The value of mentoring - both for young professionals and experienced CSI members, was a hot topic at CONSTRUCT 2018! Here, CSI members share some of their best mentoring lessons.
Add your voice to the conversation here.
“My Obi-Wan was the founder of our firm, the late Bruce Gora. His mentoring came strictly by example. He lived the theory. ‘Seek first to understand, then be understood.’
Although he was a brilliant artist, he was never presumptuous enough to think that he understood a client’s needs better than the client. Nor a product representative’s products better than the Rep.
As I mentored our student summer interns, in addition to educating them about the realities of construction and product limitations vs. their design-only based education or the importance of budgets and schedules, I tried to carry on Bruce’s legacy and provide life lessons as well.”
Ken Buschle FCSI, CDT, LEED AP
GMA Architects LLC
Fort Myers FL
“I think that people in specifications need at least two mentors: they need one mentor who can provide strategy and advice about how to do their actual job. In my case, ‘be a better specification writer.’
Often, a spec writer is the only person in the firm with a concentration on that specialty, so that mentor definitely needs to come from outside the firm.
And then, especially if you're very specialized—you need a mentor/advocate in the firm where you work. Someone who comprehends what you do (even if they don't actually do the same task) and has a bigger view of how it fits into the firm as a whole.”
Anne Whitacre FCSI, CCS, LEED AP
Senior Specifier
HOK
San Francisco CA
“One of the best lessons I ever got from a mentor came from a wise, senior Architect (Don Riddick, AIA- of Riddick, Feidler Stern) when I was an intern. He simply said, ‘Know what you know, and know what you don't know.’ How profound.”
Kevin Cheney CSI, CCCA, CDT, AIA, NCARB
Architect
Virginia Beach VA
“The most memorable for me was in about 1999, when the venerable, 72-year-old genius (with our firm for over 50 years at that point) asked me, while I was staunchly defending a preliminary design concept, "Yeah, O'Beirne, but do you know that will work?"
In a startling moment of clarity, I replied, ‘Um...frankly, no, I don't know it'll work. I guess I'd better be sure.’
Ever since that time, I've always heard the voice of Horton Wasserman in my mind asking, ‘Yeah, but do you know that will work?’”
Kevin O'Beirne, PE, FCSI, CCS, CCCA
Professional Engineer licensed in NY and PA
Arcadis, Buffalo, NY
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