that our leadership team actually went through that book together and we read it together and implemented actually that about that whole process. And we spent, we did that whole thing. I think it's 4 hours, right? Where you go through that thing that you just described. And it's eye-opening for people. I've learned things about people I work side by side with for a long time, you know, including my brother who's in the company that I had never heard before by going through that process.

It is amazing. It is amazing. Yeah.

Culture and values. This is, is this specifically Shibe Hattery culture and values and how that applies, or is it kind of culture and setting values more at large?

Both.

Okay.

Both. We get a lot. It's, it would be impossible to separate the culture and value discussion from our culture and values. Yeah. But the books we read, the books we read really do support the culture that we work really hard to grow and maintain through our growth. And that is, we talked about it a little bit already, but the autonomy that we're offered here, that we put a lot of trust in people. We treat, we give, we agree. I'm just going to talk about our people values for a brief moment, if you will. These are, we have people values and I can't take credit for these. The leadership team many generations ago I think these have been our people values for 40 years. They are timeless people values, and they are an agreement on how we're going to treat each other in our firm. And, and it's really around the idea that, hey, we, we need to create a great workplace for each other, and how we treat each other is such a big important part of that. We spend more time together often than we do with our families. And we have to have some ground rules on how we treat each other. So these are our people values. They really, you know, they overflow into our clients, but the idea is really starts internally. We are going to treat each other with uncompromising truth. We are going to lavish trust on each other. We're going to start with full trust buckets, not my trust is something you have to earn. We mentor unselfishly. We are a learning and teaching organization. This has been one of our core values for 40 years. In many firms, knowledge is power. If you have knowledge, you have the power, and it inadvertently creates this knowledge hoarding culture. In our firm, mentorship, teaching, that's the power. That's what gets recognized. That's what gets the added value. At Shai Dah Hatere, it's not the knowledge hoarding. It's It's one of the things that, you know, will get you on a performance improvement plan for sure.

So let me just drill down on that because that's obviously— now you're in a subject area for me where I could— yes, we could just go sideways for a while. But just at a high level, what I think I heard you just say is if you are— if we're either A, knowledge hoarding, or B, not mentoring and teaching, and you are in kind of a role where you should be, that's the kind of thing Like we, we not only say that you should do it, but like we'll track that and make sure that you're doing it.

Absolutely.

Okay.

We track it and we, if it's not happening, we deal with it. And it's really not if you're in a position where you should be doing this, it's a, this is, hey, this is a shared agreement across the firm. Everybody should be mentoring somebody and everybody should be sharing their knowledge. Even somebody that's one week in has something to teach somebody. And it's really around the, you know, yes, creating a great work environment, but we cannot move on and grow in our own careers if we're not teaching somebody else to do what we're doing today. We're going to get stuck or we're just going to end up adding hats on to our current role and we're going to burn out. So it's a, we, it's It's a very important people value for us. They all are, but being receptive to new ideas regardless of their origin, taking personal risks for the good of others and for the good of the company. Sticking our necks out there a little bit. Yes, Jen, you never thought of being a people leader before, but maybe you should stick your neck out.

But your company needs you.

Yes, yes. Stick your neck out there a little bit and try it. It's okay. If it fails, if it doesn't work, but take a little bit of personal risk, learn something new, try something that you didn't think you might want to, you know, take advantage of an opportunity that's before you, even if you think it might be.

That sounds interesting.

Yeah. Giving credit where it's due. Mm-hmm. It goes along with recognition. Again, being honest in all dealings is a little different than truth and trust, but Being honest in all our dealings, integrity basically. And then putting the interests of others above ourselves. So those are our people values. Our leadership development program's really built around those as central to our culture.

And getting into examples of like probably you personally, but then others when they've seen that, not seen that from themselves, from other people.

Right. Yeah.

What if you had to guess, what are the 3 words that you use the most in the learning ship? Leadership development program?

Well, I talk about it a lot as a journey because it is. It can be eye-opening for people.

Becoming a leader is a journey?

