Good, Thoughtful Hosts #307: Inspiration Through Shepherding Others with Charlie Deese

Episode #307 Transcript | Listen on SoundCloud

Producer 00:00
Today’s special guest:

Charlie Deese 00:03
I am Charlie Deese. I’m an architect and education planner. I am one of the design directors at Cushing Terrell and help lead our education studio.

Sarah Steimer: 00:10
Awesome. Well, Charlie, thank you for joining us today. So the big question, what is it that inspires you.

Charlie Deese: 00:13
So this was a tough question for me to answer, because I thought it’d be cheating to say everything inspires me, when I thought about it more, the answer was, What inspires me is seeing that kind of initial spark of an idea in someone else, and then kind of shepherding that through mentorship or project or really whatever the situation is.

Sarah Steimer 00:48
This is Sarah Steimer with Good, Thoughtful Hosts. What I’m loving about this season is we started with a few inspiration concepts that have scientific research to back them, like exercise or music. But as the season has moved on, we have found new forms of inspiration that don’t have much study behind them, and it’s been so interesting to me, and I hope to you, to think about these unique ways to mine our lives to help motivate and influence us. So as you’ve already heard, today, Charlie will be discussing how his role as a leader helps to inspire him, which sort of turns the idea of the team being inspired by its head on its head. It’s a very give and take opportunity that’s reminiscent of how many view their role as a teacher or a coach. Everyone can learn from someone else, regardless of their role. Another great example is that of a conductor being inspired by the members of their orchestra. As I poked around the web, for examples, I found a quote from the Hungarian conductor and composer Ivan Fischer. He said that he needs to be inspired by his orchestra as much as the musicians should be inspired by him. So now let’s get into our conversation.

Charlie Deese 02:21
So this is, I think, a really unique way to be inspired. We we’ve talked about activities, inspiring people, other people, inspiring them, but, but this ability to kind of coach someone through their own creative process as a way of inspiring you, I think is super interesting. What about this process of, as you put it, shepherding is really inspirational to you. Well, I think, I think it’s the kind of joy in giving back or being able to make a good idea better. There’s so much around it that is kind of led up through my kind of career and outside interests to this point, like I’ve done a lot of volunteer coaching and really enjoy mentorship in academic settings. So it’s maybe the same joy you’d see in your child learning something new, or something like that, where you’re part of someone else’s success or helping them push beyond what their expectations are.

Sarah Steimer
So I’m kind of curious to know if maybe you had a mentor, a teacher or something, maybe a colleague or a boss, something like that, that you would turn to, that you saw when you would go to them with questions or ideas, that you kind of saw something spark in them, you know, was this something that you recognized in someone else before you even recognized it in yourself?

Charlie Deese
Absolutely, my path to architecture was not traditional, so a lot of this kind of grew out of my grad school experience. Undergrad was really, you know, business, it was finance, and that was my early career, but it was grad school in that that studio setting, and some of the research we do, it’s so kind of human and user centric, what are, what our profession is, and I had a few early studio teachers that taught us their process and taught us their style. But I think it was my second or third semester where my professor, Peter Keyes, kind of flipped that on its head for me, where it was all about my ideas, and he was there to put me at ease, or say, hey, you know, chase this thought down. It was just really encouraging. And so that’s kind of the type of thing I try to create for our clients or folks that I’m helping lead on teams.

Sarah Steimer
So this is something that, in a way, we touched on it a tiny bit. In the last episode, when I talked to Kendra, and we were talking about how her brother inspired her, this idea of people close to you being sources of inspiration. And I got to thinking a lot about artist groups, you know you you’ll hear about like Pablo Picasso hanging out with like his other artist friends, things like that, where there’s this feedback loop, almost, of inspiration. Do you feel that way when you’re working with Mentees, students, you know, maybe colleagues who report to you, things like that. Does it feel like a feedback loop and you’re part of that cycle is, you know, kind of taking in their ideas and helping to, you know, almost act as a launch pad, in a way?

Charlie Deese
Absolutely, whether that’s, you know, internal team members or clients there, there is that kind of creative vibe at certain points in a project, in that’s the kind of way I take on my role as design director. I’m not a design dictator. I don’t want to be. It’s about the best idea in the room and bringing it to life or making it better. So that’s that idea of shepherding there’s those certain points in a project where everything is on the table and there’s a lot of energy about just wrapping your head around an idea, or what could it be in building off of that. So I see my role as helping others find those good ideas and how to build off of them.

Sarah Steimer
This makes me think. I don’t know why this image just popped in my head, but let me know if this sounds relatable at all, but it makes me think of those like Hot Wheel courses where, like the car comes at the track at a normal pace, and then it hits that one point where it like, surges. It so much faster throughout the rest of the track. It seems like you’re almost that surge point. You’re that point where it’s like, okay, I see you coming with this idea. Let’s help it take off. Does that? Does that really kind of sound like that’s what you’re doing?

Charlie Deese
Yeah, absolutely. That’s, that’s what I try to do. I think any designer is going to tell you that you’re more powerful when you’re you’re working with others. So you know that idea of we’re small to apply or accelerating amplifying, right? That definitely really relates whoever’s going to get that hot wheel going, right? It’s our job as design leaders to to be those wheels that spin them faster.

Sarah Steimer
I’m glad you just used the word leadership, because we hear a lot about how leaders inspire others, but you as a leader, are talking about how just this role itself is so inspiring. I was hoping that you could maybe give us an example of a time that you were working on a project with others, that you were leading, or maybe you were mentoring someone, or teaching people that your role as that leader, your role as that shepherd of ideas, how it maybe helped to inspire something else that you were doing, or helped inspire your creativity within that project. You know, if there’s just a nice example that you could provide?

