You can usually tell what kind of place you’ve walked into without anyone saying a word. It’s in how people interact when no one’s watching, how decisions are made when time is tight, and whether the mood in the room feels tense, flat, or focused. Culture is a byproduct of leadership – intentional or not – and over time, people stop responding to what you say and start reacting to how you behave. Today we’re looking at how that dynamic plays out across teams, generations, and firm sizes. Welcome to Episode 181: Attitude Reflects Leadership.

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Where it All Begins jump to 09:44

There are some phrases that stick with you the moment you hear them. I wrote about one of those in a blog post years ago – “Attitude reflects leadership.” That idea hit me hard the first time I encountered it, and it’s only grown more relevant with time. In the post, I shared how a leader’s behavior sets the tone for everything that happens beneath them – whether they intend to or not. While the words might sound obvious, the implications are far more nuanced and I have now been around enough to have seen it play out in architectural firms of all sizes. When morale is low, when collaboration stalls, or when people start checking out or withdrawing from the process, it usually isn’t about one or two individuals – it’s about the tone set at the top. People don’t show up disengaged by accident. They get there by watching how leaders act and deciding what kind of behavior is rewarded or ignored.

Architecture is frequently a group effort. We work in pressure-filled environments with deadlines that don’t care how tired you are. And in that space, how you lead—especially when things go sideways—becomes a defining factor. A leader’s words matter, but their attitude matters more. When you walk into a room already frustrated, you’re inviting everyone else to match that energy. When you default to sarcasm or cynicism, people around you stop bringing ideas forward. On the other hand, when you model respect, resilience, and accountability, your team starts reflecting that back. The point of today’s conversation is to revisit this idea from a new perspective. Because whether you’re doing it intentionally or not, you are always setting an example. And people are paying attention. Every eye-roll, every sigh, every short reply – those are all culture-building actions, whether you meant them to be or not. That’s where leadership really begins.

Leadership Defines Culture jump to 15:32

There’s a well-worn phrase in business circles that says “culture eats strategy for breakfast,” and in architecture firms, that couldn’t be more accurate. We spend countless hours refining our design approach, chasing quality, and building project delivery systems—but none of that creates a healthy, resilient practice without the right culture underneath it. And the thing about culture is this: it doesn’t get built in all-hands meetings or strategy sessions. It gets built in the everyday behavior of leaders. How you respond under pressure, how you talk to your team, how you handle criticism or failure—those actions define the norms people begin to follow. When a leader’s behavior is erratic or dismissive, it doesn’t matter how aspirational the firm’s values are. People don’t absorb what you say—they absorb what you do.

Studies back this up. Gallup reports that 70% of the variance in team engagement is attributable to the manager or leader. That’s a staggering number when you consider how many firm-wide initiatives fail because they overlook the influence of leadership behavior. Harvard Business Review has also found that organizations with emotionally intelligent leadership—where leaders show empathy, consistency, and clarity – experience better retention, higher productivity, and stronger client satisfaction scores. These aren’t soft metrics. They’re business outcomes driven by culture, and culture is driven by leadership.

What’s important to recognize here is that every leader, whether they know it or not, sets the behavioral baseline. You’re defining what’s acceptable, what’s rewarded, and what’s ignored. When feedback is delivered constructively, people learn to speak honestly. When you treat deadlines as collaborative instead of combative, people start working like a team. The inverse is also true—when leaders consistently show frustration, silence, or indifference, the people around them begin to shrink. Not because they lack talent, but because they’re reading the room. I’ve seen firms where the design culture was celebrated but the interpersonal culture quietly eroded—and it always traced back to inconsistent or unexamined leadership. That’s not a criticism of any one person, but a reminder of how powerful that role really is. A leader’s tone becomes the tone of the office, and their habits become the firm’s habits. Culture is the operating system of a practice—and leadership is the code it runs on.

Toxic at the Top jump to 32:47

Not all leadership is good leadership. It’s easy to forget that in a profession where authority is often equated with seniority or technical expertise. But the truth is, toxic leadership doesn’t always announce itself with shouting or slammed doors. Sometimes it’s quieter—passive, dismissive, unpredictable—and just as damaging. These behaviors might be subtle, but their impact is cumulative. People begin to withdraw, creativity dries up, trust erodes. And once that erosion starts, it’s incredibly difficult to reverse without structural change. What’s worse, toxic leadership often doesn’t realize it’s toxic until the damage is already done. Especially in architecture, where studios are often driven by strong personalities, the line between “passionate” and “intimidating” can get blurry fast.

