Having Challenging Conversations
Front page of the Having Challenging Conversations resource
A resource to change culture
The issues facing many students, and early career architects, in practice are not a secret. Misogyny, racism, homophobia – often overt, sometimes microaggressions – we hear about them all the time.
When people want to get on with their career, they can fear raising issues, and sometimes, practice leaders can be unaware of how their younger colleagues are being treated.
Schools and departments of Architecture don’t always have the skills to know how to manage these issues either.
So, how can we deal with these things?
Having Challenging Conversations is a free resource to help address the gap that exists between intention and impact, as well as helping to make people aware of their biases and behaviours.
The resource has frameworks for different kinds of conversations
A practical tool, full of great advice, it can be used by students, early career architects, practice members and educators.
I have wanted to bring out this resource for some time. I would have liked it to be officially endorsed and distributed by industry bodies, however, I felt it more useful to do so independently, sooner rather than later, in the hope it will be beneficial right now. We’re still at the start of the academic year, and as students build up towards going into practice, they can be using the techniques to template their responses ahead of that experience.
As I say in the document, there is no single answer to how to have challenging conversations well, but when you have nothing to help you, such challenges can go unchallenged, and that leads to other problems and frustrations.
The conversational frameworks provided are a guide, not an answer, and I recommend people seek to improve their overall emotional and cultural intelligence, mindful that leadership, as well as speaking up, requires vulnerability, so compassion should abound on all sides.
When challenging difficult cultures, it’s a guide not an answer
Anyone can use and download it; I just ask people stick to the parameters of the Creative Commons licence.
There will be more insight, guidance, and support around inclusive behaviours for the profession, in my book, the working title for which is, Building Inclusion: A Practical Guide to Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in Architecture and the Built Environment. It’s due out next year, and it’s being published by Routledge.
I will also touch on these matters in the Part 4 course, Inclusion in Practice: Building social value into how you win work, that I’m working on delivering with the London School of Architecture next year.
You can access the resource to download here.
