Taking the Lead

By Linda McIntyre, AICP

There's no shortage of advice for professionals moving forward in their careers, especially as they transition into management roles. Lean in! Disrupt! Get things done! Be emotionally intelligent!

Few principles in planning, however, are valued more than collaboration (and few dynamics are more reviled than "top-down"). There aren't always useful metrics, like the profits or sales targets used in other realms, to gauge the performance of individual planners, teams, or departments. So how can planners moving into management best apply the values of the profession in their new roles?

It's not as big a leap as you might think. Richard Willson, FAICP, is a professor at CalPoly Pomona's Department of Urban and Regional Planning and a practicing transportation planning consultant. He hears a lot about this subject from his former students, including in the form of complaints about their own managers. He's done a lot of thinking and work about how planners navigate the space between the idealism that brings many of us into the profession, and the sometimes cold and sobering realism we encounter when we get there. "In some ways, managing is a lot like planning itself — for example, not everything can be quantified," he says. "Not everyone is convinced by data-driven analysis. A lot of our methodology is also applicable to management." Below, some planners share their experiences with moving into management, working there effectively, and staying sane through it all.

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Getting There

Strategy: Seize the Unexpected

Michele Boni started working full-time as a zoning officer for Orange Township in Delaware County, Ohio, during her last semester in the master's program at The Ohio State University, after connecting with the planning and zoning director through OSU. About six months after she started the job in 2016, the director resigned, leaving Boni as the only full-time staffer in the zoning office (there was one intern). "It was overwhelming, but it was also an opportunity to prove that I was ready for the job," she says. The township board of trustees made her director a few months later, at age 25.

The township is growing, with a population of about 30,000 (up from about 26,000 in 2010), and the office is busy. Even after becoming director, though, Boni had no full-time staff for a while. She spent a lot of time "winging it" in public hearings and other meetings, but Willson's observation about the overlap of planning and management skills proved true for her: Her training in public engagement and community outreach helped prepare her for all the public meetings she would attend — and lead. Part of her job is to provide staff support to the zoning commission and board of zoning appeals, and she also works with the board of trustees.

Despite her training and baptism-by-fire experience in the role, her youth was sometimes mistaken for a lack of expertise. "Some people would ask to speak to the director and were a little surprised that it was me," says Boni. "It was challenging for them in the beginning, but once I proved that I had a lot of planning knowledge, it became easier."

Strategy: Lean into the Learning Curve

Anthony Grande, AICP, made a big move when he took a planning job in Unalaska, a port city and fishing industry hub that's the population center of Alaska's Aleutian Islands, right after finishing his master's degree at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2013. The Wisconsin native took another leap two and a half years later when he became the city's planning director.

"In terms of the community's character and needs, I felt very comfortable as planning director, but I had some anxiety about managing since I hadn't done it before," he says. For better or worse, that wasn't a problem when he started as director, because he didn't have any staff for the first six months. He learned that no reasonable person expects a manager to know everything, and that figuring things out on your own can help your team figure them out too. "Having been a one-man show and knowing the ins and outs of everything was helpful when I made my first hire," says Grande, who now works in New York City. "It was easy to show him the ropes."

Strategy: You Might Already Be a Leader

Sometimes your working style points you toward a management position even before you seek it out. Yasmine Robinson had been working as an environmental planner in New York City for two and a half years when she took a position in 2016 for the Albany, New York, Department of Planning & Development, working on a broader variety of projects. Less than two years after that, she was tapped to be deputy director.

She had already embraced a kind of de facto leadership role, she says, helping people understand processes and reviewing drafts. "People would come to me for help," she says. "When it happened officially, I had to think about the role in a way I didn't have to before. I had doubts at first — I had only been out of school for a few years. But in a way, I was doing the same things I was before.

