Again and again at my booth, I help people who have problems. And a big part of helping them is just listening to them. I often feel like a therapist, with my “uh huhs” and “I knows”. You start to see that the value in therapy – that just talking about the problem helps you see the solution.

In my residential practice though, it is more about counseling rather than therapy going on. Working through the problems and asking questions often exposes assumptions and previous disagreements. It gets more interesting as you try to determine who has the power in the situation. Often it’s not the one doing the talking.

So my job becomes even more interesting as I try to craft a solution that solves both sets of problems. The new clients I met yesterday knew that they needed an architect, but also knew the solutions they didn’t want. The one I came up with seemed to please them both – and that surprised them.

I recall in school one of my professor cautioning against residential design, but mostly because the clients are often scared by the amount of money they are spending, and get tense about the process. She felt that retail clients were much nicer because they weren’t spending their money and they understood about the need to spend money to attract money.

But I do wish that there were a course in school that covered programming, pre-design, and client management. Including role-playing games or real couples for us to work with. Because I didn’t do this kind of meeting in any of my previous offices. If it weren’t for my Quaker upbringing and skills developed raising four children, I would be fumbling about and making a hash of it. Instead, I feel that it’s one of my strengths-that I listen.

Listening is a difficult skill to develop, especially in our profession where the emphasis is on conveying our knowledge. And again I am really grateful for the booth and the skills it is developing in me. I often tell people that one reason I continue to do the booth is so that I can practice for my practice.