Yeah. Yes. Leadership, learning leadership, learning to be a great leader is a journey. It is not a path that we— really doesn't have an end, right? There's no, aha, I've arrived. I've learned all I I need to learn, uh, uh, that this is a journey. So we talk about that a lot. We talk about, uh, delegation and teaching a lot.

Mm-hmm.

Because I think what holds people back most often is just not knowing how to delegate effectively, uh, with providing still the safety net for the person that you're delegating to and the firm. And accountability, you know, how to let go.

I don't want to be accountable for somebody else's work. If I let go of it, it's easier to do myself. It's easier to do myself.

It takes more time to teach, train.

Yeah.

All of these things that we use as excuses to not take the time to teach somebody else how to do something. And really that stifles our own personal growth, especially our personal leadership journey.

Have you had people go through the program and realize that they actually don't want to be a leader and they want to be an individual contributor? Or would that have been caught kind of before they get in? I'm thinking like some people might hear that and be like, yeah, but I actually like the opposite of what happened with you. I actually do want to be a structural engineer. I actually like doing the engineering work. I don't want to have success through others. This is what I want to do.

Yeah. Yes, definitely. And, and this leadership development program for us is not about developing people with positional authority. It is more generic. So my response to that would be, that's great. You still need to lead in your position as structural engineer in Cheyenne Battery. There will be a time where you'll be called on to lead something. It might be, it might be a client project, right? You can use these skills in anything. It might be a client project. It might be something that you, you maybe the structural engineering group does the discipline.

Some kind of new standard and they want you to lead.

Yes, absolutely. This is really about how to lead change. And it is, it isn't, although we have groups that have positional authority and we might tailor some content to that, this is really about just raw leadership and not the mechanics of leading people.

I'm going to follow that thread a little bit. So then if everybody in Jive Hattery at some point might be leading. It'd be better if they knew what it was to be a leader. At what point is this a universal skill you're trying to teach the whole company versus getting to 36 people a year or something like that?

That's a great question. I, I have heard— I haven't seen any data on this, there's probably out there, maybe— but somewhere between cultural change happens when 15 to 25% of of your firm are on board, you can grow and maintain a culture if it's, you know, in 15 to 25% of your firm already. Mm-hmm. I think there's some truth to that, that as we on board and grow people, that we model what leadership, and we model leadership and how to lead change at all different levels. We model some of these skills, emotional intelligence, emotional confidence. They've become so ingrained in culture that people decide, experienced people coming in decide whether they're going to fit or not fit pretty quickly. And for new grads, it becomes part of their just learning journey in the culture of a firm and what it means to be consultant, architect, or engineer, or whatever. So what we find is when we bring in a new grad and maybe they test the waters 5 or 6 years into their career, we often find that they boomerang back so quickly because of the difference in culture. So I don't think, to answer your question, I don't think you need to get every person through leadership development to have a huge, huge impact on the firm. And I think And now, many decades into this, we're seeing that.

So I think what you're saying is, let's say I've got a leader named Denise who's been through the program and she's great. And someone named Chad is on Denise's team. Chad kind of joins the company new, watches the way that Denise moves through the world and moves through the company and how she interacts and how she treats people. By the time Chad gets into a position where he may be leading he's probably ingested a lot of that and realized that that's just what, that's just what it means to work here. Is that how we, that's how we operate?

Yes. And there are pieces of this that we can put in, are putting in onboarding, smaller, you know, smaller chunks of the topics we cover in LDP, maybe just introductory cultural onboarding pieces that we, we bring into. And that'll You know, that all helps.

Yeah.

With the company culture.

As you were just telling that story, I love what you said about the 15 to 20%. I think there's some, I believe what you're saying is true also. I kind of had this visual running through my head of you running the leadership development program as putting logs in a fire that's an everlasting fire and you just want to keep it burning. That's the culture of the company.

Oh, okay. I see what you're saying. Yes. I think that's where it's at today.

Yeah.

