Ep 89: Using spoken communication to build confidence and authority with Tom Coupe
Welcome back to The Built Environment Marketing Show.
Welcome to the Built Environment Marketing Show hosted by me, marketer Ayo Abbas from Abbas Marketing.
In this episode, Ayo Abbas interviews Tom Coupe, founder of Design Communication Training and former communications leader at David Chipperfield Architects, Heatherwick Studio, and Squint Opera. Tom discusses how architects can master spoken communications to build stronger client relationships, win more work, and scale their practices effectively.
We talk about:
How to adapt your design language beyond technical jargon to communicate design concepts clearly to non-architects
Ways to build client trust through storytelling
What makes great architectural communicators stand out - It's not just brilliant design but being adaptable
The need for structured preparation frameworks
How to handle unknown questions confidently
Ways to scale relationship management across a firm
And much more.
Resources and links
About the show
The Built Environment Marketing Show is hosted by marketing consultant and content creator Ayo Abbas from Abbas Marketing. It is a show that is unashamedly about marketing for architects and engineers, as well as bringing forward voices that we don't always get to hear.
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Transcript
Ayo Abbas 00:05
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of The Built Environment Marketing Show hosted by me Ayo Abbas. I am a marketer, speaker and trainer, and I work specifically with architects and engineers. If you want to find out more about me and my work. Head to www.abbasmarketing.com
Ayo Abbas 00:25
So today, we have another special guest in this interview, and I am speaking to Tom Coupe. Tom has had an illustrious career in the architecture world, working mainly in on the kind of communications leadership side. He now runs his own firm called Design Communication, and previously, he has worked at practices including David Chipperfield Architects, Heatherwick Studio and also Squint/Opera, who, to be honest, I've always fangirled for a very, very long time. I love their stuff. Right in today's episode, we talk about a topic we've not spoken about before, spoken communications, and we also look at confidence as well, and how important it is to kind of build that in our communication style. So today we are talking about spoken communications and how it can help firms to deal with clients, how it can help firms to build relationships, and also how it can help them in terms of their growth and winning more work. It's a really, really fascinating, very practical interview that I hope you enjoy. So please do listen to the interview and let me know what you think. Take care. Bye.
Ayo Abbas 01:42
Hi Tom, thanks so much for coming onto the show. And can you introduce yourself and your role and what you do?
Tom Coupe 01:56
Hi Ayo, thank you so much for having me. I love this show, so it's great to be here. My name is Tom and my background is architecture and communications, where they kind of cross over. So I've always been interested in both, and I've had all kinds of different roles in communications and in in the kind of built environment and the creative industries. I'm now running a communications training company for specifically for architects,
Ayo Abbas 02:22
My first question is, do architects need communications help?
Tom Coupe 02:30
No, no, they're brilliant at it. I don't know why I'm doing it.
Tom Coupe 02:42
Well, I mean way back when. I mean, I've always been interested in architecture. I didn't train in it, but my parents are both architects. I've always been around it. I've always been interested in design and in a wider perspective. And I was working at the Serpentine Gallery for a long time, and I got this amazing insight, this kind of little window on how communications works for architects. So that's a what they have there is this yearly Commission where they invite an architect that's never built in the UK before. I'm sure lots of your listeners know about it. My job there was to work with the visiting architects and get them in front of the press and run their comms for them. And I got this little yearly introduction to another awesome kind of global architectural superstar and how they did comms and so and it was fascinating how different each of them were. And one thing that was really striking is how it wasn't just design that was impressive. It was their ability to talk about their work and their ability to adapt how they spoke about their work to whoever it was they were speaking to that made the difference between whether they were well received and well understood or not, and the architecture, despite them coming and actually building a physical building in six months, this amazing program where you go from concept of Christmas to opening in June. Totally mental.
Ayo Abbas 04:10
Okay, that's me being slightly sarcastic. But anyway, so what made you kind of transition from the kind of communications leader role in house at an architectural firm to kind of doing your own thing and talking about spoken communications?
Ayo Abbas 04:23
With a massive party all the time.
