 Is it beneficial to work at the same engineering company for a long time? At the Engineering Management Institute, we help engineers become better managers and leaders. And in today's episode of the Civil Engineering Podcast, we talk with Gil Honch, CEO at MSA. Gil talks a little bit about his career journey as CEO, but he also talks about the benefits of working for the same firm for a long time, being that he's been with MSA for a very long time. He also talks about his passion for learning and development and why it's so important to growing firms as well as helping professionals to grow. Gil, let's take it away. Thanks, Anthony. So Gil, it's a real pleasure to have you, someone in a leadership position like you, who's also an engineer and you've gone through many design projects yourself. You have really wisdom from all the different aspects of becoming an engineer. But before we jump into all of that, Gil, just to get started, tell us a little bit about MSA. How big is the firm? What markets do you serve? Sure. Sounds good. The firm name is MSA Professional Services. We're currently in 17 offices in the upper Midwest states of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois. Currently our head counts about 380 people. We're a full-service, multidisciplinary firm. And our corporate purpose is that we enable people to positively impact the lives of others. And the way we do that is through the design of infrastructure that delivers clean water, provides for safe roadways, comfortable buildings, and the environmentally responsible return of wastewater to the environment. Our staff consists of engineers, architects, planners, surveyors, scientists, technicians and, of course, support staff. We primarily serve state and local governments along with select private and institutional clients. We define our verticals as public works, mobility, water, buildings, and land. The other thing I would say is we're 100% employee-owned through our Employee Stock Ownership Plan or ESOP, which really is a cornerstone of our culture. Yeah, that's great. ESOPs, from what I've heard of them, are a really great way to grow a firm. And I know it's a whole topic for a whole other podcast than ESOP. It is. It really is. But for us, it's a good match. Not for everybody, but it really works well for our firm. That's great. And so I want to hear a little bit about your career journey to get started here, Gil. I think the one thing that our listeners should really know about you is you've been the CEO for, I think, almost eight years now or so, but you've spent, you've worked on a lot of projects as an engineer, and you've designed many projects, so you have a really good understanding from the ground up, I guess is a good way to say it. And I know that not all executives and leaders in the civil engineering world have that background. I think that could be challenging per se. Maybe not that it can't be overcome, but maybe just talk to us a little bit about your career journey. Sure. Why did I go into engineering? I think it was really for no reason other than my dad was an engineer. He was a mechanical engineer, and that was really all I knew, and I inherited some good math abilities, although my high school math grades might have suggested otherwise, and so when I got to college, I started out in mechanical engineering, and I struggled for the first few years. I was trying to succeed the same way I did in high school, which was sort of on natural ability and not doing the work, and that didn't work. And ultimately, I actually had a dropout of engineering for a semester and take some Gen Ed classes, which actually was a really great semester. I never would have taken some of the history and literature classes that I did. I declared a journalism major, which lasted for about two weeks, because when my dad learned of that, I got a call at school, and let's just say he dispensed some fatherly advice. I had a number of friends that were civil engineers, and they said that I should come over and join them, and I did, but it was sort of begrudgingly. I really didn't know that that's what I wanted to do, but I think as you and a lot of people know, things have a way of working out, and as I started taking the classes, I discovered my passion for water and wastewater and fluid mechanics, and I had no idea going in that that's what was waiting for me, and that's really where I got galvanized about what I wanted to do. When I graduated, I ended up taking a job with a natural gas utility working on their pipe distribution networks, but after about five years, I realized that I really wanted to be doing water and wastewater in a consulting environment, and if I was going to do that, I was going to need to go to grad school. I was married at that time, but we didn't have kids, and we recognized that the window of doing that kind of in an easier fashion was going to close, so 27 years old, quit our job, sold our house, and I returned to grad school, couch surfed for a while, but I got in and out in a year because I was really focused on getting back, betting back to work, and I interviewed with a number of firms, and when I interviewed with MSA, it was Midstate Associates at the time, I really detected a culture that was different from all of the other firms, so I actually accepted the lowest of the three job offers I had at the time because I felt that there was an opportunity here, I felt drawn to the culture and to the people that I'd be working with, and really as you said, I was a project engineer working on wastewater treatment plant designs for about three years, but being that I had five years of experience, including some supervisor experience, I made it into the role of team leader within about three years here, which was sort of the seller-doer role, going out, getting to work, and doing a high-level, you know, engineering, but more delegating and developing other people and leading a profitable team, and I did that probably, that was the longest job I held here, I did that for about 13 years, and really enjoyed that, and then it really went gradually from the challenge of designing a wastewater treatment