That it is. We are in innovate and continuously improve mode on that, that we've got through work of past presidents. We have a phenomenal program. I feel like I was given this gift and that we have the responsibility today is, okay, what does the new generation need? And it's just a little bit of a, a little bit of adjustment.

Yeah, let's talk about that a little bit. I mean, I, I know I know one thing that you're gonna be doing differently, but that's kind of like going forward. When you took it over from Jim Lee, were there changes that you made immediately? Were there changes? I mean, I know that you added in the negotiation piece we talked about. Were there other things that you kind of, were they doing one at a time and now you're doing three at a time? What did you change about it?

It's a tough transition. I transitioned to president in 2020 and we of course were not doing in-person meetings for a while. We didn't restart LBP until, Maybe midway through 2021, I actually had, because during my transitionary time with Jim, our former president, the LDP program was just put on hold for a little while. So I actually had him come back in and help lead the cohorts that we re-picked up and restarted.

Yeah.

And then I, I participated in those with him, but he really took the, the leadership on those. I wanted to observe how he was doing them. Mm-hmm. So it created a better transition. What I observed, Jim liked to group cohorts by generation. He really thought you got good discussion. The people of a similar generation had some really good camaraderie and helped with team building, I think, and just kind of guide, uh, it was an easier discussion. I changed that right away. I, I love the different generational perspectives in LDP. So that is one thing I changed and went back to. Went back to, went more along roles and what people were dealing with day to day in their lives to generate topics of discussion and less about, you know, generations. So that's one thing. But I did not change much. I use a lot of, of course I'm reading new books, evaluating new books constantly, but we're still, you know, Leadership Pipeline's been part of our curriculum since I took LDP. It's an old book. It's still really great.

Yeah.

First Among Equals, written for the professional service firm, really talks about making that first turn from individual contributor to, okay, now you are, you are a leader. What does it mean to lead people?

Do you think that's the hardest turn? You've brought that one up multiple times.

It is the hardest turn because it's the one that requires significant behavioral change.

Such as?

Delegation, number one. So often, I think we observe this in many other companies and different types of companies. When you, as you grow in roles, you just keep adding hats on. You see it all the time. And it eventually stifles growth, stifles your opportunity, stifles your own personal growth plan journey.. And the time to learn that is really early. Mm-hmm. I believe it's in year 1, right? As you are— Yeah. A brand new architect or engineer, you teach the intern, you teach the intern, uh, what you know. But that is the hardest turn to make because it does require, okay, my job now is not all about projects and people managing teams, project teams and clients. It's about Helping people accomplish their own personal professional goals, right? Helping them chart a career path for themselves that can be successful for them and for us, and really getting to know them. It's just a different level of operating.

Well, right, and school and sports and anything else they've done and been rewarded for have not been that. They've been the individual contributor rewards.

Yeah, exactly. So I believe it's the hardest turn and it's the make or break turn.

It's an identity shift also for a person, right?

Yes.

Yeah. The fifth topic you do, ESGI and Crucial Conversations.

Yes.

For people that don't know what this is, maybe we can start there and then kind of—

ESGI.

ESGI.

Yeah, the ESGI. So this is the emotional and we We usually do this early on in just session 2 or session 3, just because it's so impactful. Emotional and social competence and intelligence. Daniel Goleman has a lot of work on this. He's really considered one of the thought leaders in this field. So I, I do rely on his work a lot. We've read a lot of different books. I have a preference right now for Primal Leadership.

Mm-hmm.

It gets a little bit into the science of the brain, which is good. I think there is maybe a tendency sometimes to think of emotion as some kind of woo-woo thing and not a science. Right. And our emotions are a science. Mm-hmm. And he starts to break that down a little bit in that book and then relate it to how we lead. In our own leadership journey and things we can work on. As part of that topic, ahead of the time where we discuss this learning journey on our emotional and social competence awareness, we do a 360 evaluation of that. When we're doing it for LDP, that is a very personal journey. We don't usually share their results with their, their immediate leader. They're theirs for their own development. We encourage them to share what they want to.

Do you share them with cohort though?

