MEL #048 | From Drawings and Calculations to Global Influence through Executive Communication Skills with James Hanley

HANLEY (00:00)

You might not have all the tools that you think you have, but it’s still your responsibility to find a way to get it done. At the end of the day, we never know what kind of obstacles we’re going to face, right?

You have to be flexible.

You have to be able to take what you’re given and turn lemons into lemonade.

ADAMS (00:30)

In this episode, I speak with James Hanley, Senior Director at CBRE, where he leads a global team of engineers and program managers shaping the future of real estate through strategic innovation, talent development, and technology integration. A love of roller coasters inspired James to study mechanical engineering at Loyola University, where he then went, as he calls it, full nerd by adding math and physics minors.

His early career zigzagged from selling pumps and boilers to multiple engineering roles that were heavily impacted by the recession. Through perseverance and networking, he eventually landed a turning point role that led to his current position at CBRE. 

In our leadership segment, James describes two crucible leadership moments. First, he took over a massive project when both the lead engineer and project manager left, only to have no one show up to his carefully organized kickoff meeting because he had not included them early. 

Second, he was told he could not have any senior engineers for a critical deadline and instead received seven interns, which forced him to rethink his plan and leverage their strengths to deliver ahead of schedule. 

James encourages aspiring engineering leaders to look beyond technical depth and invest in communication, people skills, and the ability to get things done. He shares how networking helped him navigate a tough economy and how a manager’s question about his two, five, and 10-year plans pushed him to pursue an MBA and executive communication skills. For James, leadership growth means using setbacks as teachers and deliberately developing non-technical skills that unlock the impact of technical expertise. 

Explore the full episode summary, including guest bio, key takeaways, transcript, and recommended resources in the show notes at drangeliqueadams.com slash podcast. Without further delay, here is my conversation with James Hanley.

ADAMS (02:12)

Hi, James.

Welcome to Mastering Engineering Leadership.

HANLEY (02:15)

Angelique, so great to be here. Thank you so much for having me. I can’t wait to talk.

ADAMS (02:18)

I can’t wait either. Can you start by telling us how you got into engineering?

HANLEY (02:22)

Of course, yes. So, you know, when I was younger, I was really fortunate to be pretty good at math and at science. And I was absolutely captivated by roller coasters. And so when I was trying to make a decision about what to study when I was in college, remember all the different

amusement parks I had been to when I was younger and I couldn’t think of anything more that I wanted to do than to design roller coasters someday. And that’s what made me want to study mechanical engineering.

ADAMS (02:50)

Wow, that’s a great inspirational moment. I’m actually just curious, do you still like roller coasters? Because I have found that I liked them when I was younger and now I’m at an age where I don’t like them so much. I’m just curious.

HANLEY (03:03)

Yeah, yeah, you know, I went a long time without going on one with the pandemic and all that. But my family and I went to Hershey Park over the summer and I was able to go on some of the big ones and it was just as great. You know, I was definitely a little more nervous, but yeah, no, it was was absolutely exhilarating.

ADAMS (03:20)

That’s great. And so when you went to Loyola University to study mechanical engineering, mean, did you find that it was close to what you were expecting, having this roller coaster inspiration in your mind?

HANLEY (03:34)

Yeah, yeah, you know, when I was studying, right, it’s, you follow kind of this path where you take the classes that are prescribed to you, you know, you have a certain degree, your target, they give you, you know, 80 % of your coursework is selected for you. And so, you know, from that perspective, it was very much online with the direction I wanted to go. But while I was there, I realized I was interested in, you know, so much more about engineering than just that. And I wanted to kind of be able to build on that.

And so I ended up using all of my electives to get minors in math and in physics as well while I was there. So yeah, I went full nerd, but ⁓ you know, I try and think it was worth it.

ADAMS (04:14)

I’m sure it was. So can you tell us a little bit about like what have you been doing with your math and physics and engineering degrees? Can you tell us a little bit about your career?

