A wellbeing framework for leaders in architecture
The challenges of day-to-day practice can impact personal wellbeing and if sustained and unchecked may lead to the onset of despondency or unhappiness at work. Hamish Ginn outlines a useful framework for promoting wellbeing in practice that is helpful for business owners and the managers of people.
The field of Positive Psychology offers some tools for sustaining wellbeing in both life and work that may be of use. In Martin Seligman’s 2002 book Authentic Happiness, he proposes three pursuits towards achieving happiness:
The Pleasant Life
The pursuit of positive emotions and sensory pleasure, such as good food, good company, enjoying the moment. Though it may achieve happiness, Seligman describes this as the shallowest and least enduring route to satisfaction.
The Good Life
Doing the things that you are naturally good at and enjoy (developed further by Seligman as ‘VIA signature strengths’) to get into ‘flow’, such as work, hobbies or relationships where you’re fully absorbed. This produces more satisfaction than just pleasure.
The Meaningful Life
Using your signature strengths in service of something bigger than yourself, such as a cause, a community or belief system. Seligman considered this the deepest and most durable form of happiness.
Seligman further developed on these ideas in his 2011 book Flourish, moving the focus away from the pursuit of happiness towards a broader sense of wellbeing. He proposed five levers (later added to with a sixth ‘H’), making the framework of PERMAH. These six levers for workplace wellbeing include Positivity, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Accomplishment and Health.
The following is a guide on how the PERMAH framework may be utilised by business owners and managers of people in architecture practice, to be more useful and effective at supporting wellbeing than just asking a team member: ‘How are you doing?’
PERMAH for architects
Positivity
Positivity is the background that people managers can provide a studio – an environment that has joy and cheerfulness added to the task of work rather than just being focused on the completion of required tasks.
Tips for people managers to support positivity:
Walk the floor
Schedule time in the week to extract yourself from your own tasks and ‘walk the studio floor’ with a smile to check-in and interact with the team. Ask each team member ‘How are you going’, ‘What are you working on’, ‘How is the project?’ Let the person lead the conversation. Ask lots of questions. Give positive, constructive feedback.
Find the funny
Wherever possible inject humour and levity, breathing space and lightheartedness into interactions.
Embrace small moments
Try to catch small observations as they happen to remark upon. A good sketch, a project contribution or highlighting an achievement.
Mark the wins
Congratulate and recognise wins and milestones, before moving on to the next project phase.
Look out for tone
Watch for the tone of the studio and those that carry the mood of the team. Look to distribute this responsibility by encouraging those less-contributory to participate.
Anticipate big pushes
Positivity is best injected before and/or after a crunch deadline, rather than during it.
Show personal interest
Ask or follow up on what you might know about someone’s personal lives, partner, upcoming event or milestone. Show an interest.
Engagement
When people are most engaged, where their strengths are well matched with the challenge of the task they are undertaking, they enter a flow state. In this state, time stops.
Tips for people managers to support engagement:
Allocate tasks to suit strengths
Know your people’s strengths and task them accordingly.
Anticipate motivation drop
For difficult or arduous tasks for your team, anticipate the strategic moment when a check-in to re-focus them may help catch and maintain momentum before a slump in motivation sets in.
Minimise monotony
Be aware of someone completing routine tasks endlessly, or the same tasks or project stage for an indefinite period.
Ask rather than assume
Get to know what someone enjoys most – the reason they wanted to be an architect.
Look for small changes
Look out for changes in behaviour or work quality. Catch it early and raise it with the person to address it. This is more effective than remotivating someone after they are disengaged.
Relationships
This is genuine support and connection with work colleagues and mentors. Get to know the people in your team.
Tips for people managers to support relationships:
Invest in mentoring
Invest in mentoring time where studio pairings, both informal and formal, help support career progression and personal growth.
Collaborate
Encourage team members to contribute to studio discussion and learn from each other through doing.
Be aware of isolation
Look out for where project tasks sit solely with just one person, without input or interaction with others.