Everybody share what they want to share with the cohort. And, and we find that by that time they're very open and very vulnerable in what they share. And what comes out of that is we've got, you know, maybe 2 or 3 people that need to work on the same thing and they start to to connect on those. So it's, it's really good, but it measures just at a high level, self-awareness, your emotional self-awareness, your ability to, for self-management, or whether that's social competence, your adaptability, achievement orientation. Oh, can so get in the way. Positive outlook is super important. And then social awareness under that would be empathy, organizational awareness, and then relationship management. And I'm, I'm cheating. I'm looking at some notes here.

That's fair.

Coaching, mentorship, influence, inspirational leadership, conflict management, and teamwork. So these are all evaluated through a series of questions. We hire an independent company to come in and, and administer the, the 360, but both the person getting evaluated measures themself on these topics. And then we look, we encourage them to reach out to peers, mostly internal. I think internal is most effective. We put on our best face for our clients. Our coworkers see us all, right? Almost all. So peers and anybody in your, who's a manager or supervisor. And then to come together and kind of look at those.

Where are the places do you think that the biggest gaps, like patterns, because you've been doing this for, some years now, like patterns in our industry of like where people self-assess and where the 360 comes back and there's like gaps.

Yeah, this might be, this might be shy of Hattery or this might be professional services. I'm not sure because we tend to hire and retain people who fit our culture. Yeah. And because of that, we might see similar gaps because of that. And, and it, mm-hmm. Might just be related. But what I see common in a gap in how people measure themselves and how other people measure them is in influence. Hmm. I think a lot of people come into this thinking an influential person is gregarious. They are extroverted. They've got some polished way of speaking. They are charismatic, you know, these charismatic, polished, shiny people. And that's— it was eye-opening for me.

They are under—

in other words, they're underrating themselves, underrating their influence above where their peers and where their leaders put them.

Interesting.

This happened to me.

Yeah.

And it's eye-opening that influence, being able to influence somebody, does not require polish, charisma. It requires authenticity and listening. And relationship and meeting people where they're at. So it's one that we see often as a gap. And most often here we see people rating themselves lower than their peers and even their supervisors. Every once in a while we'll see something the other way. I'm like, whoa.

But we tend to attract kind of a humble crew into this industry. Yes, yes. Yeah.

Yeah, a lot of humility here.

So that's interesting. So with the implication of that, like that most people are maybe underrating themselves, especially in this area of influence. So then what do you talk about as a group? You know, what do you do with that information?

Yeah, well, it's, that's, that's a great question, Chris. I think it's, it's good to pick that up as a group and talk about it. And we can talk about people who are influential in our own lives, right? And the characteristics that they had. And does that match your, vision of a leader. And we're doing all of this reading about what leadership is and is not. And does that match?

Yeah.

Does what you're learning and reading match your perception of what leadership is?

Do you all read Good to Great as part of this program?

We have— I have read Good to Great. It's a great book, but we have not— I think that one It's getting a little dated and has examples.

Of companies that aren't so great anymore, right?

Yes, so many of these, and that's such a prevailing problem. John Kotter's book, "A Force for Change," used to be such a great leadership book, leading change book to read, and it's so outdated today with companies who were once great and made great decisions and then lost their way. So that's tough. Books become dated. I think "Good to Great"—

In there, I was thinking of the level 5 leader thing specifically from "Good to Great," which is I think what you're kind of describing is—

Yes.

Oftentimes they're not the people that are on Forbes magazine or, you know, right. Fortune or whatever. Yeah.

Right. Right.

The new Jim Collins book is pretty good. I just, I just read it last month. Which, so he's following, it's interesting. It's, he took 10 years to write it and he's following pairs of, he's got two, two scientists and two artists and two, whatever that kind of were peers at the same time and follows them through their lives. So tries to figure out what makes people successful over a long horizon of time that can keep the fire fire burning. It's really— I thought it was really, really interesting.

That one would be fascinating.

Yes.

I will put that on my read list.