Strategy: Be Open to a Nonlinear Path

Suzanne Schulz, AICP, didn't plot out a trajectory into a leadership role, but she made the most of opportunities that came her way. She started working as an entry-level planner in Grand Rapids, Michigan, after spending six years as a planner in the private sector. In another six years, she was the planning director of Grand Rapids. She stayed for 14 years before moving back to the private sector.

"I started with an entry-level job because that's what was available," she says. "I never envisioned myself as director. I was fortunate to have opportunities quickly, and over time I grew into it, but each level came with challenges and it was sink or swim every time." Her varied experience helped her stand out. "I had worked on a lot of different types of projects; we weren't as limited in roles as people sometimes are in government."

Grande did something similar when he moved to New York, taking a senior planning position in a large city agency. "I really enjoyed working in Unalaska, I just wanted to do planning on a different scale," he says.

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Being There

Strategy: Know Yourself and Plan Accordingly

One of the first things you should do in your new role, says Willson, is to clarify your intentions. "Ask yourself, do I want to take on a culture change in the organization, or should I leave that alone and only pursue planning objectives?" he suggests. "There's no right answer, but you should be clear about your own agenda and how you plan to spend your time."

You have to remain true to yourself to be comfortable, and to find the balance between admitting mistakes and risking being perceived as weak, "or not admitting them and being a hardliner," says Willson. "When I reflect on the best managers I've known, I see an elusive firmness with openness and flexibility." But we're all human, and everyone makes mistakes, he stresses — and there's room to recover. You also have to figure out the nuts and bolts of management, including human resources requirements and procedures for dealing with problems. "How do you tell someone their work isn't cutting it?" Willson notes as an example. "HR will be lawsuit averse, and a new manager has to learn how to document all of the steps. It takes a lot of time."

Planners' training isn't always helpful here, although professional practice coursework can be useful. Willson, who himself teaches in this area, suggests role-playing exercises and case studies. He also has students take a free Myers-Briggs-style personality test to help them understand the different ways people experience and approach their work. Managers can use similar tools on the job to help understand their strengths and weaknesses.

Strategy: Know Your Team

These same tools can help you understand your staff and help them understand you and each other better. "You have to work with people and help them strengthen weaker areas and play to their strengths," says Suzanne Schulz of her work in Grand Rapids. She says she learned to put team members "in positions where they could excel."

That usually includes spreading both the fun and mundane work around equitably, and trying not to pigeonhole people, says Schulz. "Everyone wants to do long-term planning, but someone still has to attend to the planning commission, zoning appeals, and so on."

Part of becoming a manager is learning to let go, says James Rather, AICP. "I defer to the planners as the subject matter experts on their projects, because they are," he says. After working as a planner in several jurisdictions in New York State, Rather moved to Portland, Maine, last year to take a job as the city's development review manager, where he manages a staff of six planners. "In my role, I have to exercise command and am responsible for the work of my planners, but as a newcomer to the city — 'from away,' as they say in Maine — I'm also very much a learner."

Strategy: Know Your Peers

"When you're new to management and haven't had a mentor, it's easy to be aspirational without recognizing both the gifts and the deficits you have," says Schulz. But it's never too late to seek out feedback from people who know what you're going through, either midcareer mentors or other new managers.

"You need someone you can talk things through with, who can give constructive criticism and suggestions," says Willson. "That person can be either in or outside your organization, but you have to be careful about how you share information with an inside person. Someone on the outside who understands the organization might be best situated, unless you're dealing with a very particular culture." He also suggests building a network of fellow managers to use as sounding boards.

And you're probably still part of a bigger team, with other managers you can lean on. That is the case with Yasmine Robinson, the planner in Albany. "The director and I are very close ... and we talk all day."

Strategy: Start With Communication

"Being able to frame what you do, and why it's important, is critical," says Suzanne Schulz of Grand Rapids. That might be obvious to planners, but not necessarily to elected officials with a wider perspective and political and financial pressures. And remember: Jargon won't engage them. "As a manager, you have to be effective at articulating why a project is important and worthy of community support," she says.

