Finding Your Leadership Style

Principal and Director of Integration at HKS, Julie Hiromoto FAIA, LEED AP BD+C, WELL AP combines sustainability, design excellence, and business acumen to enhance the performance and impact of our projects. Julie’s experience has spanned the disciplines of architecture, interiors, urban design and research in practice.  She served as the 2020 Chair for the AIA COTE Advisory Group; she chaired the AIA Large Firm Roundtable Sustainability Group and volunteers as a Living Future Ambassador Presenter. Julie taught sustainability courses at NYU and received AIA’s 2019 Young Architect Award.

How did you get to where you are today, Principal and Director of Integration at HKS?

I am a serious planner. I like to list all the things I’m going to do, schedule them, and make sure I have enough time to do it all. That is not what got me to where I am today. After architecture school at Georgia Tech, I completed a Master’s degree from Columbia University and then the licensure process. After that, the ‘plan’ ended. When I stopped following a prescriptive path, I found myself in situations where several amazing opportunities presented themselves – a door opened, and I walked through. I feel incredibly lucky for those opportunities.  At the time, I didn’t think of the decisions I made as brave, until I read Glennon Doyle’s Untamed, “The braver I am, the luckier I get.” Without some level of risk taking, or experimentation, the results track along with a typical path or status quo.

Along the way, I have found a few rules to live by: ask for feedback, know your strengths, and do not be fearful of asking questions. Most people will not perceive you as ignorant, incompetent, or not ready.  A good question tells me a lot more about a person than silence. It suggests what they are curious and passionate about.  It demonstrates a mindset of learning and continual improvement. 

Most importantly, cherish and value your relationships. Share knowledge willingly from a perspective of wanting to grow and enhance the collective work of our profession – sometimes this boomerangs back through opportunities for personal and professional growth. Say ‘yes’ to diverse opportunities, not just the comfortable or glorious ones, and follow them wherever they may take you. As a naturally risk-aversive person, I push myself to experiment, ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen, but this opportunity sounds interesting – let’s go down this road for a while.’ I have learned that if you are with people you respect and trust, you usually end up in a good place. If something happens along the way, and you decide you don’t want to be on that road, you can always get off and try another one. Nothing is a one-way street.

What kinds of challenges did you have along the way and how did you overcome them?

The first lesson learned is there is no one-size-fits-all definition of a leader. It took me a while, through trial and error, to discover that I cannot model the behavior, words, or actions of my role models or mentors. Each of us must find our own personal style. I had to find my own voice, and it had to fit into the ever-changing context of the situations I find myself in, whether regionally, organizationally, culturally, or even from one project team to another. I’m not advocating for abandoning yourself or being any less authentic, but if you think about how your message will be received and how you can be the most impactful and influential (by reaching someone else where they are), you will connect with people more effectively. I like to compare it to the clothes you wear. You would not wear the same outfit to a barbecue at the beach as you would to a charity gala or a board meeting, yet all these garments represent your character, style, and brand. If we can be more intentional about adapting our leadership voice to the context, then we can make deeper connections and build trust.

After college, I decided to move to Japan for two years to learn about my ancestral culture. My last name is Japanese, but I grew up in South Georgia as the daughter of immigrants from Peru and Taiwan. I had no connection to or understanding of Japanese culture. I wanted to live it to learn it, to truly understand and absorb what it means to be perceived as Japanese. The cultural norms and communication styles in Japan are very different from in the U.S. There is a hierarchy and complexity of rules that governs interactions. Personal and work relationships are extremely different and some of these prioritize the harmonious whole before individual preferences. I had to first recognize the differences and then adapt to be successful in my role and thrive. I was hired by a collection of Japanese governmental ministries and took my responsibility as a cultural ambassador of the United States very seriously.  We were recruited to transform their educational model and challenge the status quo.  Yet the day-to-day reality of my presence in the local schools could be perceived as a threat to the Japanese teachers of English. How does one instigate urgent and necessary change while fitting in and being respectful? I would not have been effective if I had alienated everyone and insisted on my entrepreneurial American way. That was a life-forming experience.

How did you challenge those norms while being cultural ambassador?

The Japanese foreign language education programs were in dire need of evolution.  Courses were designed and taught with the end goal of high scores on standardized college entrance exams.  Students mastered grammar and vocabulary but were challenged when it came to communication. The JET (Japanese Exchange Teaching) program paired native speakers with Japanese professional educators in the hopes of making ESL fun and conversational.