HANLEY (04:22)

Yeah, yeah, sure. So when I first got out of school, I wanted to again design roller coasters. Not a very big market for roller coaster designers

father basically said to me that I need to get a job or else I’m getting kicked out of the house. so, you know, right then and there, I decided I would, you know, look for something. And I found my first job being a sales representative for pumps and boilers, which I didn’t really know very much about. And so, you know, I spent the first few months I was working.

just sat in front of a textbook, learning about pumps, learning about boilers, how you size them, what they do, this, that, and the other thing. And I went to visit New York City with one of our outside salespeople one day, and I went to my first engineering office, and there I saw a bunch of other people just like me, engineering degrees, working on drawings, working on designing buildings, and it absolutely captivated me. And so a few months later, I…

I got my first job at an engineering firm. And so, you know, was off to the races after that.

ADAMS (05:25)

That’s interesting that your first job was actually in sales. And I’m just curious if you think you picked up anything in that experience that has been useful to you throughout the rest of your career.

HANLEY (05:37)

Yeah, you know, it is interesting you say that when I was in that role, I was the youngest person in the entire company. You know, I just graduated school as 20, 21 years old and really had a lot of trouble relating to a lot of the people that were there. Right. But, you know, in that I was able to kind of look at all of what they were doing from the outside, you know, and I saw a lot of different approaches.

to working with the customers, right?

so you have this cast of characters there, right? You got the burly guy who had been there for 30 years. He was a little prickly, would only do things the one way, but he was really, really good at working with the customers. Yeah. The other people who were a little bit more kind of intuitive and would try and approach things from a place of understanding, let’s get to what they need. But what I learned was that, you know, when you’re dealing with a customer, they’re all different.

and they all have different needs. a one size fits all approach is not an approach that works when you’re looking at a diversity of different people you’re trying to work with.

ADAMS (06:38)

Yeah, I think that’s a really important insight and it’s good that you got that early. I definitely think that it’s one of the challenges that engineers often have about working cross-functionally is recognizing that people have different communication styles and different interests and different motivations and things like that. so for sure, at least in my own career, when I had to deal directly with customers, that became much more diverse and varied than even working cross-functionally inside of my own organization.

And so after that sales job, what were you up to next?

HANLEY (07:09)

Yeah, so I got my job, my first big engineering firm is very exciting. And, you know, at that time, it was the very beginning of the recession. And so there’d been a lot of talk about the economy and I felt really fortunate, right? Like I had a good job, I was just starting something. I got promoted a couple times really quickly, first to be in charge of a small department, the CAD department, people in charge of making the drawings and then to become, you know, a proper engineer. But

Unfortunately for that job and for a few afterward, know, the economy had a huge impact on my career trajectory. So I lost that one and I lost a couple more after that. And it was a really hard time. You know, I really doubted myself. It’s really easy to blame things, know, blame the economy, blame the people around you, blame the leadership. But at the end of the day, I just

continued and pursued my engineering career. And eventually I found myself in a place where I could settle in and really grow. And so that was kind of my first long-term most important job, the turning point job for me. And even then on the first day, wasn’t all smooth sailing. I came in and they said that they weren’t gonna have a computer for me. And they didn’t say for how long. And so they said, mark up some plans. But I knew

I knew that I had been persevering through this for several years at that point. And so just to kind of keep going, follow the process. I feel really fortunate to have been able to take that starting experience and get to where I am today.

ADAMS (08:42)

I appreciate you sharing your experience there because we know that we are in a tough economy now. our listeners are probably struggling with those same things. We’ve got other listeners who are trying to get their first job.

What were some of the things you were thinking about? How were you showing up every day? Just what was your process going through those couple of years when things were tough?

HANLEY (09:03)

Yeah, you know, it wasn’t without its ups and downs, right. But I think that when I look at the big picture, the thing that helped me was networking, you know, and at the time, I wouldn’t have called it networking because I kind of at that time thought networking meant going to conferences and business cards. Right. But it was talking to my buddies, you know, people I knew from high school who ended up getting engineering degrees, asking what they were doing, or even people from that first engineering job.

asking what they were up to. And those ended up being kind of the ones who pointed me to the right people to talk to, you know. And so for anybody who is graduating in the economy right now, you know, think back to the people that have been there in your life, know, friends, teachers, role models. And, you know, that’s going to be the start of your network. And they might be the people who help you. never know who it’s going to be the one who does it, but

You won’t be able to access it unless you start to try.