Tom Coupe 04:27
Yeah, you got design, you got planning, you got construction, you got fundraising, and then you got a bit. It's all super, super condensed, but and great fun. But what that means is, if you've got this super accelerated process, and they have to think about it, they have to come up with a way of talking about it, and then you have to put them in front of a million people to actually present it. And whether that was Rem Koolhaas or Herzog & de Meuron or Jean Nouvel or anyone like that, they all had their own style, and they were all fantastically good at about talking about their work. And that that made me think, oh, not only do you need to be a great designer, you need to be a great communicator to get where some of these people have got to. And when I've been working, I spent a long time working in house, for for some, for some fantastic architects and designers. And that was really the the enjoyable part of it was not only just being a spokesperson, but helping designers think about what they're doing and and translate what they're doing into something that's relevant to a super broad audience.
Ayo Abbas 05:42
And I guess in someway just communicating ideas, right? Because that's what they have to do. They have to pull someone with them on that vision and that journey. And it's like, if you watch any Foster, you know, Norman Foster films, it's how he brings you in. Like, I remember watching recently the new Manchester United stadium, and he's a master at it. Like, yeah, you know, you talk to me, he's in his 90s, but, my gosh, I didn't know anyone who could deliver a presentation like, yeah, and it's true, right?
Tom Coupe 06:07
Yeah, yeah. I mean, storytelling is a massive part of it. You got to be a spokesperson or an advocate for your design until it's built. That's that's a big part of what an architect's role is, right? You're you in your head. You can see it, but no one else can, and you can render it, or you can know, you can do visuals, but a lot of people don't respond as as well as you think they're going to respond to visuals, or even filmmaking. So you've got to talk about you've got to be able to tell a good story. And, and there are fundamentals of spoken storytelling which are super applicable to the design role, the designer role, and, and there are ways of learning it. And it's really quite simple. We're all kind of programmed to do it. You just got to focus on it for a minute and and build up that skill.
Ayo Abbas 07:03
So just take you back slightly. So what kind of what do you when you're working with architectural practices? I mean, what kind of communications issues do you tend to see, or is there a kind of trend or some kind of key things that kind of come out
Tom Coupe 07:16
when you're training to be an architect, or any kind of professional services expert. Yeah, you have your head down, and you're learning a lot of technical information year after year, and you're becoming a technical expert and a an analyst and a clear thinker, but architects particularly aren't really trained to communicate verbally their ideas in a simple way to non architects. There they there's a lot of quick work in in the training, which is about having your work analysed by other experts. So, so that's something that we get a lot of a lot of training in, but actually condensing it down and making it relevant and applicable and understandable by a wide group of stakeholders. Be those public audience or planners or investors or even developers who don't necessarily speak design language, that's problem number one, right, right. We're not used to taking doing the thing that GPs get trained to do. They actually get technical training on how to adapt their professional language for whoever it is walks through the circle, absolutely so do barristers. You know that this is something that that professional services have thought about in other industries, right? You're going to come up against people who don't understand what you do don't need to understand it, but they need to understand what it is, what it is. Yeah, want them to know
Ayo Abbas 09:08
I was gonna say, just before you go on, I was gonna say one of the best storytellers I've ever seen was a barrister. I was, I was on jury service, and he did the best closing argument in like, 10 minutes I've ever seen. Like, literally, he had the judge said to him, if you've got 10 minutes left before lunch, kind of thing. So he kept, like, he would stop his closing summary and go 10 minutes, nine minutes and kind of like ticking, like time. He was brilliant. Thing is I stopped listening, because I was like, this is just an amazing piece of just absolutely amazing.
Tom Coupe 09:40
It is and it's and it's a technical skill, right? That's something you can get trained in, and it's not even that hard. You just got to give it a bit of thought and a bit of practice, and you know, to be able to get to a level of expertise in design or in architecture, you're you're smart, you're already smart, right? You can do this. If you're given a framework. And so that's what this, this training program is really about, is just some basic tools in how to prepare and how to think about who you're talking to and what it is you want to get across, how to do it quickly, how to do it efficiently, and how to do it in a way that builds trust and understanding. If you can build trust with the person you're speaking to, you've kind of pretty much won already, right?
