Video: GO Figure3 Leadership: Monique Jahn
Monique Jahn, Figure3 Workplace Director, is adept at putting the pieces together. Over the past 23 years since she launched her interior design career, she’s knit together a knowledge of workplace insights and strategies for her teams to craft innovative and creative solutions for clients.
From the onset, Jahn was interested in the arts, always drawing and painting. “My parents were encouraging with me when I was taking those courses. I knew I wanted to be immersed in how people responded to their environments, and that led me to interior design.” While at university for fine art, she took a course that explored the relationship of art and film with current events, which proved influential. “It connected all the dots for me,” says Jahn. “It illuminated why people design what they design, or draw what they draw. It relates to everything happening to all of us,; connecting film to painting to the environment to travel to politics. Now I always look at art and design that way.”
Today, Jahn says her primary role is getting projects off on the right footing. And it starts with a conversation — without leading a client — to discover who they are, and what their goals are. “Repeating back what you think you hear helps the client see their future in a way that shows them where their goals might lead them, and what a space we design can do for them to drive their business forward.” She relays information the team needs, establishes goals and ensures her team has the resources and tools they require to move forward on schedule. “Clients may not have a precise intention at a project’s initiation. Sometimes more conversations are required, digging deeper to reveal their goals or an end result they may not have anticipated themselves. Finding an opportunity that they didn’t see — to exceed the expectation of the project — is a really great success for the team, for the client, for everyone.”
It’s important to encourage people to think creatively; helping them to build confidence inproblem solving. If you are constantly giving the answers or direction, it seems like there is only one thing to do, and that can be limiting for people. You can’t write a recipe and do the same thing every time.
Monique Jahn
Having great mentors throughout Jahn’s career, especially in design school, helped build a framework for what strong leadership looks like. She credits various leaders with inspiring her career over the years and teaching her specific lessons: like how to recover after a setback, or how to communicate with a client with ease. “When someone gives me direction but doesn’t do the work for me, when they offer choices, that’s what really has an impact.”
Jahn never anticipated that leadership would develop into a passion. “Sometimes you tap skills that you didn’t go to school for. To suddenly manage people after so many years in the creative field was a challenge,” she admits, but one she found professionally edifying. According to her, anyone can be a leader. “Being a leader is just teaching other people to lead and take ownership of their actions. When you empower people and give them permission to share their knowledge, it’s valuable to everyone and strengthens the team as a whole. ”
Jahn emphasizes the importance of leaders who provide guidance, direction and support, without being too specific. “It’s important to encourage people to think creatively; helping them to build confidence in problem solving. If you are constantly giving the answers or direction, it seems like there is only one thing to do, and that can be limiting for people. You can’t write a recipe and do the same thing every time. In our business, there are often multiple correct solutions to a design issue.”
She notes a common pitfall is to resource employees to similar projects. “There’s a balance to pushing people without frustrating them, and increasing the level of complexity to something they feel comfortable with.” She aims to determine which project is right for each team member, helping expose them to novel experiences that are necessary to move their careers forward.
“Success for me is putting all the pieces together so we have the right people resourced on the right project, seeing someone build their career and knowing that I might have had some small influence on that. It is incredibly gratifying to see a team bring a project to life, and hearing a happy client brag about their new beautiful space.“
“My goal as a leader is to be a connector of parts, whether it’s people within our organization to form the right team, or ideas for a client — supplying information they may not have had in the past . I think that all these pieces can help drive a project to success.”