ADAMS (09:58)

can you tell us a little bit about what you’re up to now?

HANLEY (10:00)

so now I work at a company called CBRE, the global director of engineering for one of our client accounts. And it’s my job to standardize and proceduralize everything that we’re doing for how we operate the buildings. And I get a little bit involved in how the buildings get designed. I get a little bit involved in how we kind of do the replacements, but most of my job is choreographing the work of lots and lots of individuals around the world.

ADAMS (10:35)

James, can you give us an example of when you had to use leadership skills in your work?

HANLEY (10:39)

Yeah, absolutely. You know, the first time that I had ⁓ a leadership experience, I had started a new job. So this was after the turning point job. I just started a new job. I was the number two mechanical engineer on a huge project, biggest project I ever worked on. And within six months after I started, the number one mechanical engineer had left the company and the project manager had left the company. And the partner who was in charge came to me and said, you know, what we’re going to do?

And so I said to him, I think I’m ready for this. I’m going to really work hard to kind of get this over the line. And if you’re willing to trust me with it, I’m not going to let you down. long story short, we were on the train for the construction kickoff meeting the next morning.

the kickoff meeting started all up that they already had 200 RFIs for us and we were three months behind schedule on day one. Wow. immediately, you know, it was a tough situation. But, you know, I thought to myself, all right, what are we going to do here? Number one, let’s get organized. Figure out who’s got to do what, get everybody together and come up with a plan.

And, you know, that kind of is the first time I was really trying to use those leadership type skills, those organizational type skills. Um, you know, looking back on it, what wasn’t as effective as I could have been, you know, I did all this work to get organized. I scheduled a meeting with the team. This was pre COVID. So everybody’s in person and everybody’s little packets out on the boardroom table, uh, ready to go. know, uh, look to the clock meeting was supposed to start and, and, nobody showed up.

And, you know, I, it was tough. It was real tough. Yeah. And I, you know, I went to my boss and talked to him about it. It’s like, you know, you might know a lot about design, but you got a lot to learn about people. And so that was kind of the start for me on the path that I’ve been on in the past decade or so of trying to kind of learn.

these non-technical skills, leadership skills, and just different ways to interact with other people and kind of the path that got me to where I am today.

ADAMS (12:41)

So were you able to do any post-mortem on that missed meeting? did people not know about it? Did they not think it was important? Were you able to figure that out?

HANLEY (12:49)

the fatal flaw on my part was not including people from day one. You know, I spent about two weeks trying to get ready for this meeting, but what I should have done was brought everybody to the table right away and let them know we got a challenge, right? And let them know that, that I’m to do everything in my power to help us be organized and help us to respond to it and let them know that I was going to need their support, you know, and kind of start that conversation, start getting the motion then so that that meeting would have been more follow through than the start of the swing, so to speak.

And so that is kind of how I think I would approach it now, today, differently. And I think I would have gotten a different outcome.

ADAMS (13:24)

how did you pick yourself up and dust yourself off after that kind of, as you called it, a gut punch to your leadership? Here you are, you raise your hand for this big important project. You realize it’s not gonna be as simple as maybe you had originally thought. to do all this organizing and now you don’t have,

maybe internal support that you thought you had. how do you pick yourself up and dust yourself off after those early setbacks?

HANLEY (13:45)

Yeah. So, ⁓ you know, the, the, one of the messages I got that later that day was that, you know, this isn’t about me, right. It was about the situation and that, know, if I keep going up and doing the best job I can, people are going to respond to that. And so that’s what I did. I went and I kind of broke that larger meeting into smaller, departmental type meetings. Right. So I met with the mechanical engineers, met with the electrical engineers.

the plumbing fire protection, et cetera, et cetera, kind of gone through each of their lists, right? And did it in smaller sessions. And I was able to kind of start building momentum from there. There were more ups and downs, of course, along the way, but as soon as I was really leaning into it and showing everyone that I was gonna do the work, think that they started getting on board with the fact that they could contribute and they could kind of participate in the success as well.

another leadership challenge that I faced during my career was I was working on a retail store for a tech company, I needed to put together, you know, a set of drawings. So I was looking at what we had on the drawings against what we needed to do. And I realized we were gonna be too senior engineer short. You know, I needed people that can come in

that could do calculations that could kind of work on their own and then make adjustments to the drawings to make sure that we covered all of our bases. And so I went to the principal in charge and said, Hey, you know, for the next two weeks, I’m going to need two additional senior engineers. And they said to me, well, we don’t have two senior engineers to give you for the next two weeks. In fact, in fact, there’s no even engineers available. He said, here’s what you can have. Like you can have seven interns.