Ayo Abbas 10:27
Yeah, it's a huge thing. And so let's go to the framework of it. So what does that kind of comprise of, or what kind of structure do you tend to take people through?
Speaker 1 10:34
Well, when I was setting up, so I thought, what, what is different in the design advocacy role than other roles, you know, how do, how is spoken communication different in the in the architecture role and, and I thought about all those, all those different challenges. And, in fact, I did this really enjoyable kind of talking around going to probably about 50 or so firms, talking to them about the challenges that they have, and got it down to, you know, a series of basic skills that are needed in any mid senior design role, and that and that worked out into a program now, which is eight workshops, each one focusing on a slightly different theme or and a slightly different kind of scenario. So we start with the most important thing is audience. That's where we start. It's amazing how many people you come across who say, I don't really feel like I need to think about the person I'm speaking to, because I like, I've done all of the thinking and the design, design should be able to speak for itself. I just, you know, introduce Yeah, and, and that just doesn't cut it, right. Like you're a service provider, and if you can't adapt to this person you're speaking to, they're going to go find someone who can
Ayo Abbas 12:08
and they'll just shut down. That's how you lose that's how you lose a client or a conversation, right?
Tom Coupe 12:13
Yeah, yeah, you it might stop you winning it in the first place. That your ability to make a connection with your audience is most acutely important in the business winning stage, right? I mean, if you can't make a connection in the sale, then you're not you may well not get the work at all. But let's say you do it or someone else has won it for you. Now you've got to build a connection with with the person you might be working with a client for five, six years. You know, this is a long term relationship, and you've got to put some effort into it. So thinking about audience, and then thinking about, there are a few basic storytelling and messaging techniques that can be drawn in a new, we use examples of of live design projects that people are working on to actually do messaging workshops in the in the room, as it were, as part of the part of a workshop, and helping People simplify the way that they speak about a particular project. So we go through that. We do audience, we do messaging, we do storytelling, we do negotiation, handling, criticism, body language, all of these, all of these different elements that add up to a toolbox of basic but really, really necessary face to face communication skills to get people to say yes to your project,
Ayo Abbas 13:53
say yes to my project, please.
Speaker 1 13:54
It's persuasion. That's what it is. It's like be talking persuasively about architecture. That's, that's, that's what it is.
Ayo Abbas 14:02
It is. That's fascinating, because it is one of those where you think, Oh, this is all really obvious. I mean, I guess none of it is like, seriously, seriously, like, but it's common sense. But actually, you need people to point it out to you, how it's done, don't you, and how it all fits together and works as a cohesive
Tom Coupe 14:17
Yeah, I think that that's that. That's what I've learned about, you know, working on skills development with smart adults, rather than either any other educational kind of format, or working with kids or whatever. But, but they need, they need to be able to instantly go and apply it. So there's no point trying to teach anyone something that they're they're not going to need until next year or the year after. It's got to be immediately. You know, how? How do I how do I handle a difficult conversation with a client? How do I cope? How do I plan for an important presentation? How do I plan a phone call? If people are terrified of phone call, you're like, yeah. Younger professionals haven't grown up in the you know, I'm now nearly 50, and I grew up, you know, I started working in a world where everything was done on the phone, and it's still such an important skill to be able to pick up the phone. And in terms of relationship management. It is important it we can't only get by by the, you know, video calling or whatever. So skills like that, you know, instantly use useful skills. That's, that's what this is about. And so you've got to be able to make it immediately relevant and make it fun. You know, people have got to want to come to these workshops, and no one's forcing them there, right? They've got to feel that it's instantly valuable so that so building a fun and enjoyable and relevant training environment is really important.
Ayo Abbas 15:56
Are you a practice leader who isn't getting the industry profile that you deserve? I often hear from practices who do brilliant work but aren't actually getting the visibility they need to get business through the door. Practices that influence the sector aren't necessarily the best at design. They're often better at positioning their expertise and getting it seen and valued by those with budgets. I'm Ayo Abbas, and for 24 years, I've helped leading built environment firms build the recognition and authority that their expertise deserves. Drop me a line at Ayo@Abbasmarketing.com which is A-y-o at Abbasmarketing.com to set up a call where we can talk about how I can help you get a strategy and plan in place to get you to where you deserve to be.
