Inclusive Leadership

STA is growing as a progressive design firm and looking to become a thought leader in our industry. Lately, I have found myself thinking a lot about the most effective way for the STA leadership team to move us forward. I have been asking myself, what are the important qualities of a good/effective leader and in a period of change and how can we as leaders promote this great design firm?  After all, I believe that two of a firms greatest assets are its reputation and its people. 

While looking at Continuing Ed classes at Boston’s ABX conference, I decided to take some seminars in business leadership.  The first one was called Leadership: Finding your Mojo. It was about the qualities that were key traits in being a good leader. Among them were traits like strong values, fairness, empathy, educator, mentor, inclusiveness and strong delegation skills without micro-management. Most of these traits I knew, but the topic of inclusiveness was most intriguing. The practice of including staff in more areas of running the business allows them to see that they are part of a larger whole, and that their opinions matter. Providing staff with responsibility places value on their roles and solidifies their importance as an asset to the team. 

The second seminar I attended was Building Shareholder Value and Ownership Transition. This seminar was about increasing the value of the company to position it for a sale. My intention is not to sell STA, rather explore effective transitioning skills. Interestingly enough one of the main points of this seminar was about making sure the leaders of a company include their employees in how the firm works and what it takes to make it successful and profitable.  There it is again, the idea of “inclusion” used as a method of building a stronger firm. 

In moving forward as part of the new STA I think that we need to endeavor to teach, mentor and include our people in the different aspects of leading our firm. This creates an atmosphere for the staff to be inquisitive and to stay involved.  We are an exceptional group of people and I feel that we have in front of us an incredible opportunity to develop a different kind of firm. A firm where innovative and thoughtful design based in research is part of our core.

-Tom