Leading by example is another form of effective communication. "We just approved our first mixed-use development, the first one in the county," says Michele Boni from Delaware County, Ohio. Planners in nearby communities took note of how Boni's team addressed a trend they have no experience with. "It's spurring others to make changes in their zoning codes, and to hire staff who can do that."

Strategy: Rely on Your Community Savvy

Anthony Grande, the former Unalaska planning director, rose to the occasion by working hard and embracing the community he served. He found Willson's observation about the transferability of planning skills accurate in this context, particularly when it comes to being engaged.

"Doing research and being prepared is very important, but there's no substitute for actually having an interest in and understanding of the values and politics of the community," he says. "Being an engaged member of a smaller, tight-knit community is how I got comfortable with those issues and how people were able to be comfortable with me. I had a role as a regular person in the community, not just as a planner."

Strategy: Be Creative

"One of the big challenges since the recession is that planning in a lot of places, certainly in Michigan, has not recovered," says Schulz. "It's investment for the future, but you're competing for resources against services like fire and police." She tried a bunch of ideas to show how much work the planning department was doing and how important it was to the community.

For example, she had staff count with a clicker how many calls, questions, and emails they were responding to, to capture the department's workload. She also started hiring temporary employees to demonstrate the demand for certain kinds of skills or knowledge — a passionate retiree for projects focused on age-friendliness, a resident of a neighborhood with a significant homeless population for a project there.

"It made us much more credible with the community," she says, and it allowed them to do the project in-house. "It would not have been as effective with a consultant, and that community group is still active."

Strategy: Be Honest About What's Possible

Part of your job as a manager, says Schulz, is trying to right-size work given the available resources. "You have to maintain some level of sanity and figure out when lines need to be drawn," she says. "You might need to go to upper management and explain that you can't do something because there's not enough capacity right now."

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Thriving There

Strategy: Motivate Your Team While You Motivate Yourself

Carving out some time for fun and relaxing events like happy hours can help a group of stressed staff bond, says Suzanne Schulz. James Rather tries to channel the calm under duress that one of his previous managers seemed to have by feeling, and modeling, gratitude for what he and colleagues do. "I say things like 'isn't it extremely cool that we get to do real-life SimCity?' Because that's actually how I feel about this profession. I find ways to cultivate that spirit despite the barrage of application review work that takes up the bulk of our time."

Strategy: Never Stop Growing

One of the benefits of being a manager can be access to new training opportunities, and they might not be ones you expect.

Yasmine Robinson, the planner in Albany, recently completed a course at Harvard's Kennedy School on Building State Capability with Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation. It wasn't about planning per se, and she wasn't so sure about it at first, but the Mayor's Office signed her up, so she went.

It turns out it was "an absolutely transformative experience" that changed the way she thinks about overcoming obstacles, at work and beyond. "My advice to anyone looking for opportunities to learn more is to basically just ask," she says.

Strategy: Pace, and Care for, Yourself

Robinson says that it was scary moving from a civil service position to one determined by the political leadership. But after more than a year on the job, she's feeling confident. "I don't think anyone always knows what they're doing," she says, and she's not bothered by assumptions made about a profession still dominated by men. "I'm still often the only woman in the room and people think I'm an intern." How does she handle it? She remembers she was put in this role for a reason. "I just try to be as professional as possible," she says. "I've been hiring and promoting women and people of color, and it's really cool to be responsible for doing things differently."

Rather makes time for meditation, exercise, and lunch breaks, even if they're quick. "I also stop and take a deep breath and remember that I'm a veteran of many long planning battles and campaigns, and to just trust my own judgment and experience," he says. "My predecessor in this position left very large shoes to fill. She was kind of a legend for her work ethic and institutional knowledge. I cannot be her; I can only be the best version of me. And I do have the ability to be patient, learn from the folks around me, leverage my experience, and synthesize. The rest will just take time."

Linda McIntyre is a planner, an award-winning freelance writer based in New York City, and a frequent contributor to Planning.