The most awakening experience happened within hours of arriving in my village when I was introduced to the Principal. You are instructed to bring gifts for these introductions and coached in the protocols for first encounters with your new supervisor. I arrived with my obligatory bottle of whiskey, appropriately wrapped, and I handed it to him in the right way at the right angle. During our conversation, I shared that a Japanese local offered to help me buy a car so I could be more mobile. My school and apartment were in a rural community of 15,000 people, and the train passed through only a few times daily—you didn’t want to miss it! My job also required I teach at another school a 30-minute drive or 45-minute train ride away twice weekly, so I had to be able to move around.

The Principal became very concerned and said, ‘Oh, you can’t own a car.’ And, I thought, ‘Ok, this is interesting, my boss is telling me how to spend my time and money and wants to restrict my mobility.’ I asked him why and he responded, ‘You are the school’s responsibility as a foreigner in our country. If you were to get in a car accident and kill someone, the school would be responsible. It would reflect poorly on us.’  I was taken aback and needed a moment to recover before replying, ‘Oh, yes that would be awful, but isn’t the situation similar with your other teachers? If they were in a fatal car accident, wouldn’t it also reflect poorly on the school?’ I did not share my thoughts and confusion: I am supposed to be a cultural ambassador, and he is treating me like a child, like one of his high school students. At that moment, new to this town and just beginning this relationship, I offered a compromise, ‘I certainly understand your concerns, and I want to respect your guidance. I will not drive to this school or even to the other school. As an employee, I can respect your rules while working, if you can agree to relinquish control of personal time. Outside of business hours and on the weekends, I will be driving so that I can experience Japan.’ I actually said, ‘you cannot control what I do in my own personal time,’ but I’m sure my colleague who was translating put it much more diplomatically. The principal must have been completely dumbfounded because an intern employee contradicted him. Even worse, this exchange happened in front of a Japanese teacher - I disrespected him by undermining his authority and tagged myself as an anarchist.  It was a very American response.

How do you apply what you have learned in Japan to challenging and changing policies in architecture today?

I have had the great fortune of sitting in several different seats on the AEC bus over the course of my career. Understanding different perspectives, speaking many different languages (academia, design, technical, management, research, ESG, and construction), and identifying those sometimes-competing priorities certainly helps me in my current role as Director of Integration. I have discovered that if you must convince someone of why they should listen to you or why your perspective is important, you are probably not going to get very far with that individual and any work together will include a lot of banging your head against the wall. However, if a person or team already sees opportunities or is looking for someone with that diverse perspective to help them see things differently, then the sky's the limit. You will go further faster because you are not trying to sell or convince; everyone is already on board. Instead of an anchor, you have another propeller.

I recently did a deep dive with our Health Practice. Jason Schroer, the Practice Executive, often reflected, ‘Julie, you see things that I don’t because I’m one with the stink.’ As the practice leader, he’s led significant positive change in policies, behavior, and culture. Yet, he knows he has blind spots or stands to benefit from a fresh set of eyes and the novice perspective[1] of an outsider.  That, to me, is the mark of a great leader; not to protect and defend, but thinking ‘Wow, what other opportunities do we have, how can we grow, and how can we get there better or faster? Help us see them.’ He doesn’t agree with everything I say, but he’s certainly thoughtful and has asked a lot of questions to better understand my perspective.  Sometimes he challenges me back. That is powerful. The more collaborations where you don’t have to convince people that you have something important to say or valuable to give to the team, the better off we’ll all be.

What policies would you change if you could?

Paid parental leave is important, not just maternity leave but also paternity leave. We had an amazing speaker in the office, Josh Levs[2], who spoke about smart and competent dads and how detrimental the ad industry shaming was. To paraphrase him, you cannot fix the gender issues in the workplace until you address the issues in the home and family. More and more dads are taking paternal leave and making time for their family to parent equitably, but there is still a lot of guilt associated with that. There are sideways glances. Even if it’s not overt, some people are signaling judgement, disapproval, or jealously without realizing it. We all want to support fathers in the workplace, and if we did that better, it would be easier on everyone. Some of the gender issues would start to fall away.

Listening to learn is another big one for me. We can have many conversations and training sessions about the value and importance of this skill, but you must experience it to really understand and incorporate it into your own behavioral change. There is so much we could do differently, and I am still practicing in this area.  We all have room to grow.

There is also a reluctance to try different things and experiment because we don’t reward experimentation, we reward success. If we reward behavior that is just reliably doing your job, showing up and following instructions, we will get more of that and comfortably maintain the status quo, or marginally improve. If we reward responsible risk taking and celebrate the benefits that come out from it, including what we can learn from our failures, then there is incentive for us to collectively grow, iterate, learn, and evolve our practice as designers. It amplifies the systems thinking mindset we are taught in school and helps us solve some of society’s biggest and most urgent challenges, like equitably addressing the climate crisis for human health and wellbeing.