Conduct 1:1 check-ins
Connect with people without reference to project deliverables to build connection and indicate reliable support.
Make time for out-of-office events
Allocate time for the team to get to know each other and socialise.
Meaning
Meaning and purpose is the comfort that work connects you to something bigger than yourself and the immediate task you’re engaged with.
Tips for people managers to support meaning:
Explain ‘why’
Support people to understand the ‘why’ of the task, rather than just the ‘what’, so they understand what the task is for.
Connect to the outcome
Give people insight into the impact of their work towards the final outcome. Connect a detailed task with the bigger picture.
Facilitate client contact
Involve people with client interactions for understanding of the client’s priorities and decisions.
Offer on-site experience
Involve people in the physical realisation of projects during on-site construction.
Share and celebrate completion
At completion of a project, involve the team in the afterglow – client thanks, photoshoots, publication, celebration events – a reminder of the reason for all the hard work.
Give regular reinforcement
Regular direct check-ins with people, project by project to ensure that team members know why the work matters.
Accomplishment / Acknowledgment
The sense of recognition gained through having your achievements seen.
Tips for people managers to support accomplishment:
Make intermediate project milestones
Rather than waiting until the end of a project for acknowledgement, celebrate the completion of incremental milestones.
Mark small wins
Share and celebrate small wins – a resolved detail, positive client feedback or a completed challenge.
Praise specific examples
Rather than just saying ‘you’re doing a great job’, connect directly through a person’s achievement – for example, ‘resolving that junction detail has improved the whole facade’.
Look for blind spots
Ensure equity in who is praised, making sure quiet achievers are also recognised.
Apply praise consistently
Establish consistent ways that achievements are acknowledged, towards team members feeling ‘seen’ for their efforts.
Health
Good health, both physical and psychological, is likely the most important consideration for sustained workplace wellbeing.
Tips for people managers to support good health:
Manage long hours
Implement checking for long hours and, where unavoidable, prepare people for busy periods and ensure adequate time off for recovery.
Lead by example
Set the tone and reinforce expectations of overtime and a healthy work balance.
Provide confidential support
Provide de-stigmatised and safe studio care for people experiencing personal wellbeing challenges and structured, professional wellbeing support through an Employee Assistance Program (EAP).
Look for signs
Watch for early signs of fatigue setting in and make accommodations to remedy.
Manage client expectations
Leaders should ensure realistic deadlines for the team by managing the client’s expectations and workload wherever possible.
Promote physical activity
Encourage physical wellbeing through taking short breaks between tasks to get out of the studio, walking meetings, office social sports, healthy lifestyle choices and a regular fitness routine.
Provide a healthy studio environment
Support people with a physical environment that takes care of their bodies and brains.
The PERMAH six levers for workplace wellbeing give people managers a framework for how they might assess and support the wellbeing of their teams that is nuanced and specific rather than a vague consideration of how people might be doing.
For instance, it may be helpful to notice that a team member is fully engaged and accomplishing technically, while running low on a combination of task meaning, collaborative relationships and good health. PERMAH is also a framework for self-care. It is a way for business owners and people managers to check their own wellbeing rather than running on the empty tank that they are watching out for in others.
Martin Seligman’s PERMAH framework can be a useful tool to promote and sustain wellbeing in architecture practice, supporting people managers to be at their best, while also focusing their efforts to check-in and support the workplace wellbeing of others.
The attached summary page may also be a useful ongoing reference for practitioners.
Download the PERMAH summary page for practice
Hamish Ginn is the ACA NSW/ACT Vice-President and a People & Culture Specialist at SJB. He supports the studio’s talented team in the areas of career development, procedures and guides, studio support and assistance with policy refinement and recruitment. Hamish contributes to industry initiatives including the the ACA’s Mental Wellbeing Forum, the Australian Institute of Architect’s Large Practice Forum, and the 30 under 30 mentoring program for the Australian Design Review. His passion is Architecture and putting into practice the conditions that best support creative people in all aspects of their work and life.