Future Voices: Leadership Across Generations
For generations, much of what made someone successful in an architecture, engineering or construction firm was learned almost by osmosis.
You overheard a principal navigating a difficult client conversation. You sat beside someone more experienced as they worked through a detail. You picked up on how a project manager ran a meeting, how a senior leader gave feedback or how someone turned a client relationship into the next opportunity.
Those moments still happen. But firms can no longer assume they will.
That was one of the themes that emerged during a recent AVEC Partners Roundtable, an invite-only conversation among leaders from the AVEC community focused on cross-generational communication and leadership.
As firms navigate hybrid work, changing communication habits, leadership transitions and a new generation entering the profession, one idea kept surfacing: what used to be caught now has to be taught.
Make knowledge transfer part of the work
Knowledge transfer is often treated as something separate from the work—a training session, a mentorship program or an initiative someone has to find time to manage.
But some of the most interesting ideas shared during the roundtable embedded learning directly into the firm's normal rhythm.
One firm turns technical questions that arise during the week into short lessons that can benefit the entire staff. Another holds weekly project-learning sessions where employees share something they encountered on a project, giving others exposure to the lesson while helping the presenter build communication skills.
Others are intentionally bringing junior employees into client meetings, involving staff in working groups and creating short opportunities for employees at different levels to teach something they know.
None of the above require an elaborate training program. What they do require is a shift in mindset: the work itself can be the curriculum.
Give people the opportunity to practice leadership
Preparing the next generation of leaders isn't only about transferring technical knowledge. It's also about creating opportunities to make decisions, communicate ideas, solve problems and influence others.
One firm described forming small, cross-level working groups to tackle issues ranging from quality control to software standards and project management. Firm leaders help establish the agenda, but employees are responsible for developing recommendations.
The approach creates an important exchange. Younger employees bring new ideas. More experienced employees contribute institutional knowledge. Mid-career employees begin to recognize how much expertise they have to share.
And leaders get something equally important: the opportunity to step back.
That same philosophy came through in a simple lesson about delegation shared during the conversation. When you hand something off, some of it will come back exactly as expected. Some will be wrong. And some will come back in a way you never would have considered.
(That last category is often where the magic happens.)
Developing future leaders requires leaving enough room for them to surprise you.
Rethink what productivity looks like as people advance
For employees who have built their careers producing tangible work, moving into leadership can create an uncomfortable question: What did I actually accomplish today?
Earlier in a career, productivity might mean completing a drawing or finishing a task. As responsibilities grow, it may mean spending an hour explaining a process, coaching someone through a problem or helping a colleague understand why something is done a certain way. The output is less visible—the impact isn't.
Helping emerging leaders recognize teaching, delegation and coaching as productive work is an important part of making knowledge transfer sustainable. It also reinforces that mentorship isn't solely the responsibility of principals or the most senior people in the firm.
Someone who was junior a few years ago already has something to teach the person arriving today.
Make being together worth it
The conversation also raised a question many firms continue to navigate: What is the office actually for? Several leaders described intentionally making in-office days different from remote ones—not simply requiring people to occupy the same building.
They use that time for collaborative redlining, one-on-one conversations, drawing together, lunch-and-learns and the spontaneous interactions that are difficult to reproduce through a screen. One leader put the expectation more simply: if everyone is in the office, don't send a Teams message to someone sitting nearby. Get up and talk to them.
The larger lesson isn't about choosing office work over remote work. It's about recognizing that proximity doesn't automatically create connection.
If firms believe being together matters, leaders have to create the conditions that make it matter.
Create low-stakes opportunities to build high-value skills
Communication skills don't appear the first time someone is asked to present to a client. They develop through repetition.
Firm leaders shared several ways they're creating lower-stakes opportunities to practice: short technical presentations, project-learning sessions, rotating staff-meeting updates, design discussions and participation in client meetings.
Ten minutes explaining something to colleagues today can make the client presentation tomorrow feel a little less intimidating. Leading a working-group update can become practice for leading a project meeting. Sitting in on client conversations can help someone understand not just what experienced leaders say, but how and when they say it. Soft skills (also!) need opportunities to be practiced.
The next generation won't develop by accident
There is no single program that solves knowledge transfer, communication or leadership development. That may be the more important takeaway.
The firms participating in the roundtable aren't all approaching these challenges the same way. They're experimenting, adjusting, and learning from one another. Instead of asking how to recreate the exact environment in which today's leaders learned, firms can be more deliberate about creating the environment in which tomorrow's leaders will learn.
Because the knowledge that once moved naturally from one generation to the next still needs to move. We just may have to be more intentional about how it gets there.
This article was inspired by a recent AVEC Partners Roundtable, an invite-only forum where leaders from AVEC partner firms and alumni come together to candidly discuss the challenges they're navigating, exchange ideas, and learn from the experiences of their peers.