We don’t have anything for them to do. And I thought to myself, my gosh, how am I going to get this done with seven interns when I thought I needed two senior engineers? And so the partner in charge said something to me that was really, really powerful. He’s like, look, you you might not have tools that you think you have, but it’s still your responsibility to find a way to get it done. And so he’s like, so you could take the interns or you could leave them. I said, I guess if that’s what we got, I’m going to take them.

And so my plan had been to give the senior engineers a list of things to do. I couldn’t do that with the interns, right? They had been in the office for about a month and they were going to leave in a month. so, you know, the next, for the next four weeks, I was going to take up basically all their time. And so, you know, I had to kind of rethink this and I thought about the interns strengths, right? They weren’t going be able to do the calculations I was looking at. They weren’t necessarily going to know the codes.

that they would need to follow or anything like that. But what they were really good at was making models in Revit. And so I thought to myself, okay, well, let’s kind of break the work apart. Instead of combining the calculations and the modeling and the code, why don’t I take on the calculations and the code part and just strictly keep them to the modeling piece? And I said, all right, you know what, I’m going to try it.

The next morning I came into the office and I printed out a full set of drawings, right? Again, the intern strengths was modeling and the drawings, not necessarily the other stuff. Though, instead of asking them to do calculation or anything like that, I just took the drawings and started to mark up exactly the changes we needed to make. You know, I had a vision of where we needed to go, but I hadn’t had a chance to sit down there and do it. And so while I was marking them up, I had the seven interns.

sitting around me, was talking them through exactly the reasons why I was making these changes. You know, so gonna change the pipe elevation to this because it clashes with that. You know, we’re gonna make this stuff bigger. We gotta get more air through it. These are the types of conversations we were having. I went with sheet by sheet and ended up splitting them out and giving four or five sheets to each person and said, all right, go and pick it up. And then that freed me up the rest of the day.

to work on making sure the equipment was right, to work on making sure that we were compliant with the codes. And so, you know, at the end of the first day, I thought to myself, all right, well, that’s good. I haven’t checked what anybody did. So hopefully it all came out right. And so the next day I scheduled a follow-up, another war room meeting where it printed out every drawing again. We brought the markups from the day before back. We cross-checked against where we were. And then we went and we did another round of markups for the team. Right? So I was really leaning into the strengths.

of these interns and making sure that we’re kind of capitalizing on what we could. And then ultimately this plan became really, really successful. We finished ahead of schedule, which was kind of hard for me to believe. And I was able to get extra coordinating time in with the architect to make sure that our rooms were gonna be the right size. And this was construction documents. So this was big money for the client. So it ended up being a really happy accident, right? But.

⁓ That is kind of one of the experiences that I’m most proud of when I think back to my leadership journey as an engineer.

ADAMS (18:23)

That’s a great example. there’s a couple of things that come to mind one is you could have easily just rejected the whole idea, right? And just been sort of threw up. guess you weren’t going to just throw up your hands and say, I can’t do the project. I mean, that’s really not an option if you want to stay employed. So we wouldn’t pick that one. But you could have really pushed back. And I could see how some people could get into such a negative headspace.

that they would have not come up with this really creative solution that you came up with, which was not only just like, OK, let me see how I can use these interns, but really leverage their strengths and design this workflow where you could get what you needed out of them. But you’re also really giving them this incredible experience of really, mean, they’re on the ground. They’re actually making something happen. And they’re understanding why things need to be changed. And so I could imagine.

that if I talk to any one of those seven interns today, they probably, that was, I’m sure, a crucible moment for them as well. And then to actually over exceed, some of the deliverables in terms of time and things like that was really incredible. So I am curious how you thought about this creative solution.

