We talk nostalgically of the mentor relationships between notable masters and their apprentices, such as Bernard Maybeck and Julia Morgan, William Jenny and Louis Sullivan, Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson. While the mentors of Richard Meier, Michael Graves, Frank Gehry, and Thom Mayne are not yet well known or celebrated, these great architects had their own masters early in their careers, you can be sure.
Over the past few years, architects in California have discussed and debated the benefits of mentoring. While the proponents of mentoring have won the creation of the AIACC “Mentoring Program,” most AIA members remain focused on objective constraints, such as the marketplace, fees, and—as much as possible today—good design. We are talking the talk of mentoring but haven’t yet committed to walking the walk.
Since the late 1970s, the Intern Development Program (IDP) has traveled across the country, being adopted by state after state as a recognized mentoring program with a common structure to standardize nationwide the experiential skills of interns. In 2005, California jumps on the train as a commitment to its young architects that a culture of mentoring will prevail in this state. We can look towards mentors as educators, leaders, and partners in creating a future for the profession that ensures success and prosperity for all.
Identifying What We Do Best
Before we know how to be a proper mentor for the generations to come, before we can offer wisdom that will be appropriate and effective for our protégés, we must be sure we know where we are going as a profession and as individuals.
If our professional mission is to advance the art and science of building, then the skill sets needed are fairly straightforward. If our mission also includes strategic planning of integrated ensembles of buildings and business operations using principles of smart economic growth and sustainable materials to shape a built environment that is representative of a more inclusive social context, then many more diverse skill sets are needed.
In our never-ending search to strengthen our credibility as professionals, we have recently committed to strive for a synergy around a broader knowledge base. We have learned over the past few decades that alone we can’t be all things to all people in the complex and highly regulated design and construction process. Instead, motivated architects, through a new collaborative culture with more specialized individual skill sets, can create new leadership opportunities in the construction industry and the construction economy as well. Know more, be more, be the expert—or give in to others who will.
As “Thought Leaders,” architects can use these new skill sets to redirect the economy and public policy towards the contemporary priorities of livable communities, smart growth, and sustainability. Developing strategic alliances with others, we enhance the future opportunities for the architect to become not only a building design professional, but also an educator, politician, advocate, critic, and even “Development Strategist.”
We have already played many of these roles during our careers. Now each of us must ask what it is that we, individually, know best, and how can we offer it to a protégé, so that someday he or she may become a master of these skills. And we must ask, as well, the aspirations and goals of each protégé.
Defining Terms
As mature, experienced architects in leadership positions in our firms, we all believe that we are, to some extent, mentoring our young staff. Why, then, do so many of them say that we are not available or not approachable? Is it that we don’t have the time or that they’re not asking the right questions? It’s both. First, it is necessary to make a distinction between the historic Mentor/Protégé or Master/ Apprentice relationship and what has become the usual Advisor/Intern or Supervisor/Employee relationship. It is not just semantics; it is about commitment and relationships.
We all enjoy the opportunity to share advice or wisdom with our peers, our staff, and even our employers. These important exchanges can be construed as mentoring, but perhaps it would be wiser to distinguish between advising and mentoring, so as to strengthen the credibility and value of the latter. Both are important to the journey of an architect in his/her pursuit of lifelong learning and success. But the difference is about the level of commitment in the relationship between two individuals. Advising is a critical component of “on the job training” and daily growth. Mentoring is more; it connotes a commitment and a lasting career relationship between master and apprentice or mentor and protégé. The success of a mentorship program will be measured, not in day-to-day learning, but in the strength of the relationships made and how they reshape our profession. We shape our protégés, and afterwards our protégés shape us.
What Interns Want, What They Offer
So what do today’s protégés want, and what do they have to offer? What are students, interns, and young architects really thinking? Perhaps it is no one thing—having an accredited degree, or taking the state exams and getting licensed, getting a raise, paying back the enormous student loans, developing a meaningful relationship with a significant other, exercising, eating healthier, living longer, or being an active member of the X or Y-Generation. They have passion, focus, motivation, curiosity, compassion, concern, and righteousness, and they want it all.
The work ethic is there, but only to a point. They have been told that it is healthier to strive for a balance between life and work, to avoid divorce or burnout, and that is what many are doing. They want answers, experiential skill sets, more of their supervisor’s time, and more opportunity to design, to meet clients, and to be in the field during construction— and they want all these things to fit into an eight-hour workday. This is their contradiction, their weakness and their strength.
Many of us came up with graphite and erasing shields doing the job day or night till it was done. It is just not that way anymore. Being consummate architects with much time “on the boards,” how do we learn to achieve balance in our own lives? We can watch and learn from our protégés. Because mentoring is truly a two-way relationship, we are able to give what we know while we observe how to achieve balance between living and passion for one’s work. A protégé can bring us not merely exposure to highly useful technology skills, but a renewed joie de vivre, a balance of life.
Choosing
Remembering that good mentoring is about the benefits of a lasting relationship, it is important to choose one’s mentor well. Someone once said, “Mentors are like investment portfolios: diversify. Get different takes on a situation.” Accordingly, it is acceptable to have more than one true mentor, because we know that each of us possesses unique strengths and treasure troves of experience. And, if our protégés are to evolve into the power generation as thought leaders, they must create, as a part of their architectural experience, influential strategic alliances.
Looking at it from the other side, it is perfectly acceptable for a mentor to seek out and develop a relationship with a protégé who aspires to his or her own, unique ideals.
Looking Ahead
Our protégés are our future. We must invest the time and energy to mentor each other, to promote better design, construction, business, and policymaking skills, so that our profession can thrive and endure. As Ken L. Ross, Jr., FAIA, recently suggested in AIArchitect, “What if you do all this work with someone and they leave your firm? The only thing that could be worse than that was if they were never mentored, never learned, and stayed.”
So reach out and be an advisor to as many interns and young architects as you can, and share your unique knowledge. Have a true mentor/protégé relationship with a few, select, young, talented thought leaders who share your vision and ideals. Be a master to at least one apprentice.
Photo by Ragina Johnson.
Author Philip J. Bona, AIA, recently opened Wolf Lang Christopher Architects’ Emeryville, California, office. He led Silicon Valley’s Housing the Next One Million AIA Design Charrette and is past president of AIA San Mateo County. He is a member of the AIA National Mentorship Taskforce, the AIA National Livable Communities Committee, the AIACC Long Range Planning Committee, an AIACC CalcPac Trustee, a consultant to the AIACC Mentoring Committee, and an Alternate Director of the AIACC Board.
Originally published 1st quarter 2003, in arcCA 03.1, “Common Knowledge.”