Ayo Abbas 16:50
Do you find that architects, I mean, once you've kind of trained them, they feel a lot more confident, or how's this whole thing about, how do they build their confidence and start to kind of take it out into their kind of day to day. How do you kind of, I guess, empower them in a way?
Tom Coupe 17:04
By the time you've done, you've done all of that training, you're already practicing, you're already in a firm, you're going to be giving exciting projects to work on. You know, there's a lot there to feel proud of and feel confident about, but actually speaking about your work in an unplanned way. That's the funny thing about face to face communication slightly, you can't really fully plan it. You can't go in with a sheet of paper, and doesn't work anymore. And that's why we default to emails way too much, right? Because it's much more it's a much more managed communication tool, but it's way overused, and face to face communications is way better at building trust and understanding. So your question was about, how do you build confidence? Right? So the whole framework of this training is basically based on the idea that if you allow a smart professional to see the workings a little bit just see the matrix of how you do it, they'll have that confidence. Okay, okay, this is not a magic tool that only that person over there who's brilliant at it and seems to do it in their sleep, and I can't do it. What's the magic? If you can see that actually what they're doing is just using maybe seven, eight basic techniques, if you've understood the techniques and take them apart a little bit. You say it's, it's at, you know, messaging just simply works like this. There's four things to remember, you know, storytelling, that it's, it's a basic structure, the same thing over and over and over and over again for 1000 years.
Tom Coupe 18:59
If you take it apart, let them see it, demystify. That is the confidence building, right? You can now go into an unplanned situation thinking, oh, yeah, well, I know what I'm doing, and also, half of what we do is simple preparation tools for difficult conversations, right? Like, actually, what can you do in advance, not writing yourself a script, but putting yourself in the the other person's shoes and thinking about their pressure points. What it is they care about, what? What are they what are they worried about? What are the most important things that they might they might be interested in? What's the bit of information that they need right at the top of the conversation. Say that bit first, de stress the rest of the conversation into those kind of basic techniques. So, so it's about providing confidence through simple, memorable structure. That's, that's, that's what it is. And, you know, I was speaking to someone in a workshop the other day, and I just asked the question, well, how do you how do you cope in a conversation where your client asks you questions you don't know the answer to, yeah, because that's gonna happen, right? It's gonna happen all the time.
Ayo Abbas 20:15
You can't know everything.
Tom Coupe 20:16
can't know everything. and and this person said, I just make sure that doesn't happen. And I said, Oh, what do you mean? And she said, Well, I just prepare absolutely every question that I could ever get. Can you imagine how much work is going into
Ayo Abbas 20:38
that's exhausting, like
Tom Coupe 20:42
I've like, okay, we can do we can help. I can save you quite a lot of time here,
Ayo Abbas 20:47
the way my mind works. I would have like 150 questions. I wouldn't be meeting anyone.
Tom Coupe 20:58
No, but that's born out of a feeling of the need to be able to answer every single question. And if you can get it into someone's head, you there are ways of of being able to say, I don't have the answer without losing credibility. Then you de stress that so much, and you're much and you're much more likely to be able to go into that conversation and relax, cope with ambiguity, cope with unplanned communication, and probably you'll be able to come up with an answer if you're less stressed,
Ayo Abbas 21:34
because it's quite interesting. Because I always think there's that element, I mean, you do have a project, there's always an element of unknowns. You don't know until you're on site, right? You don't, you have there is always, always that. And I think when you think about clients, it's like, there's no reason you can't say, I don't know the answer. I'll come back to you, make a note of it. I come back to them, and it's like, I respect you for that. And I think, yeah, that's what people are worried about, right?
Tom Coupe 21:55
Yeah, yeah. And sometimes it's as simple as just, just pointing that out, right? Like that, despite you being in an expert role, it's impossible to know everything. And there are ways of articulating the fact that you don't know something that doesn't damage your credibility,
Ayo Abbas 22:12
but I guess that also draws straight back to confidence again, right, confidence in your authority to actually be able to do that. Right? Yeah, it all kind of boils into that, doesn't it?