Have you experienced any advantages or disadvantages to being a woman leader?

Some of these experiences come down to people underestimating me. That allows you to fly under the radar and then surprise people who had little or no expectations. But sometimes it also feels like a constant uphill battle. Some may doubt, or not even listen or engage in a conversation with you, because they are questioning your credentials, background, or experience. Maybe you are in the room already, but they cannot hear what you are saying because of biases and systemic barriers. There is not much you can do about other people’s biases – we all have them, we should recognize them, but they are slow to change.  Instead, focus on what you can personally control and manage first. Remember that your firm saw something when they hired you, and they continue to invest in you every day - trust yourself, and the confidence that was placed in you, keep going.

There can also be this reinforcing cycle of insecurity or overcompensation. You may feel like you must speak louder or be more direct and assertive, and want to fight or push back, instead of stopping for a moment to ask yourself, ‘What’s going on here? Is what I perceive really happening? Is there a way around it, instead of through it?’ This is what I learned in Japan. My American upbringing and culture said, ‘Go to Japan, find the problem, and through perseverance and hard work, keep whittling away until you fix it.’ What I learned from Japanese culture is that patiently and diligently aligning the group through five conversations with five different people, sometimes in a certain order, can instill more robust, lasting, and meaningful change. Sometimes slowing down helps us speed up. 

Decision making in Japan is different from here. In the West, we fight over the ownership of innovation, ‘It was my idea. Why are you taking credit? I said that first.’ In Japan, you take your boss out for drinks after work, convince her that your idea was hers. Then, in the meeting the next day you say ‘Wow, that is brilliant. How did you come up with that?” Allowing the team to happily follow the leader, instead of an uncomfortable situation of choosing between a good idea and undermining authority. There is a cultural dynamic of me-first versus us-first. Trusting that us-first betters the whole team, when we all go there together, and that people will recognize your participation and value, is in my opinion, less emotionally taxing than me-first and keeping score of the things I’ve contributed minus the mistakes I’ve made. 

Do you have any final tips for emerging professionals?

Do not fear doing what you need to do and be open to an amazing web of opportunities and how they may be connected. When I graduated from college, I already had many opportunities with summer internships under my belt. I didn’t feel like I was going fall behind if I didn’t immediately find employment with an architecture firm. I needed to understand the heritage of my surname and Japanese culture. At the time, it felt like a complete detour from my career path – I was teaching English in rice fields. Who would have known that the most helpful thing in my job today would be that cross cultural integration and intergenerational communication of bringing together multiple competing goals from the Ministries of Education, Foreign Affairs, Sports, and Trade to help elevate teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) and cultural exchange? This is what I do now in my job now as Director of Integration – identify the right relationships and synthesize diverse expertise so that 1 + 1 = 5. That job did not exist when I graduated. Have faith in yourself to know and do what is right for you in that moment, how that leverages your personal strengths, and aligns with your ultimate goals.  I often talk about a career matrix instead of a ladder; you can choose your own adventure and write your own script. You could do anything, and it does not have to rigidly planned step-by-step.  Lead with character, relationships, and purpose and the results will speak for themselves.

Balance your priorities and do not weigh yourself down with too much first-world anxiety and aspirations of ‘success.’  Most of us were born so much more fortunate than others. When I hear a recent graduate say, ‘I’m not going to take the job offer because someone else is going to give me $5k more,’ they think we don’t recognize their potential and value them. I wonder about their priorities. If your finances require you to prioritize compensation right now, then make the decision based on money. Will that salary differential go directly to repaying student loans? If firm culture, opportunities for growth, or project type experience are the priority, then make that decision. Those are investments that each firm makes for your benefit. It is a challenge to have everything you want, all at the same time, like finding a perfect apartment in NYC. You can have more space, daylight, a great location, beautiful finishes and amenities, or it can be affordable. If you are lucky, maybe you will get two or three, but if you hold out for all five you may be homeless for a while.  When the lease expires, reassess your priorities, and make a move if you need to.

We could all be more intentional about continually self-assessing. A decision made five years ago could have been the right decision then but may not be right today. What is the right balance for you? Societally, we tie self-worth and value in things like how much money we make, do I have a job at a prestigious firm, what is my role or title within the firm – or are you more interested in personal autonomy, challenging yourself, flexibility, or the impact of your work? Each of us must find the right mix for that moment. Life changes around us all the time, shouldn’t we be adapting with it?

[1] Francesca Gino in Rebel Talent. https://www.npr.org/transcripts/631524581
[2] Josh Levs in All In https://joshlevs.com/all-in-book-by-josh-levs/