Throughout this summer, we’ve been taking a closer look at each of our core values – our cornerstones – and the role they play in guiding our behavior, both as individuals and as a company. We challenged our team members to think differently about the cornerstones, how we’re all capable of being business thought leaders, how we have the potential to create built-in value with every action and interaction, and how beautiful outcomes are so much more than just the finished project. For our final month, we focused on our fourth cornerstone: Places with Soul.
Places with Soul inspire, connect, and energize us. These places complement their surroundings and honor the skills that went into their creation. They provide shelter. They offer room for growth. They encourage creativity, strength, and community. Places with Soul are powerful and engaging spaces that fill needs in the built environment while unfolding abundant, other possibilities.
As builders of a changing world, it’s our job to deliver and celebrate these special places. For this last challenge, we asked our team members to take a photo of anything that captures their definition of “Places with Soul.” Entries could include a photo of a completed project or a photo of family enjoying time together at home. The photo could be of a place of worship, a favorite hangout, or any other place with soul.
Like all of our previous challenges, each team member had a different take, a different perspective on what this cornerstone meant to them. To us, Places with Soul is just as much about a feeling as it is about a physical space. Team members shared photos of everything from a completed project and their families to places of worship and their favorite hangouts. Some of the photos captured the following thoughts:
- I have always been in awe of the beauty and magnificence of the Mackinac Bridge. The view from the top of the south tower is incredible.
- I love sitting on the back of my boat out on Lake Michigan.
- Any place with family is a place with soul.
- Being out in nature is good for my soul! Specifically, as I walk along beachy shores, I feel peace and contentment.
- When you walk in the cathedral just outside of King John’s Castle in Limerick, Ireland and try to fathom the history, the people, the wars, the famine, the kings, and the births that have taken place in it over the centuries, you are humbled. It is the most beautiful “soul” filled place I have ever been.
This summer, we intentionally set aside time to reflect on our values. But if there’s one thing we learned, it’s that living out our values is not, and should not be, a one-time thing — it should be embedded into our culture and at the forefront of all we say and do.
