Ep 190: The Truth about Titles

Titles follow architects around like a quiet shadow. You barely notice them early on, then spend a few years thinking they hold the map to your future, and eventually realize they never carried as much authority as you imagined. The work shapes you. The people around you shape you. The title mostly signals something to everyone else. That gap between what a title promises and what it actually delivers is where most of the real learning happens. Today, Andrew and I are sorting through that space between expectation and reality, and what it means for architects who are trying to find their footing. Welcome to Episode 190: The Truth about Titles.

[Note: If you are reading this via email, click here to access the on-site audio player]

Podcast: Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | TuneIn

The Setup jump to 05:39

There is something oddly comforting about the fact that architecture, for all its rules, codes, and obsessive precision, still manages to be a profession where titles are both deeply important and strangely meaningless. I spent most of my career without a title that mattered, and it never stopped me from running projects or being the person clients expected answers from. Colleagues still asked for direction. The absence of a title did not make me less capable, it just meant whatever influence I had came from what I actually did, not from what the firm printed on an org chart. That background is why I look at titles with a bit of leveling skepticism. They matter, just not for the reasons people assume.

Younger architects tend to assign far more weight to titles. I hear it in mentoring conversations every month because a frequent point of discussion is invariably how to get promoted, as if the title itself is the goal. It never feels satisfying when I tell them they are asking the wrong question. The more reasonable question is how to get better at their job since promotions happen when the organization begins to rely on you in ways that justify giving you one. The title follows the work, not the other way around. It is not glamorous advice, but it is the most honest version that I can provide. Some of the intensity around titles is developmental. Younger architects use them as mile markers because progress in this profession is not always visible. You can spend years on unbuilt projects and need something external to point to … and titles can help fill that void. They become the scoreboard that architects use to track who is gaining ground, who is treading water, and where they stand in comparison.

There is an uncomfortable truth that titles are often used as proxies for competence, especially by people outside the office who have no idea who actually knows what. Clients and consultants make assumptions based on whatever label sits under your name, whether or not it reflects your judgment or experience. I saw this long before I had a meaningful title. People deferred to me because I behaved like someone who knew what they were doing and my track record supported it. Would a title would have made things smoother? Maybe, but it was never the thing that earned trust. That difference becomes the dividing line between management titles people are assigned and leadership status people earn. My skepticism about titles comes from watching exceptional people go years without a promotion while others received titles they were not remotely prepared for. Titles solve internal problems quickly, mostly by creating clarity, even when that clarity is uneven.

It is useful to admit that titles matter on a functional level because they help structure responsibilities, clarify accountability for clients, and give new employees a sense of how the hierarchy is organized, which makes them a practical shorthand for expectations in a profession already stretched thin on mental bandwidth. My issue comes from the exaggerated meaning people attach to these labels early in their careers, when chasing the title becomes more important than doing the work that would naturally lead to it. Margaret Thatcher has a line I return to often, that if you have to tell people you are a lady, you are not, and I think about that every time someone fixates on leadership titles because it captures how authority actually works. Management titles can be assigned, but leadership titles have to be bestowed by others, and no one gets to declare themselves a leader because people make that decision based on what they have observed over time. The printed label is the least important part, since the behavior underneath it is the real measure of whether someone has earned trust, influence, and legitimacy.

The whole conversation gets trickier once you acknowledge how fluid titles can be between firms. An Associate in one office might run multimillion dollar projects while an Associate in another might barely sit in on a client call. A Principal might be a founder or someone who joined during a merger. You cannot assume a title carries a consistent meaning. That inconsistency reinforces why relying on titles alone to understand someone’s value is a shallow metric. There is always more happening behind the label. Titles matter psychologically for the people who want them, structurally for the organizations that use them, and functionally for the clients who depend on them. The substance of someone’s value is never the title itself. It is the trust they have earned, the competence they demonstrate, and the influence others allow them to have. These contradictions get louder once people finally achieve the titles they spent years chasing and discover how quickly the shine wears off. Titles do not always give people what they thought they would. Sometimes they give less. Occasionally they give more. That tension is the part worth exploring next.

The Perceived Value of a Title jump to 12:58

There comes a point where you have to admit that titles do carry weight, just not in the melodramatic, destiny-shaping way people imagine when they first start chasing them. The internal meaning of a title shrinks almost immediately after you earn one, because you already know what you can do and the people around you already know who you are. The external meaning, though, takes off in a completely different direction. Titles step in as translators for everyone who does not have the time or patience to understand the nuances of your career. Clients rely on them because architecture is a trust-based profession and they need a quick read on who the responsible adult in the room is. Consultants use them to calibrate how they should talk to you, whether they should set the table or jump straight into the main course. The broader industry uses them as shorthand for credibility during presentations, interviews, and community meetings. People look at a title and decide how seriously to take what you are about to say long before they have heard a word out of your mouth. None of this is noble, but it is how most decisions are made: fast, partial, and based on whatever information is available. Titles supply that information.