Charlie Deese
A recent example is, we’re working with community of Salida on on an affordable housing project. And one of one of our newer hires was really kind of given the the reins, you know, within the context of some some site constraints, and Salida has downtown historic design guidelines. So they really were able to, kind of like, iterate through some rough ideas and then we get back together and look at how to refine those. So, you know, in in some of that, you know, what the exciting stuff is that? Okay, that’s an idea I probably wouldn’t have come up with. Maybe it’s not fully realized, but, yeah, that’s really exciting. Let’s, let’s roll with that. How do we, how do we make that better? So just that kind of iterative process is exciting. And then, you know, seeing how other people kind of work through their their own process, and how I can supplement that, or help with their communications to clients, that’s when we also started diving into some early AI tools on image generation to test out some ideas quickly. And that’s tech that I haven’t used a lot. So somebody else kind of going through their process and seeing that brought that to me and something I’ll carry forward.

Sarah Steimer
This reminds me a lot of I talked to a lot of professors, actually, and I’ve spoken to a lot of professors who have been about to retire, and they frequently talk about when students have taught them and how much it’s been helpful to their own research. When they get to also go into a classroom and talk about what they’re doing, and then maybe a student brings something up that they hadn’t thought about, or they questioned something, or, you know, a student’s curiosity kind of piques something in them and helps to move their projects, their study forward. And it really sounds like this is what you’re talking about, and how would you maybe recommend to other leaders, other mentors, things like that, to feel inspired by the people that they’re leading, by the people that they’re mentoring or teaching?

Charlie Deese
You know, what would you say to them, like, Hey, this is, this is an opportunity for you to kind of help develop some of your creativity as well. Yeah, I think the first piece of advice is, take ego off the table, right? If it’s never your idea, then you’re never defensive of it. I think the second piece of advice is, you know, there is this idea of kind of raw design talent. Some people have it. Some people don’t, in terms of, maybe it’s understanding of colors or proportions, or really being adept at hand drawing. But the way I’ve come to look at it is more than anything, I designed a process. And if you can do that, you can start to plug others in, in parts and pieces, and then use, you know, use their ideas to accelerate your own, or vice versa, to challenge your ideas and perception. You know, like that, diversity and perspective, even if it isn’t an idea that’s carried forward in the design, it’s it’s going to challenge your own understanding. And you know internally, when you can do that, it’s such a benefit. Because you know that, especially with some of our projects that go out to the public for engagement, you are going to get 100 200 different perspectives, and now you’re better prepared to, you know, justify kind of the action and decisions you’ve taken in pushing design forward.

Sarah Steimer
I really, I like the way that you describe that, because it does sound like there’s almost this element of getting to be a conductor, you know. So you already have all of these, sorry, I always like pull up 20 analogies within these conversations, but like, it does sound like, you know, if you’re the conductor, you already have this whole field of really creative and adept musicians that you then just get to lead, and you’re the one who gets to decide, like, okay, more from you, tone it down over there, maybe, or pick up the pace over there. Like it, it sounds like, and we, as we know conductors, are inspired by the people that they’re working with. And that really the way you put that, it does sound like, there’s that joy, that excitement, that creative inspiration of getting to put those puzzle pieces together and act as that conductor for your team.

Charlie Deese
Absolutely. I mean, look at any building team, even even small projects. You’ve got a couple architects, several engineers, your client, your client’s stakeholder group, contractors, subcontractors, like we are talking about an orchestra here in terms of number of participants in any given design. So that is really how I view my my role is I have the privilege to kind of orchestrate or celebrate their ideas and bring it into a singular solution. You know, it’s not the Renaissance where it was that kind of master designer builder who was really doing everything and kind of holding all of that within them. Buildings are just too complex at this point to do this, so you really have to kind of take that team shepherd approach.

Sarah Steimer
Well, Charlie, this was, again, I really love this different perspective of finding inspiration this way. And before we jump off, I just wanted to know, is there anything else that you would maybe say to people who might have the opportunity of finding inspiration because they’re leading a team or mentoring someone else, you know what they can really the chance they have and not to kind of ignore that opportunity that they have.

Charlie Deese
Yeah, I guess I’d leave everyone with this thought, that there’s really only a few architects there that are really hired for their style, and I bet even those architects really started from this client, contextual centric way of design and their esthetic just happened to kind of catch on to some audiences, or was a different take, but like the majority of us, are really kind of working within a context, whether that’s something regional, environmental or adjacent neighbors, or just what Our clients want out of a project. So you know, with all that in mind, we’re such a small piece of it, so how can you not be inspired by that and really be an empty vessel for all of that context in creating a design? So I don’t ever want to be the starchitect known for a certain style like, I really like the variety and the new challenge that comes with every project in that new set of context. And so with all those variables, you know, tap into everything around you, your teammates, your clients, everyone and find that best idea and focus on how to make it better.

Sarah Steimer
Awesome. Well, Charlie, thank you so much for this really cool conversation today. I so appreciate it, and I hope, I hope lots of leaders heed your advice to sort of be that vessel. That’s a really cool way to put it.

Charlie Deese
Yeah, thank you.

Producer 15:23
Music for Good, Thoughtful Hosts was written, produced, and performed by Sam Clapp. Our moderator is Sarah Steimer. Editing by Travis Estvold. And a special thanks to our content development team, Amanda Herzberg and Marni Moore. For more information about the podcast, visit thoughtfulhosts.com. Thanks for listening!

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