A Visit From Greg Spotts

Last week we had the privilege of hosting Greg Spotts, the Director of Seattle Department of Transportation, as a Mentor-In-Residence in our office in Berlin.

Sharing in our commitment to create liveable neighbourhoods, we have previously exchanged knowledge with Greg through the 'Dialogue for Urban Change Peer-Learning Network between German and U.S. cities.' 

Since Greg visited Berlin with the 'Dialogue for Urban Change Peer-Learning Network' last year, TSPA has been actively looking for an opportunity for Greg to return. This 10-day visit has provided him with further insights into the dynamics of the city, whilst our team has learned from his knowledge and experience.

Here are some highlights from our week of sharing knowledge with Greg:

Because of the nature of TSPA's work, we tend to take on the outsider role, looking at our international consultancy projects through 'stranger's eyes.'

We benefited from the opportunity of 'stranger's eyes' on us for a change.

Greg's fresh perspective helped us uncover what our team does right, as well as areas where we can improve.

We kicked off our time with Greg with a conversation amongst our core team members; to talk about our company's history, leadership, and challenges.

We discussed TSPA's values and new ways to put them into practice, floating the idea of updating these values as our team evolves.

Dialogue between this group continued throughout the week. We brainstormed strategies to improve our team's productivity, such as applying a protocol for meetings to ensure utmost efficiency and respect for one another's time.

Analysing our firm's shift to a holacratic approach, we considered how to facilitate individual development pathways for our team under a highly collaborative, shared structure.

Greg's "stranger's eyes" rendered him an invaluable sounding board for our project pitches and overall presentation skills. Here are some key takeaways from this workshop:

Competent, Confident, Calming: Greg applies this "Three C" framework in all his public speaking endeavours. Radiating this presence makes speakers more credible and compelling.

Connection Before Content: Find yourself in the project, and discover and show your personal passion. For example, Thomas felt particularly moved when Ale implemented this advice by linking her personal passion for protecting the environment with her project's objectives. It completely altered his perspective—despite his existing familiarity with both Ale and the project—and made her presentation far more impactful. Discovering the value not only in having, but also communicating personal passion and interest was a unique discovery.

Introduce Yourself: Again, associating a passionate, whole person with a project can make our work truly resonate with our audiences. This can also help presenters ground themselves in case of nervousness.

Provide Context: Put yourself in your audience's shoes and give them points of reference for things they may not know. It is helpful to anchor our work to bigger issues or well-known facts.

Build a Narrative Arc and Connect the Points of Your Story: Start with the big picture before narrowing it down. Walk the audience through actions and challenges, local experiences, and connections to global issues.

Be Authentic and Use Personal Experiences: Find your tone and style, and use anecdotes to captivate the audience and illuminate your personality in your presentation.

Take Time to Rehearse and Continuously Practise: Find your rhythm and work out any technical glitches beforehand. Use team meetings and conversations with friends as opportunities to practise your tone. Public speaking can become second nature with enough experience.

In his many years of work in various industries, Greg has developed strong communication skills. His wisdom helped us recognise how our team's unique traits influence the way we experience situations of negotiation and conflict, finding new tools and behaviours that could be beneficial to our team.

Greg's personal mission can be defined by 5 key words. These goals are the essence of what drives him in all his professional and personal endevours.

Each member of our team had the opportunity to have a 1-to-1 talk with Greg to better understand what drives them and articulate their own personal missions. Each project and experience then becomes a platform to acheive these goals.

Greg and TSPA's founder, Thomas both share the unique career history of starting out in the event and music industries to shifting their focus to their current committment of planning, mobility and sustainability.

The foundation of TSPA's core values were built from this flexibility, curiousity and engagement in the world.

Discovering that we have this in common with Greg, was not only extremely useful professionally, but ultimately has led to the development of great friendships. Together we strive to make the world a little better.

The urban fabric of Berlin became the background for the most interesting conversations the team had with Greg.

From building walks around Holzmarkt and Kotbusser Tor to dinners and lunches in our favourite local spots; as a team of people from all over the world, we discussed everything from our favourite parks to the UN sustainable development goal that drives each of us the most.

We would like to thank Greg for giving us the opportunity to reflect both individiually and as a team; to recognise how far TSPA has come but also to look into the future and envision new innovative ways to enhance our practices and achieve greater impact through design.