There's a lot in there. This is great. I think like one thing that I just keep coming back to as we're talking is like, this feels— I'm trying not to ask this in a leading way. So the way I was about to do it was, okay, here's what I'm observing. I'm observing this is deeply important to you and you enjoy it. And It's, I think this is the part where I was gonna lead you, but it, it seems true that like you see this as a big investment in the future of the company. And so when people, do people inside or outside of Shive Hattery saying, Jen, how in the world are you spending 2 days a month on this thing as the CEO of this company? What do you say?

Uh, so I get that question and I get, how much money are you spending on this?

Fair.

Okay.

Yes.

And I think this is such a long-term investment in our culture and resiliency that I do believe this is a very important work of top leadership in the company. I believe now that we're decades into this, it's driving a lot of our success. That is the foundation that didn't immediately bear results. We started this in the mid-'90s. We didn't— see the kind of results we see today in 2000. This took some, this took some time and some effort to get through 12 people at a time to influence and impact and continue our culture. So I think it's, it is the work of leaders and the responsibility, especially for top leadership, to pass this on. So one of the things in our culture One of the things we focus on is this idea that Chey Pattery and who we are needs to exist for the next generation.

Yeah.

That the things that we love and admire about this firm, we are pouring ourselves into this next generation and building them up. We have, I'm gonna use the love word, we've got a lot of love in our organization. And with that comes some responsibility to pass on something pretty darn great. To them so that they have the same opportunity that my generation had. And that is starting to go away in our world. There's more emphasis. I wasn't going to go there. There's, but I am a little bit. I do not think all private equity is evil, but there is this thing in our happening to architecture and engineering right now where We are becoming very, very growth for growth's sake focused, right? Instead of growth so people have opportunity focused, it's really the financial end result, and it's having a huge impact on our cultures and how we're working. And eventually, I think it's impacting our clients and the service we're giving our clients and the communities. Impacting. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

And Part of the responsibility today, and this is not something Jim probably thought about or Tom Hayden, the president before him, is building a resilient firm that can still provide the same opportunities for our team, same autonomy, same ability to build your own career path, same ability to, hey, stick your neck out there and try something. It's okay if it doesn't work. It doesn't have to yield. We are not always chasing some short-term result or impact. Part of our responsibility is to chase long-term impact. And that takes a fortitude. It takes investment beyond our generation.

There's a book and it's along the idea lines of building an evergreen company. I don't think that's exactly the title by the founder of the Tugboat Institute. Which I think you would like, but I think the word you didn't say, but I think you're saying is also for Shive Hattery to stay independent, right?

Yes, we are pretty fiercely independent right now.

Right. And so in order to preserve the long-term sustainability, culture, and independence of the company, like this is the kind of investment we would make. If the idea is we're gonna get bought in 5 to 10 years, you may not be putting money and time and energy into a leadership development program.

Yeah, why would we do this?

Right. To that end, I know you've made some recent changes to the program and have some thoughts about making the program sustainable and to be able to evolve and grow. So what's next for the leadership development program?

Oh, okay, this is a big change for me. So we have grown quite a bit. When I became president in 2020, we were just under 400 people. We stayed pretty flat through '21. COVID, we anticipated a big growth year, but that year was pretty flat. Since then, we've been growing pretty steadily again. Now at the moment, I think we're 760 people, includes interns. This program isn't very scalable as it's currently structured, right? I am maxed out at 3 cohorts at a time, which means I'm touching 36 people at a time, and I'm with them for 15 15 months. Not very scalable. We need to, as we grow, this is so important, I believe, for our culture and all of the things we talked about, that we need to find a way to preserve this and still be able to reach 15 to 25% of our firm.

Yeah.

And that means that I can't do every session, every cohort. So we are starting in the Classes that actually start Monday and Tuesday, first cohort of next week. I'm, I'm kicking the class off. I'm doing session 1 and session 5.

Okay.

And then we've got different exec team leaders pairing off and doing sessions 2, 3, and 4.

Mm-hmm.