plant to meet this difficult situation to the new challenge was running a successful business unit, and by about 2007, then I was asked to join the board of directors, and then the following year, I was made a vice president in charge of a group of teams like I had been running, and so from 2008 to about 2013, I was running that portion of the business, and as we might get into later, then I became president, CEO in 2013, but I still love it when I get an opportunity to talk about wastewater with some of my clients or some of our engineers, but that's becoming less and less every day. Yeah, for sure, and a couple things I want to ask you about in regards to that journey, number one, because I get this question a lot from engineers, did you find the master's degree for you to be helpful in practice? Absolutely, you know, the epiphany I had was the more I learned, the more I realized I didn't know, so for me, I had a pretty basic civil environmental engineering background, but I knew I wanted to do water and wastewater, so there's much more process chemistry and biology that you really need, I felt, to succeed in the design world, and that's what the master's degree gave me. I did a lot of growing up in that five years between my undergrad and my graduate time, and that my attitude towards school was much more serious. I had some real world skills to apply to, you know, solving, you know, problems within the grad program, and I just really got so much out of it, and that allowed me to walk into MSA, and on day one they handed me a declaration project, and I had done that in school and was just able to pick it up and run, and I think that's partly why I was able to advance as rapidly as I did. No, that's good to hear, because I do get that question a lot, and the one thing that I'll say for those of you out there, because I definitely agree with Gil in terms of getting that master's degree as early as you can, in terms of life responsibilities and things that will happen to you as you, you know, grow older of course, but the one thing too that I'll also say in terms of the civil world is having an internship where you can get exposure to some of the different disciplines in civil engineering, or even if you go out into the quote-unquote real world and you get a job for a year or two, then you go for a master's degree. I think the one thing you want to be sure about, which it sounds like Gil was when you take that master's degree, is it the discipline of civil that you're excited about and that, you know, you really want to practice, because that's the one thing with civil engineering is there's a ton of sub-disciplines. I mean my wife and I are both civil engineers, but she's geotech and I did land development, so we could talk about stuff all day and they wouldn't intersect per se. So I think the key thing there is, you know, just try to get clear on what direction you're headed, because that may be the reason for some that I've heard that the master's degree wasn't helpful, because you ended up working in a different discipline. So that's something to keep in mind. The other thing too, Gil, that I wanted to ask you about in terms of your development and your growth, I think a lot of engineering professionals that I know in the civil world, they come out, they're excited to start working, and then of course the next thing on their horizon is I want to become a manager, whatever they call it, project manager, team manager, and grow. Now you got to CEO, so you know, you kind of went all the way and the question I have for you is was that something that you were planning for or how did that evolution happen or did you just end up liking management and kind of kept going with it? It's more of the latter. I mean it's kind of laughable. Did I have a career goal of becoming a CEO? You know the answer is no. In as much as I tend to be a planner, I was, I never had a career plan for myself. I've always enjoyed doing what I was doing every step of the way. I always viewed that whatever it is I'm doing right now is the most important thing I could be doing, and I didn't really think too much about what comes next. I just wanted to do a good job. And through that then you start getting more responsibility and you start taking, you know, gravitating towards management and I found out you know I was interested in that too. Some people have no taste for leading people and managing things. They want to stay in that technical track but I found it fairly easy for me to divert my attention to things that were more impactful to the firm. So you know one of the challenges for me is I never really considered myself a people person. If I go back to my reasons for going into engineering I thought it was well there's a job I can just go and not have to deal with people. And of course as it turned out that's nothing could be further from the truth but I really aligned myself more with the operational aspects of the firm and over time working with our director of operations I could envision myself doing something like what he was doing. And we were working closely together and as it turned out he started dropping some hints to me that he was thinking that I should be succeeding him as president and this was about eight years before his retirement. And he continued to mentor me and over the last couple years that really started to ramp up. Now at the time the company had separate president and CEO. Over our history sometimes they were occupied by one person other times they were split oftentimes preparing for a transition. This was one of those times where the roles were split but as it happened there was some friction between those two. And I came to realize that the whole organization was really feeling the tension from that relationship. And then it happened to coincide with the great recession and it happened to coincide with an acquisition that we were doing. So there was a lot of stress that was contributing to a situation where just two individuals that had done a lot for the firm but had stylistic differences. So as I started looking into the role I would be stepping into I was seeing there would be