It’s also worth acknowledging that toxic leadership isn’t always malicious—it’s frequently unexamined. A leader might think they’re being direct, but their team hears hostility. Or they may believe they’re pushing for excellence, when they’re actually just pushing people out the door. According to a 2023 MIT Sloan Management Review study, a toxic workplace culture is 10.4 times more powerful than compensation in predicting attrition. So if your firm is bleeding talent or struggling to keep younger staff engaged, it might not be about salary or workload. It might be about tone, trust, and whether people feel psychologically safe. That’s not a guess—it’s measurable.

The fix doesn’t start with a leadership retreat or a new organizational chart. It starts with accountability. With leaders being willing to ask for feedback—and actually hear it. With companies creating mechanisms where concerns can be raised without fear of retaliation. And most importantly, it starts with a willingness to grow. Architecture is hard enough without adding emotional landmines to the job. People want to work for leaders who are demanding and decent. Who can set a high bar while also modeling how to treat others with respect. Because ultimately, the presence of toxic leadership doesn’t just hurt individuals—it lowers the ceiling of what the entire firm can achieve.

Leadership is How You Show Up jump to 43:54

One of the most overlooked truths about leadership is how closely people are watching—not for the formal decisions or the big-picture strategy, but for the everyday behaviors. People don’t gauge leadership by your job title or your credentials; they judge it by how you show up when things are stressful, uncertain, or falling apart. How do you treat someone when they’ve made a mistake? How do you speak to your team when a client is being unreasonable? These moments, often small and unplanned, shape how people feel about the culture they’re part of. I’ve seen it countless times: the way a leader reacts in a 30-second hallway conversation can have more lasting impact than anything said in a staff meeting, and whether you intend to or not, those moments become a model. If you respond with empathy and clarity, people take note. If you shut down ideas or let frustration bleed into your tone, they remember that too.

What makes these moments so powerful is that they don’t just influence mood—they shape behavior. I’ve watched junior staff unconsciously mirror the habits of more senior leaders, for better or worse. They pick up on how trust is earned, how blame is assigned, how credit is shared—or not shared. None of it has to be taught directly; it’s absorbed from the environment. And over time, those modeled behaviors harden into the culture of the firm. That’s the long game of leadership. It’s not about what you hope people think—it’s about what they see you do, consistently, when things are easy and when they’re not. Every interaction becomes a signal of what’s acceptable and what’s valued, and whether you realize it or not, those signals are shaping the next generation of leaders. Before someone learns how to lead, they learn what leadership looks like, and they’re learning it from you.

** the post that I mentioned in this section is titled “Dominion and Empathy” and the author of that book that I quoted was Dominion : The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy by Matthew Scully. 

Teaching By Leading jump to 55:45

One of the most important and most overlooked responsibilities of leadership is preparing other people to lead. Not just managing the work in front of you, but actively helping others build the confidence, judgment, and awareness they’ll need when it’s their turn to take the reins. Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen by osmosis. Leadership isn’t something people learn just by being near it. They need opportunity. They need to be trusted with responsibility before they’ve fully “earned” it, and they need to be supported when – not if – they stumble. Because leadership is learned in motion, not theory. You can’t expect people to grow if you’re not giving them a reason or a runway to grow.

That might mean inviting a younger team member to run a portion of the client meeting, even if you know you could do it more efficiently yourself. It might mean asking someone to lead coordination with a consultant, or letting them write the meeting agenda and handle the follow-up. These aren’t just tasks—they’re developmental moments. And when those moments are paired with mentorship, feedback, and space to reflect, they create a feedback loop that builds confidence over time. People rise when they feel like someone believes in their potential and is willing to walk beside them. What’s more, they learn to trust themselves not because someone handed them a script, but because they were given the room to make decisions and learn from the outcome. That’s a completely different kind of learning than what you get from watching someone else lead from a distance.

It’s also important to remember that developing leadership doesn’t mean creating carbon copies of yourself. It’s not about pushing people toward your style – it’s about helping them find their own. Different personalities bring different strengths to the table, and the firms that thrive over the long haul are the ones that make room for a diversity of leadership voices. The common thread should be values, not personality. Ask yourself: who have I been mentoring, even informally? Who do I interrupt in meetings – and who do I encourage to speak? Who do I trust with visibility when clients are in the room? These are all small signals that shape who grows and who stalls. Leadership, at its best, is a form of stewardship. It’s not just about being effective today—it’s about planting seeds for tomorrow.

