No matter what point you are in your career, chances are you have had a mentor or have mentored someone else. That mentor may have been a supervisor or more experienced coworker who showed you the ropes on your first job. It may have even been a professor or teacher who guided and encouraged you to follow your interests. Even if you've been in the profession a long time, you may still have mentors among your peers—individuals to whom you often turn for advice and information.

You are not alone. By its very nature, the architecture profession provides wonderful opportunities for mentoring. By history and tradition, young architects have long apprenticed to masters (although a protégé can be at any level of his or her career). Frank Lloyd Wright learned from Louis Sullivan and then went on to mentor many others through his design studios at Taliesin in Wisconsin and Arizona. Charles and Ray Eames mentored many individuals in their Los Angeles design studio in the early 1960s. And there are many others. We have always learned from each other. The team approach at many firms today inevitably teaches young architects how to interact and relate with more experienced colleagues. If that is not the case at your firm, I hope here to change your mind.

A little background
Successful mentoring programs are usually those in which firm partners and associates take on the task with interest when they are encouraged to seek out protégés. What tends not to work is assigning people to mentor. Moreover, the idea of learning and sharing knowledge should be built into the firm's culture, from the top down. At WHR, we encourage everyone—partners included—to seek out protégés. We even make it part of everyone's annual performance review.

Architecture firms of any size can enjoy the rewards of mentoring. The quality and quantity of projects an architecture firm can do is directly related to the ability of its people to work together to surpass their expectations. Nurturing that through mentoring can only enhance the firm's work. As a corollary benefit, people who feel better about themselves and their work will make a better impression on clients. Clients see that and, in turn, feel better about the firm's work.

Because mentoring is a two-way relationship in which individuals share stories, experiences, and ideas, there are rewards for the mentor as well. Seeing a person grow and learn is an affirmation of the mentor's efforts. The special bond that develops between mentor and protégé can develop into a career-long friendship.

Good mentors are:
• Good team members. They have excellent interpersonal skills and are able, and find the time, to explain things in an interesting way so their shared knowledge is understood and retained
• Approachable. A protégé can pick a person to learn from and ask to work with, but unless that person takes on the mentoring role on his or her own, a relationship will probably not develop
• Honest. They deal honestly with their protégés and willing to let them learn from their mistakes
• Exemplary. They have good work ethics and high-quality design skills.

Good protégés have a:
• Thirst for knowledge. They want to get better at what they do
• Good sense of self-worth and discipline. It can be rough being a protégé, especially if you have a mentor who has high expectations, but that's the way you learn.

Upon finding a mentor, learning-oriented persons will instinctively be observant, follow their mentors' lead, and treat them with respect and admiration. Mentors, in turn, will be affirmed by that admiration, comfortable in sharing their knowledge and career experiences, and interested in discussing their protégés' career and professional development.

You're never too old for a mentor
As you reach a senior level in your career, peer-to-peer mentoring is a good way to keep learning and developing as a professional. Your peer mentors may be individuals within your firm or other acquaintances in the design and construction industry. Find peers whom you respect and with whom you feel comfortable showing your own vulnerabilities. These are vital characteristics before you are willing to take criticism from him or her. Seek out persons who share your values and have an equal or greater commitment to their careers, as well as the confidence and energy necessary to reach their full potential. Choose project teammates who motivate and challenge you. You may have peer mentors you're not really aware of—those people who seek you out to talk about things and congratulate you on your accomplishments.

A final thought
In the end, mentoring has to do with the more positive side of what architects really do. Our work benefits society in general, not just our clients. The rewards are many. Architecture firms, after all, are what they are because of their people. If we don't invest the time and energy to mentor each other, then we will not survive and thrive. A colleague summed it up beautifully. She was asked: "What if you do all this work with someone and they leave your firm?" She answered: "The only thing that could possibly be worse than that was if they were never mentored, never learned, and stayed."

Copyright 2002 The American Institute of Architects. All rights reserved.