The value continues in how titles help outsiders understand the structure of a firm that, to most people, looks like a dense cloud of overlapping responsibilities. Clients who work with you repeatedly need some way to track how your team evolves over time, and titles give them that continuity. Consultants appreciate them because it tells them who is coordinating, who is steering, and who is quietly keeping the deadline from falling over. Inside the profession, titles anchor your presence in rooms where credibility matters. Sitting on a design jury, participating in an awards committee, or speaking at a conference all take on a different level of legitimacy when the title next to your name signals that your voice comes from within the machinery of practice rather than from the sidelines. People may not know your portfolio or your judgment, but they can at least place you on a map of responsibility and assume you have earned your seat at the table.

The internal mechanics of titles, while less glamorous, are just as critical. Titles help stabilize compensation systems by structuring expectations around salaries, bonuses, performance, and long-term growth. Without them, every financial conversation becomes a free-floating negotiation without context. Performance reviews lose their scaffolding. Career paths become foggy, which is the last thing younger staff need when they are trying to figure out where they are going and how they get there. Even if they eventually learn that titles matter less internally than they imagined, they still need markers along the way to keep them moving. Those markers create retention, provide direction, and help people understand where they stand. Titles also smooth internal conversations with leadership by signaling that the firm recognizes your growth and trusts your judgment, even if your role has not radically changed. It becomes easier to advocate for your team or shape a project without having to prove your legitimacy every time you open your mouth.

All of this leads to the most practical truth: titles create access. They open doors to conversations, committees, client groups, and leadership environments that would remain closed otherwise. The title does not guarantee success once you are in the room, but it absolutely determines whether you get the invitation in the first place. When you pull all these threads together, the real value of a title becomes clearer. It has far more to do with how the world interprets you than how you interpret yourself. It shapes trust, opportunity, credibility, and momentum in ways that are entirely external to your identity. Titles may not change who you are or what you can do, but they absolutely change what other people are willing to let you do. The irony is that titles tend to matter most the moment you stop expecting them to.

The Recognition that Titles Don’t Matter jump to 28:41

Earning the title you spent years chasing rarely delivers the shift you expect. You picture the moment as a kind of professional recalibration, where the room registers you differently and your own perspective sharpens. What actually happens is far duller: you update your email signature, leadership posts an announcement, a handful of coworkers congratulate you, and the next morning you return to the same desk with the same work waiting. The title is new but the ground under your feet is unchanged. That is usually the first clue that the anticipation you built around a title has very little to do with its internal meaning. Architecture runs on the people who hold projects together when things get tense, not on the people with the glossiest labels. Everyone inside a firm already knows who calms a frustrated client, who can get consultants to pull in the same direction, and who makes the tough calls without turning it theatrical. Those impressions settle long before anyone receives a promotion. A title may formalize a reputation, but it almost never creates it, and anyone who has spent time in a firm learns that quickly.

The longer you work in the profession, the clearer the gap becomes between management titles and actual leadership. Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s first female prime minister, understood that distinction acutely. She spent her career surrounded by people who questioned her authority on sight, which gives weight to her remark, “Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.” The relevance to architectural practice is immediate. Leadership is not something a business card proves. People decide whether you are worth following based on how you act when the stakes rise, how you treat colleagues when no one is watching, and how consistently you show up when things get complicated. That is why titles lose so much internal force the moment you earn one. The people who need a title to validate their standing rarely have the authority the title claims to represent.

Firms reinforce this quietly. Every office has an unofficial hierarchy that everyone understands even if it never appears on an org chart. You know which project architect is the true anchor, which designer has reliable instincts, and which senior staff member people drift toward when a deadline starts wobbling. These dynamics take shape long before any formal recognition, and sometimes the title never quite catches up. Promotions feel anticlimactic partly because humans adapt faster than they expect. You imagine a before-and-after moment. Instead the novelty fades, and you are left with the same responsibilities, the same expectations, and a realization that the title was never going to define anything on its own. Over time you start to see titles less as personal statements and more as organizational tools that help the firm function.

