Page 184 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows
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LEADERS ARE PERSUASIVE

                 “For years and years architects had a code of ethics that had a prohi-
             bition against competition on the basis of fees; they had fee schedules that
             were set,” McGinty explained. “The Justice Department ordered the AIA
             to stop all that. At the same time, there were architects in the AIA who
             were looking for new roles in society such as doing construction themselves,
             which had also been prohibited. And then, of course, the environmental
             movement was coming on, and the civil rights movement too. There was
             a great effort to widen the profession, to be more diverse, and to bring in
             more women and minorities, because architecture had always been a white
             gentlemen’s profession until then.”
                 McGinty was in favor of all the new trends facing the AIA and believed
             the time for change had come. Through his new leadership position he
             planned to modernize the concepts of architectural practice to address
             societal trends such as consumerism and conservation, and he planned to
             waste not one minute in doing so. He proposed a series of resolutions to the
             convention while he was president-elect of the AIA. “So, being young and
             thinking I knew everything, I was certain everybody would agree with me
             and we would revolutionize the profession and reform it overnight,”
             McGinty said. “But I was wrong: Everything got voted down. I was defeated
             in my effort to rewrite the canon of ethics and redefine membership
             qualifications and professionalism.”
                 The young president-elect could not believe he had lost in his bid to
             revolutionize the organization. He wondered where he had gone wrong
             when it suddenly became clear to him that he had made the same mistake
             as the organizers of the Poor People’s Campaign. He had not taken the time
             to build a solid foundation for his ideas; he had not utilized the power of
             persuasion.
                 “As soon as I realized my mistake, I decided I would devote my year as
             president to making sure the reforms did happen. I went back to work and
             spent the following year building a greater intellectual basis for reform and
             building a broader constituency.” McGinty set out to develop a grassroots
             movement for change within the AIA. He organized a task force that
             included people with a broad range of opinions and experience, from the
             institute’s youngest associate members to its veterans, as well as industry-
             related professionals such as engineers. He traveled around the country
             visiting local groups of architects, talking with them about ethics reform
             and listening to their concerns. On the basis of the membership’s input, he

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