HANLEY (19:30)

Yeah, it was not nearly as eloquent as you make it sound. Honestly, I had no clue what to do. You know, I just know that when I was young and I was learning, I learned by the sing on markups. And so I just tried to channel that and I did not expect it to be extremely successful. You know, I was already kind of planning for the inevitable thing to go wrong. But so, yeah, so I just kind of tried to think back to when I was

young and I was learning how to do the designs and try and replicate that. And yeah, I mean, hopefully the interns all, you know, thought it was a really great experience for them too. But, you know, at the end of the day, we never know what kind of obstacles that we’re going to face, right? And, and you have to be flexible. You have to be able to take what, what you’re given and, you know, turn lemons into lemonade.

ADAMS (20:30)

All right, James, as we wrap up, what advice do you have for engineers who are interested in pursuing leadership roles?

HANLEY (20:36)

Yeah, what a great question. One I could talk about for a long time for sure. But, you know, I kind of start to answer that with a story about myself. You know, when I was just learning, every single one of my managers, every single step of the way told me become more technical, learn more about what doing, learn more about the technicalities of the other trades. And, you know, I did.

And so I kind of like looked at that and you know, when, when you’re a hammer, everything else is a nail. And so I started giving advice to other people, get more technical, which works sometimes, you know, and, and, and didn’t work others, right? When, somebody told me they wanted to pursue entrepreneurship and I told them to get their PE, there was a little bit of a missed missed opportunity there. But you know, what I’ve come to learn is that no matter how strong you are, technically, if you cannot effectively communicate,

what you’re trying to do. If you can’t work with other people and if you can’t find ways to get things done, that technical skillset kind of cannot really be used to its fullest capacity. And so my recommendation for anybody who’s looking to pursue leadership is to start to learn about those soft skills. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t become an engineer because I talk good. So…

learning how to speak more effectively, how to use the right words, how to present in front of groups of people, how to get your ideas in a kind of order of thinking so that people know what you’re talking about, to have the appropriate context and be more memorable. Those are all non-technical skills that I’ve kind of really leaned on over the course of my growth through my career. And, you know, I would have never had.

kind of the foresight to learn about some of those things had I not had some of those negative experiences that I mentioned earlier. But, you know, looking back, I realized that they were absolutely transformative for me and for my career.

So when I was, you know, working at CBRE, my first job here, I realized that, you know, I wanted more, you know, I wanted to do more than just the engineering designs. And I was speaking with my manager about it. And he said, All right, well, here’s what I want you to do. Come up with a two year plan, come up with a five year plan, come up with a 10 year plan. And you know, being the, the young and a little bit more rash individual, I

had a two-year plan, open a new office, five-year plan, open more offices, 10-year plan, become the CEO. know, CBRE really big company, right? And so my manager said to me, does the two-year plan and the five-year plan really point to the 10-year plan? And I guess a really, really insightful way to look at it, right? But they didn’t, and they weren’t even close. so he asked me what types of things that I thought I needed to be able to actually achieve the 10-year plan.

And I was like, well, I need to know a lot more about business. And he’s like, all right, so what are you going to do about it? Guess I’m going to get an MBA. He’s like, okay. And, know, so this was never not him telling me to do it, but, me kind of come into realization that to get to that place I wanted to go, I was going to need a much more diverse skillset. And also that day, then and there I applied to a couple of programs and ended up getting in and studying at a Baylor.

for their online MBA. One of the things that drew me to them was that it was the same degree as their in-person MBA. And my concentration was in executive communication. And so, you I was going through this program, working full-time, studying full-time. Every single one of my assignments, I would think back to my experience as an engineer and think about, you know, how the thing I was learning kind of interacts with the world of consulting engineering. And I realized that

You know, without being able to effectively communicate, you cannot actually get your intent across on the engineering drawings. You can’t make a good business case. You know, you can’t differentiate yourself, right? So that means that you’re kind of competing in terms of a race to the bottom for revenue. And so I’ve learned so many things about being a better engineer that has been tremendously valuable for me ever since.

ADAMS (24:34)

James, thank you so much for sharing your insights with us.

HANLEY (24:37)

Absolutely. Thank you for having me.