In addition to leading Development One Architects and being its principal architect, J. Bruce Camino has led a stellar aviation career and has a proud video that calls him The Flying Architect. “I think that if more [people in this field] were able to find that passion outside work, they would enjoy the work a lot more and stick with their firm longer—not burn out as fast,” he said. 
 
But there’s an even bigger retention tool that Camino has found: employee coaching. He turned to it after working with the staff at PSMJ Resources and another business organization. He found one-on-one coaching very beneficial and thought, “I can afford to give every employee that experience—a sounding board for their emotions and feelings.”  
 
So he hired a life coach to work with each of his 20 employees and conduct one-on-one Zoom calls for about 30 minutes each month. It’s a relatively small number of people, but it showed strong belief and commitment by Camino—and perhaps a blueprint for better retention and career growth. 
 
“It is definitely something that our employees see as a tremendous benefit,” Camino said. “When we hired this coach to come in, it was primarily to make sure that employees weren't letting stories build in their head.” Camino once had a bad experience with a colleague who invented a negative story just because he later found out he wasn’t making eye contact with her.  
 
“This life coach is able to clarify all those things, not only work-related, but personal as well. We're humans. We all have issues and challenges. And sometimes it might affect the work environment. Bringing in somebody to work through issues with employees has been very instrumental in the success of the company.” 
 
As for his Flying Architect status, which has also helped bring in jobs for the firm with NASA, JPL, the Air Force, and other similar companies, Camino is pleased to have combined his work with his passion and “find more purpose in the profession.” 
 
Coaching on Another Stage 
 
Purpose also comes up in a discussion with John Meng, who is both a vice president at a large west coast engineering firm, which he joined a year ago, and a long-time career coach. 
 
“It's a process because we're rewriting our habits,” Meng said about the coaching he is now delivering company-wide. “And yet, I'm seeing positive results—people taking actions that they would not have taken before. There's a new level of accountability and support.” 
 
This is where purpose comes in. Meng talks about the importance of being clear on the outcome you want and writing down why it matters. He then wants employees to ask, “’What is the purpose?’ It has to be powerful,” he said. “The purpose is the fuel.” Responsibility is also important. “It is responding to what has occurred. Sometimes responsibility becomes a blame-and-shame guilt game. I [prefer to] look at it and say, ‘Well, that happened, so now what?’” 
 
Next comes implementation. “That's one of the struggles I see in engineering organizations,” Meng said. “We talk a lot about what we should do, but we don't give it a shot. It's not knowledge that’s lacking. It’s a structure for implementing, for actually applying the tools. And I've seen it from companies big and small.  
 
Meng said the foundation of his coaching started when he “went into the Tony Robbins world. It gave me a little bit of structure.  
 
“That's what we put into practice now,” he said. “Everyone chooses their goals, and we put together a 12-week plan on how to achieve those results. Then we follow up every week. ‘What's the progress?’ We do that as a team, and if we need support, we ask for it. We also have buddy pairs—two people teamed together, holding each other accountable for achieving their goals. I found that structure works surprisingly well.” 
 
“The final thing, and this is probably the most important thing that we tend to forget, is to celebrate,” said Meng, who has completed several Ironman triathlons and knows something about that. “But don't celebrate the result. Celebrate the taking of action.”  
 
More Coaching Tips 
 
PSMJ senior consultant/instructor Jonathan Wilson says that “coaching is probably the most confusing term out there for people who are not athletes. 
 
“If you're in a leadership role inside of a firm—could be a project manager but more a principal-level role or higher—you need a coach. Preferably it’s an external coach. And I'm going to help you by not telling you what to do because that's consulting.  
 
“I'm going to help you by becoming a thinking partner who doesn't have to think about all the other contexts that people like that have when they interact with others. The context of I'm your employee or your spouse or your business partner. They all have an interest in possibly getting you to think a different way. I don't.” 
 
Here are more tips from Wilson:  

- Coaching has to focus on people skills. “What makes projects hard is that you need to work with people,” Wilson said. “You need to reach a level of people skills that can help you and your team shepherd these projects from beginning to end.” 
 
- Accountability is huge. Did you do it? Today is Friday, and you said it was going to be done by the end of the week. Is it done? 
 
- Coaching needs to be learned. “We send people to a two-day training, and then we expect them to come back and be able to coach their people,” Wilson said. “It doesn't work like that because it's a skill set that you need to learn over time. And you really need to learn it from a coach.” 
 
- Collaborate, don’t solve. When it comes time to coach, what we're trying to do is become that thinking partner, that collaborator, Wilson said. 
 
- When you're coaching, the skill set is listening. “And listening means we're not raising a hand in our brain and solving the problem. We're trying to figure out what the actual problem is here. Is this a skill gap? Is this a confidence problem?  
 
- Coaching is not sharing your knowledge. “If you just try to apply your solution to your team members' problems, it may or may not work,” Wilson said. “But you're robbing them of the opportunity to grow professionally. Better to come up with an action plan.” 

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