The thing that I, I am not looking forward to is I also through, the course of spending this much time with this group of people, get to know pretty intimately our leadership and those relationships. You see impacts. I see impacts from that years after graduation. So there's going to be a little bit less of a one-on-one connection. I have the fortune of spending day one with them when we, you know, do the getting to know each other exercise. And then session 5 where we're wrapping up.

And that's when they present their— is that when they present the project in session 5? Yes, when they do their capstone.

Session 5, capstone presentation. So the positives, I think, outweigh the negatives.

The positives for Shive Hattery, but for you, this is back to people values of sacrificing for the good of Shive Hattery.

Yes, I will get to know more, right? Maybe a little, not quite as deep level. It is incredible how that kind of connection can drive performance, who we reach out to when we need to lead certain change. You get to know certain people, but now I'm not going to be the only one with that knowledge that we'll have 6 other leaders that get a taste of who these people are, it will, I think, help drive better decisions on who we make owners and who we make leaders in different positions and who we ask to do certain things. Just, you know, another perspective on that. So I think benefits are probably going to outweigh any hesitation that I have.

How are you preparing folks to do this that are leading it?

So in our leadership team meetings, we are practicing. We're reading a book together and then discussing the same questions we discuss. I think what I had to practice, really practice learning, was not talking too much and really leading through teaching through discovery and not through—

Giving the answer. Yeah.

Yes. Getting really good at asking questions and then reframing the question or redirecting the question.

Yeah.

So we are practicing that. And then, you know, I have, I've gotten better at this over time and, and they will too, right? They're, they're trying something new and they can hold each other accountable as they're pairing off to do this and, and kind of watch and give each other some guidance on, on how they're, how they're directing or reframing.

So what's the new, if this work, and, and are you Are you all in that we're gonna do this or is this, we're gonna try it and see how it plays out?

No, I think we've gotta be all in on this. There is, we're, we're just at the side.

There's no plan B, right?

There's, well, plan B might be, plan B might be a cohort stays with a smaller group of leaders and I'm not involved in every cohort.

Yeah.

Maybe just some. And I'm hoping plan A works. Okay.

And then if plan A works, how many leaders per year are you getting through the program? As opposed to 36?

I think we could easily do 5 or 6 cohorts that way. Okay, great.

So you double your throughput to some degree. Yeah.

Yeah. That's great.

Have you had other CEOs or leaders at AEC firms ask you about this program, try and implement it? What do you, what do you end up telling them? What do you, where do you, if they ask you for advice, where is this gonna go wrong? How do I make this go right? What do you tell them?

I don't know that I can think of. I've had many leaders reach out for curriculum, for what we talk about, for the questions we ask. I don't know of any firm that's really implemented it quite like— it is a big, scary, big investment.

Yeah.

Right? You've gotta— I had the advantage of saying this. 3 generations in that I am benefiting. I don't have to make that initial investment. I just have to make the maintenance investment in it. But I am certain that Tom Hayden, when he did his first class, didn't see the results of that. He probably didn't see the best results of that in his presidency at Shave Hattery, that it was an investment in the future. And that is really hard to do today, especially given the whole private equity. Conversation and the growth pace. Even firms that aren't in private equity feel like they need to keep pace with the growth of the private equity firms. So it's really transforming the industry. I think making it a very difficult investment. I think it's easy for people to send, I think it's easy for firms to send people to leadership development training offered by, there's many consultants out there that will offer to train your leaders for you.

What do you like, what do you think about, why would you not do that if you're knowing what you know? What do you think the advantage of doing it internally is?

I think leadership is so tied to your individual firm culture that to disconnect those, you're going to end up with the mechanics of leadership, like the how-tos. You'll get probably the why one-on-ones are important and the how-to, but you won't get the connection to your firm culture. And how it impacts your firm culture and how you use that to create change in your firm. Your, you are, your firm leadership, our firm leadership needs to make that connection. So while I think mechanics can be really well trained, the, what I think is the most difficult part The special part, and it's individual and unique for every firm, is how that ties to our culture and how we're going to use what we're learning in our own individual cultures.