some challenges there. And as the president's retirement was looming I suggested to the board that I would benefit from some leadership training. I really had not had a lot and specifically I had heard of something from the American Council of Engineering Companies called their Senior Executives Institute. I heard good things about it and I brought it to the board I says I think I should go it's expensive but I think we'll get our money back. You know was that a really difficult time for the company financially but they agreed and made the commitment to send me. And it was really that experience that shaped me as a leader and it made me own up to the leadership problems that the company was having and further to recognize that it was my role to address them. So it followed that I not only took on the role of president which was planned but at the same time I took on the role of CEO which was not planned. So my planning and mentoring had focused on these operational aspects but the mentoring and understanding of the CEO position was really something I had to kind of start from scratch with. And now actually two years ago at the beginning of 2019 I have spun off most of my operational duties to our chief operating officer and now I really am solely inhabiting the role of CEO which is where I focus on the future of the organization and be the communicator in chief. So is that the role that I imagined for myself? No but I really honestly feel it's the role that I was made for. That's great and you know for those of you out there you know thinking I know some of these terms like CEO people throw it around a lot I like to think of it as a visionary for a company you know as Gil said you're thinking about the future you're thinking about big things that maybe a lot of other people they can't think about it because they're strapped in all these details and projects and things like that but Gil going back to kind of your career journey for a minute I want to ask you this question and I know you probably won't say this but I will but you have a track record of being a great engineer and you have a track record of being a great leader based on some of the things you've done at MSA and I read them in your bio in order to do that you definitely have to be able to manage people and you have to be able to manage projects there's no kind of way around that and that's not an easy thing to do it's not to say that someone can't learn how to do it I mean for you it sounded like some of those things came easier than others maybe but I'm just wondering for the engineers listening right now that want to be a manager maybe they want to be an executive they want to be a visionary even say but you know they they like working with people but they struggle in some instances and they really want to improve those skills what what advice can you give them yeah first thing I want to do is parse out that project management and people leadership are two really different skill sets and so you need to address them you need to get training and experience on project management that's going to come earlier in your career and that should come first you need that as one of your basic skills then you need to decide am I interested in that and we've seen a number of people try and find out that they really weren't interested they want really are better off at project management because when you step into the realm of people leadership you're all in and and their problems are your problems and you have to address them so you know the the thing that I learned through the the SCI course is it's all about people and understanding people starts with yourself what we call personal mastery is foundational to leadership you really have to be able to develop an unvarnished understanding of who you are because let's start with the basic assumption that nobody's perfect I'm not perfect therefore I can't hold that standard on to anybody else and what are my imperfections right what are the things I'm going to spend the rest of my career and the rest of my life trying to improve on I'm going to be acutely aware of those things and if I'm going to be a good leader and then once you have that understanding that I've got things I'm working on so does everybody else and that creates an empathy and a willingness to sort of meet people where they're at say how can I help them be better that's really what people leadership is and I've seen too many people apply sort of one one way one style of leadership to all people and each person sort of needs something different from you and that's the part about understanding yourself so then you can understand the different types of personalities how people are wired differently so that you can effectively coach a variety of people the end of the day leadership is about making other people better it's not about leading the charge up the hill and having everybody follow you and glory for the leader it's no it's about if I do my job well I've got other people who can function effectively without me there and someday I can retire and I know the organization is going to be even better off yeah that's great and and a couple things that I just want to you know reinforce or you know maybe hop on top of that with is number one what Gil said about you know management being you know understanding people that's kind of a little bit of a misnomer I think a lot of times well you know listen as engineers we're used to equations when we're younger right we're plugging in numbers things are coming out we're getting the right answer quote-unquote there's no equations for management right like Gil said every person is different so you can't use something with maybe one person on your team and then go and use it again with someone else it doesn't always work that way some of the skills might help you and some of the conversations certainly might help you but people are different you need to take the time to understand them and understand what motivates someone what drives them how they like to even receive messages from you I've had that with some of our team here some people like it spelled out in bullets some people like