The strongest evidence that titles matter less internally than people assume shows up the minute real work begins. You might introduce yourself as Senior Architect or Director, but the instant a project hits friction, everyone defaults to the hierarchy they already trust. Teams turn to the person who knows what to do next. Contractors call the person who answers the phone and actually solves something. Consultants direct their questions to the person who has earned their confidence through competence, not formatting. Titles rarely guide those decisions. Skill, steadiness, and follow-through do. This can feel disorienting to anyone who imagined a new title would unlock authority or belonging, only to discover that colleagues respond exactly as they did the week before. None of this makes titles meaningless. They matter in how organizations create structure, clarify accountability, and help clients understand who is responsible for what. They simply matter far more externally than they do inside the firm, which is where the next section takes over.

The Actual Value of a Title jump to 45:44

Most architects eventually reach the point where they realize that titles matter, but never in the career-defining way they imagined early on. The internal meaning shrinks almost immediately after you earn one, but the external meaning takes off in a different direction. Titles become the shorthand everyone else uses to understand who you are before you say a word. Clients rely on them because architecture is built on trust and they want to know who the responsible adult in the room is. Consultants read titles to calibrate how technical or broad a conversation should be. The broader industry scans them in presentations, interviews, and community meetings because they need some quick indicator of credibility. People respond to Principal, Director, or Senior Architect long before they understand the nuance of how your firm uses those labels. Titles also help outsiders decode the structure of an architectural practice, which otherwise looks like a tangle of overlapping roles. They give repeat clients a sense of continuity and help people understand who leads, who supports, and who carries the load when deadlines wobble. Internally, titles establish your footing in situations where credibility matters, whether you are sitting on a design jury or speaking at a conference. They set the baseline of how your voice is heard even when they do not guarantee respect. That spectrum of external perception is where much of a title’s power lives.

There is a practical layer beneath all of this that architects tend to overlook because it is not glamorous but it keeps firms functioning. Titles stabilize compensation systems, shape expectations around salary and bonuses, and keep performance reviews from drifting into improvisation. Without them, every conversation becomes a negotiation without context and every career path turns into an ambiguous maze. Younger staff rely on titles as markers that show them what the next step looks like, even after they eventually learn that titles matter less internally than they expected. Titles outline the shape of the journey without defining it, and that scaffolding helps people understand where they stand and where they might go. Titles also make internal conversations with leadership simpler by signaling that your judgment has been vetted and your contribution recognized, which removes a layer of friction when you try to influence a project or advocate for your team. The internal hierarchy people actually follow is often based on competence rather than labels, but titles still help leadership understand who is ready for more responsibility and who has reached a stage of consistency the firm can count on.

All of this clarity becomes even sharper when you consider the gap between leadership and management. Internally, people already know who steadies the team, who defuses tension, and who keeps a project from tilting off its axis, none of which depends on a title. Externally, people need a title to understand why they should listen to you, and they rely on that translation layer because they lack the context your colleagues have. That is why the most significant value of a title is not philosophical but practical. Titles create access. The right one gets you into conversations, meetings, and opportunities that would remain closed on merit alone because you have to be in the room before you can prove your capability. They shape who is invited, who is consulted, and who is considered. People can still decide whether you deserve that trust once you arrive, but the title determines whether you arrive at all. When you pull all of this together, the real value of a title becomes clear. It is not about identity or ego. It is about how the world reads you, how opportunity finds you, and how easily you can move through the professional landscape. Titles may not change who you are, but they absolutely change what other people are willing to let you do, which is the irony at the center of all this: titles matter most once you stop expecting them to.

Hypothetical jump to 51:20

There is a certain amount of nerdiness required to answer this question in an effective manner, but like most of the questions we attempt to tackle, the methodology for how you answer the question is actually more interesting than the answer itself.

If you could pick one robot or cyborg from any movie to be your lifelong companion, which one would you pick?

I am not going to spill the beans motor oil on what our selections were, but I can tell you that I leaned into the “lifelong companion” part of the question (not in a dirty way, don’t be juvenile) but considerations like, portability, emotional tone, loyalty, shared scale and a humanoid anatomy are central to my eventual response.

To make your brain hurt less, here are some potential mechanical companions you could consider …

Ep 190: The Truth about Titles

Titles end up being one of those things you spend the first part of your career chasing and the rest of your career seeing for what they actually are. The internal meaning shrinks once you finally earn one, but the external value grows in ways you could not have understood earlier. They help clients trust you, help organizations function, and help the world know where to place you, but they never replace the work that earned you the title in the first place. Leadership still comes from behavior, not from whatever is printed under your name. That is why the people who deserve their titles rarely need to lean on them, and why the people who lean on them often reveal more than they intend. Titles matter, but mostly in the places where other people need them to. The rest is up to you.

Cheers,

Special thanks to our sponsor Construction Specialties, maker of architectural building products designed to master the movement of buildings, people, and natural elements. Construction Specialties has been creating inspired solutions for a more “intelligently built” environment since 1948. Visit MasteringMovement.net to learn more.