Tom Coupe 22:23
One of the reasons I did this is I've seen from inside really big growth businesses and successful growth businesses, the pressure where you have too few people doing this, too few people running the important relationships, whether those are clients or investors or whatever, going through the process of of training up that next level of people who are who should be able to run projects should be able to Run client relationships, is, is a way of releasing the possibility for growth, right? Yeah, if you've got one person running all of the projects, running all of the client relationships, there's only so many projects you can have,
Ayo Abbas 23:10
and if something happens to that one person, right?
Tom Coupe 23:17
Yeah. So it's a business risk, but it and it's also a limit on growth. So that was a little bit one of the other kind of push factors for me thinking about, what can we do here to to broaden this skill base? Because it's it's not something that should be concentrated. It really should be you once, once you've got the technical ability to run a project, you should be able to run a project, right? You should be able to run those relationships. And there's no reason why relationship management is something that is separate from from the other technical skills.
Ayo Abbas 23:57
And also it shouldn't be something that just sits at the top of an organization, because you need to start to think about it. I mean, some of the most kind of impressive CRM kind of relationship management I've seen in firms is when it's, like, actually, when it's done for like, junior level. So they they work with their peers, and they know how to communicate. And then as they come up the ranks, and you've got these really strong relationships that have been literally going for like, 10-15, years, and that's that's so powerful. And I think it's just kind of giving people those tools which are so important for work and for life, really, right?
Tom Coupe 24:27
Yeah, yeah, it's always nice when someone comes back to work, she said, Oh, I tried that technique out on my partner the other day.
Ayo Abbas 24:34
I'm married now,
Tom Coupe 24:38
you protected my interest in those negotiations.
Ayo Abbas 24:47
You get extra payment for this.
Tom Coupe 24:50
Yeah, I need to have some kind of other remuneration there, don't I? Yeah.
Ayo Abbas 24:56
So when it comes to teams presenting as a whole. And how did, how do you orchestrate that? What advice do you give to teams in terms of their communications as a group? So if I was going to a large project presentation or something,
Tom Coupe 25:09
yeah, yeah. So we, I suppose we focus mostly in the course on communication, out from within to to non designers. When I've been in house, we spent a lot of time on internal communications. And that's that's, of course, really important. It's more about, I think the more immediate value that we can add in in these skills is things where we're either winning new work or building creating more efficient interchange between you and your clients or or working on those that that skill development, where you're actually providing the scope for growth in a business.
Ayo Abbas 25:59
So when you're going out, have those meetings to talk about what you could be doing together and all that kind of thing,right? Yeah,
Tom Coupe 26:05
yeah, exactly.
Ayo Abbas 26:07
I mean, I think I read some research recently, which was saying, basically, we're getting to a stage now where there's gonna be five generations in our practice, which is massive, and also all those different communication styles, right?
Tom Coupe 26:19
Yes, yeah, absolutely. And, and being able to communicate across difference and across levels of seniority. And one of the big ones, of course, is language. You know, I'm working with clients who who have, whatever it is, 20 or something, different languages, spoken first languages, spoken by stuff. And if you're working with international firms, then their clients could be, you know, from anywhere, anywhere in the world, and could have any first language. And so the that's when the ability to be clear and precise, but also concise with your language is so important. I was talking to an architect who's a Spanish architect working in Holland with a German manager and a Chinese client, and in English, the lingua franca of that relationship, and that's, you know, you think, Wow, what a what a challenge just to get yourself, just get yourself understood, let alone the the subtleties that you want to get into your language over a long, complex project. So there's real challenges there, and the things that we can do there are about the complex to the simple, all of those exercises that you can do to pull out the important information and to analyse the way that you speak to remove barriers to understanding. And that's those. Those are simple things to do, but they're they become super, super important when the person you're speaking to has a weaker understanding of your shared.
