Senior Workplace Leader

The Senior Workplace Leader drives growth through cultivating client relationships, establishing new market opportunities, and by providing leadership across the NELSON platform. As a Senior Workplace Leader, you will advance NELSON’s market reputation and brand by actively engaging in industry associations and events, and through expanding existing client relationships and developing new lines of work. In this role, the Senior Workplace Leader is responsible for providing an understanding of all pertinent business information considerations, tangible and intangible, needed for strategic planning and operational decisions. The Senior Workplace Leader is the face of NELSON in the market as well as the Leader within the Workplace practice team in Chicago.

Additionally, the Senior Workplace Leader is ultimately responsible for business performance – revenue, profitability, design, and technical for Workplace within the Chicago office.

Attributes to support the NELSON Culture:  Guiding Principles

• Culture of Transformation: Act as a community to accelerate firm impact
• Dedicated to Progression: A 360 approach to innovation and design
• Enable Engagement: Storytelling that educates and inspires
• Design with Purpose: Sustainable form and function

Qualifications:

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty and responsibility satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Critical features of this job are described under the headings below. They may be subject to change at any time due to reasonable accommodation or other reasons.

Required Knowledge and Skills:

• Ultimate accountability for growth of NELSON in Workplace
• Focused on creating an overarching strategic plan for Workplace growth in Chicago
• Execute strategy to include, but not limited to, retaining and expanding current client relationships, driving increased revenue and profit streams, selection of new strategic business ventures for development and launch, and move forward the NELSON vision
• Gather market and competitor intelligence and translate into effective positioning of NELSON and continuously gauge appropriate service offerings
• Collaborate with Practice Leaders and others to develop a thoughtful and integrated go-to-market strategy
• Serve as an ambassador of NELSON to the market ensuring the growing strength of the NELSON brand across current and future business opportunities
• Foster an environment to elevate and support NELSON’s, Vision, Mission, Values and Culture and Strategic Priorities
• Maintain vigilance on all business Profit and Loss indices to include but not limited to accounts receivable, overhead and support expenses, staff utilization, overtime, staffing, and other business projection tools
• Establish and manage annual revenue projections for the market and Workplace in concert with other  Leadership
• Partner with Practice Leadership to ensure that talent planning and management occurs at all leadership levels including succession planning, talent assessments and training and development
• Possess code knowledge and ensure team has incorporated permitting requirements into the deliverables
• Basic knowledge of design, trends, construction methodology, materials application and manufacturer-supplier appropriateness
• Basic knowledge of sustainability, integrated design and LEED, Well, EnergyStar guidelines
• Proficiency in Deltek Vision
• Proficiency in understanding of financial management concepts
• Proficiency in MS Office, including Word, Excel, and Outlook
• Continuously remained focused on attracting and retaining top talent and driving a culture of diversity and inclusion

Essential Duties and Responsibilities include the following. Other duties may be assigned:

Leadership

• Maintain and build a deep industry network, including Key players and “who’s who” in the Workplace represented
• Grow revenue organically, as well as grow new clients 
• Build the organization towards meeting future Workplace opportunities
• Skilled vision caster and communicator with well-developed and proven motivational skills
• Self-confident personal style; able to present ideas to important constituencies, earning the confidence and trust of others; perceived as a thought leader; have the ability to deal with ambiguity and adapt to changing business conditions
• Ability to integrate Workplace market, competition, trends, organizational state and other issues into a coherent vision for change, development and growth
• Expert team builder and experienced leader of business operations, staff development, business development, small team operations and executive senior staff teams
• Multifaceted business experience, able to effectively act across every Service Line and Practice Area and support function in the region
• Intelligent, decisive, quick, forward-thinking, strategic, and tactical executive; proven ability to work across an organization at all levels with technical, creative, and executive team members
• Proven strong “seller doer”
• Individual mentoring skills across multiple business disciplines; capable of fostering creativity and innovation at every level of the Workplace market enterprise
• Intimate understanding of business financial reporting and keen ability to translate these into successful business strategies and operational business processes
• Experienced team player with demonstrated ability to communicate and execute NELSON strategies and visions to the market
• Establish ability to appropriately delegate authority and maintain accountability in a large organization
• Expert negotiator capable of successfully positioning the talent and quality of NELSON deliverables and mitigating client grievances
• Exceptional influencing skills and preferred experience working across many areas and levels of the organization
• Foster a “pursuit of excellence” climate within the region and NELSON as a whole
• Organize and prioritize tasks as needed to complete within the identified time frame
• Manage expectations of project leads and Teammates, cast a vision for success of the studio
• Effectively communicate, both verbally and in writing
• Lead by example
• Foster a positive studio environment and maintain harmony. Resolve conflict and have difficult conversations with Teammates, peers, upper management and/or clients when necessary
• Provide opportunities to utilize individual’s strengths for their professional development as well as team performance
• Conduct employee performance evaluations within studio on an annual basis and provide feedback to the Workplace Leadership Team; recommend salary increases for teammates with Business Leader
• Conduct performance evaluations for your direct reports within studio as needed
• Advise Practice Leadership of project lead performance and team(s) dynamic on a quarterly basis
• Set goals with project leads and create opportunities to achieve these goals
• Deliver feedback to inspire continuous learning
• Develop project leads 
• Mentor all Teammates in the execution of their responsibilities
• Provide studio performance feedback to Practice Leaders
• Mentor project leads on written and oral communication, presentation skills, time management, and prioritizing their team’s workload
• Develop network to support the recruiting efforts for the firm
• Embrace specific steps to create, develop, and promote a diverse workforce and to promote an inclusive environment

Education / Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree in Interior Design, Architecture, or Engineering from an accredited University; PLUS
• 10 years’ experience; or equivalent in appropriate education and experience in design profession and/or real estate consulting with at least 5 years’ experience managing or leading a team.

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