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At last month's ASAE Annual Meeting and Exposition, one takeaway echoed through almost every executive session: the association environment is evolving faster than ever. Just as those of us in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) space must continuously update technical standards to stay relevant, leadership styles must adapt too. The skills that brought someone into the CEO seat five years ago aren't necessarily what will keep them successful today. Modern l

A few years ago, "quiet quitting" dominated workplace conversations. Employees were doing the bare minimum, disengaging without ever formally checking out. The story has since shifted. The bigger threat today isn't the employee who stops trying. It's the one who keeps going, while quietly running on empty. This is silent burnout. Unlike traditional burnout, which often ends in absence or resignation, silent burnout hides in plain sight. Silent burnout is a low-visibility form

There is a particular type of uncertainty that comes with starting a new job. Even if a new employee feels qualified, experienced and motivated to contribute, there is doubt that comes with not yet knowing the inner workings of a company. Organizations are known to spend considerable time and resources on structured onboarding, but that preparation tends to fall short when it comes to questions about communication, culture and processes. These answers do not live in documenta

When professionals move into leadership roles, the capabilities that earned them recognition rarely match what the role demands most. Technical expertise and individual performance may lead to promotion, but managing people, navigating organizational dynamics and thinking strategically require a different set of skills. Leadership mentoring helps bridge that gap by providing emerging managers with guidance, perspective and real-world insight that experience alone often cannot

Something significant shifted when ChatGPT crossed 100 million users in early 2023. Marketers and communications professionals who had spent years perfecting their SEO playbooks suddenly found themselves asking a new question: what happens when people stop searching Google and start asking AI? AI-powered search tools do not index pages the way traditional search engines do. They synthesize information from across the web, drawing heavily on sources they deem credible: trade p

AI assistants now sit between your organization and the people searching for answers about your work. For every search query, topline results are now returned by chatbots that base their answers on sources they trust. The question for every marketing team in the concrete and construction sector then becomes: is your content among those sources? A recent Muck Rack report, "What Is AI Reading?" (May 2026), analyzed the citations AI systems generate across millions of queries. P

Getting leadership to value marketing can feel like an uphill climb. A recent SMPS webinar, "How to inspire AEC leadership to care about marketing," offered practical ways to change that. Here are the takeaways worth carrying back to your team. Know your differentiators and revisit them often You cannot sell what makes your firm special if you have not defined it. The webinar stressed that differentiators are rarely generic. They come from digging into who your clients are, w

Just as it is important to have a mentor who is further along than you in your particular field, it is also beneficial to be mentored when learning a new skill that is outside of your current job scope. This is called cross-functional mentoring. This is the third installment of our four-part series on workplace mentoring. In part one Laura Merritt examined the lifelong nature of mentorship and why the need for guidance does not expire at any career stage. In part two Kendra T