Date: October 4th, 2019
Location: Gensler – 2020 K Street NW, Washington DC, 20006
Led by: Caitlin Parker, AIA, LEED AP BD+C and Dawntaya Rodgers, AIASession Downloads: Session 01 PDF

The session began with a small do’s and don’ts about fundraising. The main focus of the presentation was to highlight how personal behaviors and the behaviors of others can be influential and improve collaborative relationships in the workplace. The two speakers and closing activities were organized to take an in depth look at each scholars leadership styles and how those styles fit into workplace dynamics. The scholars ended the session with a group activity by using their leadership and collaboration skills to solve an escape room.

The first part of session was led by Cable Clarke, President of Clarke Consulting in Washington, DC., which is an international consulting firm, founded in 1994. As a prerequisite to the session, each scholar filled out a Life Style Inventory assessment. The point of the assessment was to gain an insight to their individual relational styles and pinpoint their individual leadership strengths and weaknesses. Then Cable presented strategies and practical techniques for improving the effectiveness of their leadership styles to positively impact the culture of their firms. The presentations stressed the importance of understanding different dynamics, whether cultural, corporate, home, or interpersonal, and how to navigate them.

The second presentation was led by Robert Holzbach, Principal and Director of Staff Operations with Hickok Cole, a 100 person firm located in Georgetown. Robert presented methods and ideas for managing individual, team, firm, consultant, and client dynamics as well as constructive ways to help facilitate and encourage strong office collaboration and productivity.

The last activity of the session was an escape room. On the walk to the escape room, the scholars broke off into assigned pairs and discussed their Life Style Inventory results and ways they saw themselves working to improve on what they had learned from the assessment. Once they arrived to the escape room, the scholars worked together splitting themselves up in several teams to solve each of the different colored clues. The scholars exhibited their great teamwork and escaped the room with a little over 16 minutes left to spare, the best time of the month so far.