Buildings 2.0 Library
Conversations on the future of the built environment
81 episodes of the Buildings 2.0 podcast, each bound as a short book: the ideas, the numbers and the lines worth keeping.
Season 2, Episode 17 /Nov 18, 2025
Why likability is a competitive advantage for designers and builders
Susan Young, Get In Front Communications, Inc.
Nov 18, 2025 /The Business of AEC
Why likability is a competitive advantage for designers and builders
Susan Young is the CEO of Get In Front Communications, which coaches architects, engineers and real estate professionals to present and lead. She spent years as a radio news anchor in New York covering planning boards and zoning hearings, which means she has watched hundreds of technical presentations fail for the same reason.
Susan Young, CEO of Get In Front Communications, Inc., Get In Front Communications, Inc.
In this conversation
What Susan saw from the press table at planning boards: engineers presenting data to rooms that needed a story.
Her inside-out model of storytelling, where internal communication comes first and business closes on empathy rather than process.
Why likability is a competitive advantage in a technical industry, and how matching verbal and nonverbal language builds it.
Her guidance on AI: use it for drafts, then edit out anything you would never say, because authenticity is the one thing that cannot be faked.
We need to communicate H to H, human to human, because you weren't born an engineer or a real estate executive or a designer.
Susan Young
Chapters
From the newsroom to the boardroom
From New York radio to coaching the people who build the city.
Start with yourself
Why effective communication begins with how you see yourself, not with technique.
Likability
The case that being likable wins work.
Authentic, not generic
Using AI without sounding like everyone else.
Emerging leaders
The emerging leaders every firm's future depends on.
By the numbers
Large architecture firms that have a plan in writing
Susan says succession succeeds or fails on emerging leaders who were never taught to communicate. Most large firms have a transition plan; fewer have a continuity plan.
Source: AIA Firm Survey Report 2024 ↗How dare you keep those gifts to yourself when you could be sharing them, not just as a vendor but as a trusted advisor.
Susan Young
Takeaways
People do not decide on statistics. Communicate human to human: nobody was born an engineer, and the room wants to know who you are before it hears your numbers.
Bridge the technical detail to the money. The C-suite is not seeing the three percent margin or the two months saved; the person who connects them gets promoted.
In one group of 30 commercial real estate professionals, 95 percent said they had no idea what leadership expected of them. Communication starts inside the firm.
When you're being real and when you're being authentic and genuine, you can't make a mistake.
Susan Young