in a paragraph from a phone call when you understand those things it makes you know leadership and management easier but yeah I can I just interrupt because I do think you just said it management and leadership and we really need to understand they're two different things management is looking at the numbers and it's sort of like treating the system and to a degree the people like like parts of a machine right we got a crank up utilization we got to do this that's management leadership is trying to figure out how to motivate people to do the right thing and and that's where the people skills come in I really look at it as you go from a project manager but once we you have supervisory authority over people they report to you their development is is dependent on you it's people leadership I don't even like to use the term management anymore we we in fact one of the first things I did in stepping into this role was I changed the name of the management group to the leadership team and and that really that little subtle word change means a lot because we are leaders of the company not just managers of our part of the company and we have to function as a cohesive team that's awesome and that takes me back kind of to the second thing that I wanted to reinforce that you said with the people skills versus the project management skills so at EMI we have training courses on each one they're separate training courses and a lot of times companies call us and they say well you know we've got some engineers either they're going to be managers soon or they're already managers and we need project management training for them so when I say to them you know well tell me more about that they'll say well you know they can't communicate great with the clients they can't present the projects accordingly so you know I kind of stopped in there and I said listen there's really a triangle that I see with engineers there's a technical skills that you learn school and you learn earlier in your career then there's your pm skills that would be you know project scope project planning scope creep scheduling all that stuff and then there's your people skills which is communicating with people running meetings effectively you know having conversations listening and so I think that if you're out there and you're an engineer you're saying to yourself I need project management training or your company said I want to get you project management training make sure you understand what your needs are what your teams needs are if you're if you're a leader in the company because it may be both it may be one of the other but a lot of times I feel like things get lumped under project management training it's like a common term and it's just not they're not the same they're totally different yeah I think when when we define project management training at msa it is the entire enchilada from the early relationship building and marketing pursuit efforts all the way through project close-up you can't just carve out a chunk in the middle and say that's project management at least for us it's it's cradle to grave you talked about how you define a world as a triangle I've defined it in five parts and we're working on our career charting graphics to illustrate this but everybody comes in with a technical skill that's why you're getting hired right Patrick Lindseyoni calls that permission to play it just gets you in the sandbox right once you're in the sandbox now we can start to lay around the project management skills the client liaison skills which is a lot of the marketing and sales piece and people leadership is its own regime all the while you have to have an increasing level of business acumen as you go so those are the five it's technical project management marketing people leadership and then the the business skills that's great so a lot there for you to kind of unpack when you think about your career or if you're listening you you uh you're leading a team of professionals you can think through some of that for sure so gill let's let's talk a little bit about our industry in the world of civil engineering obviously 2020 has been a year like like no other lots of stuff going on and you know some I talked to a lot of civil leaders as I'm sure you do and you have your leaders in your firm many companies have been busier than ever this year but what are the what are you thinking right now and I know there's uncertainty but what are you thinking about the next few years in civil engineering yeah it's exactly what you said everybody's having great years everybody's expecting some kind of a downturn in 2021 but beyond that it's uncertainty I remember in 2009 at the very beginning of that crisis I was already planning for our recovery right and late 2009 2010 that's where my mind was and then we learned that that recovery didn't happen quickly for us in particular it had a very long tail we were still being impacted by that recession in 2013 when I came into this role but the beauty of being in civil engineering is that in general we're all in the infrastructure business our infrastructure needs continuous renewal and replacement and we've not been doing that at the rate at which it's been reiterating right so we go back to 2009 we saw projects being deferred roads bridges wastewater treatment plants things were kicked down the road and we were just starting to maybe get caught up on some of the things that we deferred last time so now we're staring into a 2021 and we're kind of assuming the same thing is going to happen we're going to defer some things there's going to be a downturn we're going to get further behind and all of that at some point has to come home to roost so by then I think about not only repair and replacement but what are the future needs of infrastructure right we're seeing things being functionally obsolete because we're going to need a connected infrastructure data gathering and transmission to enable autonomous vehicles so not even things that don't need repairing and replacing they're going to need to be modernized regardless of their physical condition so for me all of this is to say especially to those of you