Ayo Abbas 28:18
And is that something you do overtly, or it's just something you have in the back of your mind. Do you know what I mean? So if you had that, you know, smorgasbord of different kind of nationalities, personalities, language, is that something you kind of just as long as you've got it in the back of your mind, actually, how do they like to communicate? How does
Tom Coupe 28:37
No, no, you should be doing it overtly, absolutely. I mean, you should be thinking about who it is you're speaking to, what they're interested in, what their level of understanding is of the material, but also their level understanding of the language and adapting to suit that. And you should be doing that over consciously in every situation, particularly if that's a long term relationship or a high frequency relationship, that you're going to be needing to speak to them regularly, and that's what I have to keep saying. But to keep saying this is part of the job, right? It's not just designing, it's not just project management. It's putting effort into structuring how you speak about your work is part of the job, and that the more you can do it, the more likely you are to have a productive relationship get approvals quickly, less wasted work, less being sent back for revisions that are unnecessary, just haven't presented them well, more likely to get your ideas signed off and eventually built.
Ayo Abbas 29:50
So I've got two final questions. First one is, so how do you especially, I guess, in the current climate where everyone's kind of budgets are being a bit squeezed, all that kind of. Of, how do you convince kind of, you know, senior partners and architects that actually this is something worth investing in, rather than a nice to have?
Tom Coupe 30:08
Well, so some firms will simply see it as a nice to have. Yeah, then that's less interesting to work for them. To be honest, when I'm when I set out. I, I kind of said to myself, I only need to work with good designers or great designers, because shortlist, yeah, that's my shortlist and and because what I'm trying to do is help people get stuff built. And with there's a lot of awful architecture out there, right? And there's, there really is. I mean, come on, is, is there?
Ayo Abbas 30:46
There is, I'm nodding.
Tom Coupe 30:47
I don't really want to help them get that built. I want to help, you know, we're in urgent need of great design in the built environment. Urgent Need a great design. And what I'm trying to do is help great designers get their stuff built right. So I find that the people who who really care about their ability to understand a brief, understand a client, to get to the knot of a problem. Rather than just splurge out design, they already see this value. They already understand this value,
Tom Coupe 31:13
because they go deep already.
Tom Coupe 31:30
Yeah, yeah, and, and, and so it's kind of self selecting to an extent. And, and so that's that's great. And yes, I can make an argument for efficiency, less wasted time, all the rest of it. But in in the long run, if they're not investing in skills of their people, you know, in their in professional services in general, in this country, broadly, we spend between two and 3000 pounds per person per year on skills development. I don't think the architecture world is spending anything like that.
Ayo Abbas 32:09
No, I've never heard of that much
Tom Coupe 32:10
No, exactly. But if you go sideways into professional services, into finance and law and the rest of it, then, then that, that is the standard, and that's not necessarily possible for some of the smaller firms. Nevertheless, if there is an interest, and they a perception of value in doing that, then communications is it's not much of a an argument to it's not, it's not that much of a difficult argument to say one of these important skills is being able to make these connections with your with your audience.
Ayo Abbas 32:37
So what would advice on that you said about smaller firms? So what advice my final question would you give to growing practices or smaller practices, about how they can kind of, I guess, improve their communication skills?
Tom Coupe 33:01
Just talk about it, right? Like, talk to each other. It's like, if you if you don't focus on it, what happens is, you get mimic. You get get younger team members saying, Oh, well, that partner, she speaks like this. So I should probably speak like that too, like, I'm just going to copy the way the boss, does it that doesn't work. Never works. You've got to, you've got to develop your own, everyone has to develop their own style, um, so don't copy. But also, um, think about listening as a skill. Is really, really simple, and it's free, and you don't need training in it. You just got to think about it. Listen harder is like the most important, one of the most important things, and almost every architect could, as a little wrap up, work on being a little more concise.
Tom Coupe 33:55
Oh, it's been great fun. Thanks for having me.
Ayo Abbas 33:55
You know what's really funny? On the 17th of June, I'm on a panel for Rachel Birchmore and Emma Keyte. They're doing a thing called the listening project, and I'm one of the panelists. So that is a fun listening to that. Thank you so much for the conversation Tom and for coming onto the show.
Ayo Abbas 34:06
Thanks so much for listening to The Built Environment Marketing Show. Don't forget to check out the show notes, which will have useful links and resources connected to this episode. You can find that on
Ayo Abbas 34:29
Abbasmarketing.com and of course, if you like the show, please do share it with others on social as it helps more people to find us. See you soon you.