Changing How We Lead jump to 57:44

Leadership in architecture is evolving—not because the fundamentals of the job have changed, but because the people being led have. The expectations, communication styles, and career priorities of the current and emerging workforce are different from what many firm leaders were trained for. The old model of leadership—based on authority, hierarchy, and proximity—is being replaced by something more nuanced. People today aren’t simply looking to be told what to do. They want to know why decisions are being made, how they fit into the bigger picture, and what kind of culture they’re contributing to. And those aren’t fringe expectations—they’re shaping how people evaluate whether they want to stay in a firm or look elsewhere. The pressure on leadership now isn’t just to be decisive. It’s to be clear, consistent, and human.

This shift is especially visible in how younger professionals interpret leadership presence. It’s no longer about how early you arrive or how late you stay—it’s about how you engage. Are you approachable? Do you share credit? Do you give regular feedback and opportunities for others to step up? These are the questions being asked, often silently, by the people working under you. And if those questions go unanswered—or worse, if the answers feel negative—it creates distance between leadership and staff, even when everyone’s physically in the same room. The gap isn’t logistical. It’s cultural. A 2022 Deloitte study found that more than 40% of younger employees feel their organization doesn’t meaningfully invest in leadership development, and that perception directly correlates with their intent to leave. In a field already strained by retention challenges, this is not a trend to ignore.

This doesn’t mean that effective leadership today is any less influential. If anything, it matters more because the people paying attention are asking better questions. They want to see leadership that’s responsive and grounded, not performative or removed. They’re evaluating not just what gets built, but how it gets built, and who gets acknowledged along the way. And they’re willing to follow leaders who take the time to listen, explain, and model behavior that aligns with the values the firm claims to hold. That’s the shift. We’re not moving away from leadership—we’re moving toward a version of it that requires more awareness, more communication, and more humility. It’s no longer enough to lead by habit. You have to lead by example—and by intention.

Leadership at Every Size jump to 59:54

Leadership doesn’t operate the same way in every firm – and scale has a lot to do with that. What works in a small, tight-knit studio doesn’t always translate to a larger, more layered practice. The core traits of effective leadership – accountability, clarity, empathy – remain universal, but how those traits are expressed and experienced shifts dramatically with firm size. In a small firm, leadership is personal and immediate. People see how you operate up close. There’s very little insulation between principals and staff, and that means every decision, every tone of voice, every late-night Slack message carries more weight. The culture is often an extension of the leader’s personality, for better or worse. That intimacy creates opportunity – but also pressure. There’s no room to coast, and any inconsistency is quickly felt across the studio.

In larger firms, leadership tends to become more distributed. There are more layers – project managers, studio leads, sector heads—and with those layers comes the challenge of consistency. A firm may have a clearly stated mission, but that mission can get interpreted differently across departments or offices. The risk here is fragmentation: where teams begin to feel disconnected from the larger vision, or where one group thrives under strong leadership while another suffers from weak or inconsistent direction. To counter this, large firm leaders have to work harder to create systems of cultural alignment. They have to reinforce values at multiple levels, making sure that leadership doesn’t just live at the top – it’s felt throughout the organization. That’s not easy, but it’s essential if people are going to feel like they’re part of something unified.

The truth is, leadership at every size comes with trade-offs. Small firms benefit from speed and directness, but the emotional responsibility is heavier. Large firms have resources and structure, but have to fight against cultural drift. One isn’t better than the other—but each demands a different kind of attentiveness. And in both cases, the impact of leadership is the same: the tone at the top sets the tone for everything underneath. Your influence may look different depending on scale, but the responsibility is no less real. Because at every size, how you lead determines how people work, how they grow, and whether they stay.

Hypothetical jump to 62:17

There are very few pizza toppings that I dislike, but the one’s I think are bad, they aren’t just bad … they’re trash.

What are the Three Worst Pizza Toppings?

These are not crazy selections but there will definitely be some people who think these selections are completely wrong … and those people are wrong and I encourage them to make their own list.

Ep 181: Attitude Reflects Leadership 

Leadership isn’t just a role – it’s a responsibility that lives in every interaction, decision, and silence. It’s not about getting everything right, but about being intentional in how you show up, and honest about the influence you carry. The culture of a firm isn’t built in sweeping gestures; it’s built in the accumulation of small, consistent behaviors. If your team is watching – and make no mistake that they are … what are they learning from you? That’s the question we’re left with, because long after the drawings are done, it’s the leadership provided that people will remember and how the judge you.

Good luck,

“Special thanks to our sponsor Construction Specialties, maker of architectural building products designed to master the movement of buildings, people, and natural elements. Construction Specialties has been creating inspired solutions for a more “intelligently built” environment since 1948. Visit Mastering Movement dot net to learn more.”