early in your career civil engineering is and will be a great place to spend your career the world is waking up to our need to revitalize that infrastructure so much of was was built 50 or more years ago and that progress has been slow how many years has ASCE been giving out a D in their infrastructure report cards right so to me it's an unavoidable conclusion that there will be much work for us to do the only question is whether we see that returning in 2022 or will it be a more prolonged recession before we see a big uptick in demand I think for purposes of our planning we're expecting you know 2020 to carry over into the first couple quarters of 2021 as in dealing with the virus I would be think it's hopeful that by then we have a vaccination first and that people are getting it second so that the economy starts to reopen such that by the third and fourth quarter of 2021 our clients are optimistic enough to plan for sort of a return to normal in 2022 but if that confidence isn't there in late 2021 then this is going to be a more prolonged downturn yeah no one's going to want to spend money if it's if the confidence isn't there and by the way I just want to mention Gil mentioned the ASCE infrastructure the report card it's really interesting if you're not familiar with it we actually did an interview with Peyton Gibson who walked us through the process of it and we'll link to that in the show notes for this episode so you can learn about that because it's totally related to the future in my opinion as well and so you know all that being said Gil I'm interested to learn about you as the CEO we talked about how you're thinking about the future for your firm you know it's like a visionary role now that we've gone through this pandemic which nobody has been through before really to this extent at least in the engineering world like this with the economy what do you how does that change or what are you're what are you going to do in terms of thinking about the future going forward like in terms of risk risk mitigation like is that now are there's no all new things that you have to think about and what you're doing well risk mitigation is always there but now we're having to apply it to a new set of unknowns and new risks so I'll give you a couple examples I mentioned we're kind of rebooting a strategic planning event starting now that'll take us you know 21 to 2023 um we did some work last year that a lot of it's invalid because the world has changed since then and of course nobody saw this coming so thinking about the future of work right many people are working remotely and what is that going to mean in terms of people's expectations we have leases coming due for office space every year what should we be doing with those office spaces are people going to show up to these nice new offices or do we need to retool and that's where the opinions of people I speak to in the industry are all over the map from some that are doubling down and saying we're going to be more remote than not and they're working on reducing all their footprints we've also seen some in the tech industry have tried that and are going back to more in person I think we're feeling that the design process benefits from collaboration and although we can use tools like this to do an awful lot that we couldn't do in the past that that in-person relationship builds trust and when you trust someone you're willing to share work and so I think you know we're going to accommodate a growing number of people that are teleworking but I still think the core of our business has to reside in some type of collaborative work where people are allowed to really get to know each other which is best served in person there's too many serendipitous conversations that happen when people are co-located so that's one of those uncertainties that's out there scenario planning is is a good exercise and there's lots and been written on it but it allows you to explore a number of different futures and something I came across the other day made me think I just told you what I think is going to happen in 2021 I'm going to be wrong no matter what whatever path I chart isn't going to be how it's going to go so spend some time exploring what do you think is not going to happen because for example in 2019 we did not expect a pandemic and a recession right and I don't know that I would have thought of that as a scenario but if you spend some time thinking about what you don't expect to happen well I don't expect we're going to have a vaccine later on this year such that 2021 is going to be great I don't expect that we're going to not have an effective vaccine or that people won't be taking it such that in 2021 the virus is still rampant by the time we get the Q4 and things are looking really dark right but now I should spend some time exploring those scenarios and there's two things you can look for the commonalities there might be some things that we should do no matter what and then the other this type of planning is talking about creating a memory of the future right so I've played this scenario once in my mind and if it actually starts coming to fruition I have a memory of living it through our scenario planning and now I can act more quickly in figuring out what we should do so that's probably the best thing that I know a lot of firms are doing and will be doing as as we look ahead because frankly the the buzzword right now for me is uncertainty and no one can profess to have all the answers there are people that are going to make bold moves there are people that think this is the time to go up and acquire firms but that might not turn out to be a good thing if you make a big bet and this recovery is much more protracted than we think it's going to be so at the end of the day I have to preserve the firm and I have to ensure that this firm lives on and gets through this so there's always going to be at least for me a sort of conservative element but that said there are some that are going to succeed wildly on making bold moves and some that are going to fail yeah no that's and again that is a lot of those are some great strategies in terms of thinking