I love that. So Above the Waterline, we've been talking about the leadership development program, but I feel like there's this topic underneath that's been kind of building, which is how to build a long-term sustainable company and culture. And this is like an express— this is one of the tools in the toolkit for Shive Hattery of doing that. And the thing you just brought up about that being hard in this environment right now, and maybe this is outside of just the leadership development, but how is your team navigating that, like wanting to be a long-term reinvesting in the company, but also competing in a private equity space? What are your thoughts around that?

Oh, we have to continually remind ourselves why growth. What our why behind, behind growth, that our why isn't to be the biggest firm. It's not to compare ourselves to other firms. Our growth why is to provide opportunities for our people to grow so that they stay, so that they don't have to leave to find opportunity. Because usually when people leave, that's what they're leaving for. They're leaving for some opportunity that they could not get at least when they leave voluntarily, they're leaving for some opportunity that they couldn't get in our organization. And, and so that's our primary, that's our primary reason to grow. So we have to constantly remind ourselves in that. And then I think continually reminding and picking up our decisions and saying, is this good for the long term? Is this good for the long-term health of our organization. Is this the right term? Is this the right decision today? And will it be the right decision 5 years from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now? And those are harder to make. I think a good example of that is everything going on with AI right now.

Haven't heard of it.

No, no, none of us have heard of it. What are we going to invest in AI and what are we not? And we are doubling down on relationships, right? I think. Relationships were number one 50 years ago. They were number one today. They're number one today, and I think will be even more important 30 years from now as we've got technology kind of trying to push against that. We are humans and we are made to be in relationship with each other, and we are doubling down on that. So A lot of face-to-face things. This is face-to-face. This is not virtual.

The leadership development, meaning? Yes.

Yes. Right. Yeah. Those kind of investments, you know, where we're investing, we're investing in relationships while we're investing in certainly automation and AI of some things.

Right. That's been actually one of my pet theories for, 'cause I don't know that those things have to be mutually exclusive. I think there are ways to implement AI that free up time for people to spend more time mentoring, apprenticeship, more time with clients.

Yes, more time in the stuff we love. More time in the stuff we love. Creativity. Yeah. Yeah, it's actually a fun exercise to draw that line. Life of a project. What do you love? What do you not love?

Yeah.

Automate this.

Right. Is that, does that kind of thing, maybe this will be our last kind of question, but so as you've, you've been leading cohorts through this AI transition. And so how much do the kind of— and the PE transition also, right? And probably a couple other things that have gone on— tariffs. I mean, we can go on. How much COVID? But how much do those kind of issues of the day find their way into the leadership development program conversation versus how much you're trying to talk about evergreen principles of being leaders, if that makes sense?

Oh, it's both.

Yeah, right.

It's keeping the evergreen in mind while you're dealing with the day-to-day. And that is kind of the art. That's the whole art of leadership. So yes, we pick up all of those issues. And I don't know that we've talked about COVID in the last cohorts, but it was a big topic.

Yeah.

What was going on. Private equity is a big topic today as people learn about it, hear about it, want to know Shai Padre's position on it, why. Why we are the way we are.

People meaning like people going through the program. I've got the CFO and the CEO here. Like, now I get to ask my question, right?

Yes. Yeah. A lot of private equity discussion today.

Interesting. Well, Jennifer, thank you for being so generous with your time and sharing this. I think people will want to learn more about your program, and I hope, I hope we see this. We share a passion for wanting to see more AE firms find a way to stay independent and evergreen and build long-term. That is something that's really important. It's the kind of company we're trying to build. I feel like we have a very strong affinity for firms that are trying to do the same thing, and thank you for talking so openly about that and what you're building.

Yeah, I'm happy to share, so reach out if you'd like any more information on the, on the program.

Yep, is LinkedIn probably the best place to, to get in touch with you?

LinkedIn is great. I will I will have to put a note on my calendar to check it regularly.

That's hilarious. That's terrible. Okay, fair enough.

Fair enough.

Awesome. Well, thank you again, Jennifer.

Thank you, Christopher Parsons.

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