about anything whether it's your career or your business your company your team I read something similar in a book recently where they said you know imagine you're building I don't know a training program and the training program failed ask yourself why it failed right like future visiting similar exactly what you said if it doesn't work what are you going to do next and and we spent a lot of time during the pandemic in fact I probably spoke to 30 or 40 individuals in your seat in the civil engineering world for this new civil engineering collective that we launched and I think the word uncertainty I looked at my notes it was in every one of the phone calls literally in everyone and I was like looking for that common thread and for sure that was it so I think I want to ask you about Gill is learning and development obviously it's something that's you know near and dear to my heart I left engineering to get into training and development and I know for you you've been really committed to kind of annually increasing msa's commitment to training and development it's a big thing for you can just talk about you know why you feel it's so important and why you're so you know interested in it sure you know without learning and development we remain static John Gardner who's an author that I admire suggests in a book called self-renewal that by middle age most people become mummified suggesting that we get set in our ways and and our opinions thinking that maybe now I know enough to get by in life and and do our job there's an old adage that you probably heard that says what got you here ain't going to get you there right that means if you don't grow yourself you shouldn't expect to be able to move on to a new or more responsibility you're going to get stale you're going to get in a rut you're going to have to continually build your skills if you want to do anything new or different so those of you that are out there wondering how is it that I can advance my career think about what is it that you're going to build in terms of new skills to offer your employer so that you can make the case or demonstrate that you're ready for something new I'm really somebody who issues a daily routine in favor of having the agility to adapt to whatever is going on in fact I can think of no more horrible fate than to be mummified by middle age I so I apply that to myself as well as everyone around me and it's only through learning that we can grow and only through growth that we can approach true self-fulfillment really becoming the best version of ourselves and clearly the young people coming into the industry place a high value on this I was working with a human capital consultant and he told me recently that a lack of learning and development opportunities has supplanted their supervisor as the leading reason cited why people leave their employer so that tells me that and I use this in our new employee orientation we're entering into a relationship or a partnership and it's reasonable for them to expect that we're going to do something to allow their continued development and growth so I just know that as a young engineer entering the workforce when I came in I realized how little I really knew about how to do anything this was maybe coming out of my undergrad and I also recognize that what my engineering education had taught me was how to learn new things. When you think about engineering problem solving we identify the knowns and the unknowns we make reasonable assumptions when we have to and we set about solving the problem so everything I encountered in my career was just another problem to be solved because I had learned that mindset so I was really gratified this summer when we did a sit-down with our interns and one of them made a similar statement that he had learned how to learn and so once again I turned to John Gardner who put it far more eloquently when he wrote the ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursuing their own education and I think if you subscribe to that and you apply that to your life and your career that you now have the burden of being responsible for your own learning and growth and development the job never ends and there's so many things to learn out there and and that's to me what makes this whole career so exciting is that opportunity to continue to learn that's great and it's really for me it's very powerful to hear someone in your seat talk like that I mean the reason I left my civil engineering career 10 years ago and started the training business was because I felt that there was kind of a lack of professional development support for engineers and a lot of companies that didn't provide the learning and training programs that I thought should be there and that we needed to succeed and a lot of that changed over the years thankfully I've seen a lot more learning and development but you know hearing someone you know who is leading a firm being so committed to that is I think you know really says a lot about you know your firm and how you invest in people and I can you know totally confirm from what Gil's sentiments around what younger people want because I talk to them all the time in terms of our coaching and training programs and they're looking for learning and development in fact when companies contact us for training you know they're of course really focused on getting the people that they want to get trained certain skill sets which is great but I always remind them that the other benefits to training programs are retaining people and recruiting people because if someone's coming to your firm for an interview and they say well what kind of training programs oh well we invest in this type of you know people skills people leadership training programs okay that's great that's important to people it's not just about a salary or you know some of the other benefits it's about how you're going to invest in them and I think that you need to be really be really super aware of that because it is important going forward so what we're going to do now is we're going to take a short break with Gil we're going to come back and we're going to wrap up by putting them on the civil engineering hot seed segment so we'll be back in just a minute all right i'm back with Gil Haunch president and CEO of msa professional services and Gil it's time that we put you on the civil engineering hot seed you ready i'm ready all right first question are there any specific rituals that you practice every day for example do you have a specific morning routine or lunchtime routine or something that you do consistently on a daily basis that has contributed to your success I really have to say no I as I mentioned earlier I thrive in a variety of life and love that every day is different from the other it goes along with the appeal of consulting where every day you're dealing with different people different projects different challenges you know some days I need to be in early some days sometimes I'm working late at night but other times I can dial it back and pay attention to other parts of my life that I might have been neglecting so I think the fact that I'm open to change and able to adapt allows me to be agile in confronting new challenges I try not to have too many preconceived notions and and that served me well so other than maybe getting up and having a fried egg every morning I really try not to let myself get into a rut that's great that's great I love that I do I agree with that and a lot of sentiments that was one of the reasons I turned to engineering civil engineer I feel like there's different challenges there's different things going on every day all right your next question you recommended a few books already but is there one book that you know you might recommend to people in our industry that are you know progressing through their careers or just one book for you that's been really helpful in your progression as a leader yeah I would have to say the advantage by Patrick Lencioni it's been very impactful in terms of understanding the importance of organizational health I think our organization was suffering from a lack of health when I stepped into this role and that really helped to crystallize my thoughts on how we want to be as an organization what we can't afford to tolerate in terms of behavior that was used as the foundation for our the first strategic planning effort that I led in 2013 we subsequently made that into a big read we made that book available to the entire company and had all these discussion groups and I tell you the language from that group still permeates our company people will cite that all the time we use it now in our internal leadership development course as well that's great and I love it whenever we hear about a new book I mean I've asked this question 154 episodes in a row and we haven't gotten that book yet so I love when we get a new book it's it's it's exciting all right so two more to go here next one thinking back on your managers of the past as you you know kind of came through and people that maybe you know led teams for you if you picture some of your favorite leaders or you know project managers whoever you can think of what was it that maybe made them your favorite what were the ones that stood out to you why did they stand out sure I can picture three that I had it as immediate supervisors of my career and again like I said earlier none of them are perfect right I shouldn't expect them to be but each one of them contributed something different to my development but if I'm looking for a commonality what stands out about each of them is they all took an interest in me and in helping me so that they spent time teaching me or demonstrating by example you know how to do things and I remember my dad in his career he always talked about how important it was to have a champion and I finally understood what he meant when I had people championing me so now that I'm in this position I keep that foremost in my mind how can I be that champion for somebody else that's great and and it goes right back to obviously you could see where you got it from but it goes right back to what you said earlier when you said you know leadership and understanding what people need right and that's that's exactly what you've learned from your your managers or mentors all right I got one final question for you here Gil we called the civil engineering career elevator advice question if you got into an elevator with a an engineer in our industry and you had 30 to 40 seconds with him or her and you had to give them career advice in that short period of time what would it be well first I'd stop the elevator now I I would say focus on improving your communication skills you're often going to find yourself to be the smartest person in the room but your success will not be determined by how smart you are but by well how you can communicate what you know to a group of what will often be non-engineers so if you can check your ego at the door and have some empathy that they don't know what you know that's why they hired you then you can realize that the obligation of being the smartest person in the room is to teach them something people will hire someone who they think can teach them something so if you regard your writing and speaking ability as one of or your most important skill set and if they aren't where you want them to be then dedicate yourself to improving them how by reading by paying attention and thinking that your communication is important and by asking for honest feedback from someone skilled at it awesome that that's great advice and that's a great way for us to to wrap it up here once again Gil Han's president and CEO of msa professional services you can check out Gil on LinkedIn he's pretty active online and Gil thanks so much for spending some time with us here on the civil engineering podcast thank you Anthony i hope you enjoyed this episode of the civil engineering podcast on youtube produced by the engineering management institute we're always looking for new ways to help engineers become effective managers and leaders you can view all of our content on our website at engineeringmanagementstitute.org and be sure to subscribe to our youtube channel here for our weekly videos until next time please continue to engineer your own success