What It Means to Be a Design Leader
The role of a Design Leader has evolved over the past decade. Here are a few expectations from anyone that leads a Design team, as a manager or otherwise.
Hi all! Here’s your weekly dose of ‘Designing Leadership.’ Hope you enjoy the read. Feel free to forward this along to friends.
The role of a design leader is arguably one of the most misunderstood and mysterious roles. This isn’t too surprising since UX is a fairly new field compared to others in the industry. I thought I’d take this opportunity (my first post!) to shed some light on the role of a design leader and, once and for all, answer the question, “So, what exactly does a design leader do?”
First things first, it’s important to understand some of the differences between leadership and management. The two concepts are often referred to interchangeably but are, in reality, quite different from one another. Suffice it to say that it’s very much possible to lead without managing as well as manage without leading.
Design Leader: A design leader often focuses on setting the vision and strategic direction for Design within the organization along with their Product, Engineering, Research, and Data Science partners. They are more concerned with the overall design philosophy, long-term goals, and ensuring that design drives innovation and business strategy.
Design Manager: The design manager, on the other hand, is typically more focused on the execution of design projects. They manage the day-to-day operations, timelines, budgets, and team coordination to ensure that design projects are completed successfully.
Whether you’re a Design Leader or a Design Manager, your company and team will look to you to take responsibility for three main areas (you’ll approach these areas in different ways depending on which role you’re playing — that of a leader or manager or both):
Quality of Output
Establishing a well-rounded perspective
Growing the discipline and team in more ways than one
Quality of output
As a design leader, you and your Product and Engineering counterparts are the gatekeepers of the quality of the product your team ships. The four components below stick out to me when thinking about how a Design leader is expected to hold a high bar for quality.
Communicate an inspiring vision and sound strategy
It’s difficult for your team or org to design, build, and ship quality experiences if they don’t have a good grasp of what their work amounts to. Communicate an inspiring vision for how your product will evolve for your intended target audience and what type of experiences will help you win in the market. Rally your team or org around what this means for the way you’ll all work together in the future. Share a strategy that will help you and your team fulfill this grand vision. Once your team is bought into this vision and strategy, it will be a lot easier for you to uphold that quality bar. Having a clear strategy will also help when you’re in discussions about prioritization and balancing tradeoffs. All this to say, having a clear direction to go in can be a powerful motivator. Who woulda thought?!
Set clear expectations
This is an obvious one, but it’s surprising how many leaders get this wrong. Setting clear expectations starts out with the job description. Once a candidate takes on a role, it’s your responsibility as a manager to help them understand what you’re expecting of them and set them up for success. As a leader, you can up-level the quality bar by giving your team tools (like Design Principles) to help them make better decisions, which often results in shipping higher-quality products. Another way in which you can set clearer expectations is by joining crit sessions as often as your schedule allows so you can guide the team to start or continue thinking about how to improve the overall quality of output.
Team Health
Your team’s health has a direct correlation to the type of work they’re producing. As a leader, be a champion for your team. Celebrate their successes (and failures aka learnings) in public. Reward them for their hard work. Be inquisitive about their professional wants and needs. This is definitely not rocket science, but still worth calling out how important this point is!
Establishing a well-rounded perspective
I can’t emphasize enough how important having a clear viewpoint is. It doesn’t have to be a definitive, written-in-stone kind of viewpoint, but it helps to have one. If you’re a leader, you’ll be expected to have an opinion on a number of things — the overall experience of what you’re shipping, if a set of initiatives or projects are worth investing in, how the strategy must change based on the competitive landscape or shifts within the industry. It’s important for your team to be able to count on you to provide guidance on some of these topics.
Here are a few ways you can ensure you’re going into discussions with a well-rounded POV:
Keep yourself informed and updated
If you work in tech, there’s undoubtedly a lot of innovation happening around you. With the conversation shifting from ‘how do we solve user and business problems’ to ‘how do we solve user and business problems using AI and LLMs,’ there’s no shortage of new ideas and concepts to learn about. In order to have a firm viewpoint on some of the areas I mentioned above, it’s critical to stay on top of what’s happening in the industry so you can start formulating your thoughts on how this shift might impact the product that you’re building.
A few resources:
Designing with AI by Erica Virtue (Product Designer at Meta)
Reach out to brilliant folks you work with to learn from them
As you dig into information on your own and try to wrap your mind around some of the not-yet-fully-explored concepts, you might find yourself having more questions than answers. This is great! Take your list of questions and start identifying who within your organization can help answer them. Once you have a more fully baked picture of how certain things work, you’ll likely be able to answer why or if you should prioritize certain initiatives moving forward. An added benefit is that this could be a great opportunity for you to either strengthen an existing relationship or form a new one.
Take time to reflect
Take time each week to reflect on some of the biggest questions that are being asked around you and carve out space to think through these problems. What are your thoughts on them? How would you answer these questions? Do you have knowledge gaps that you’d like to address? It’s easy to fall into the trap of being reactive when put in situations that require your thoughts to move projects along. The risk with a reactive approach is that you may end up forming a quick, ill-informed perspective. Sure, you can always go back to the team to let them know that you thought about it and changed your mind, but doing so too often can be disruptive and erode trust over time. As they say, preparation is the key to success.
Growing the discipline and team in more ways than one
I can write a whole other post about what “growing a discipline and team” entails (in fact, I will, stay tuned!), but that’s for another day. Hiring and retaining a strong, motivated team is more important than anything else I’ve mentioned in this post. If you don’t have the right team working towards a clear set of goals, everything else falls flat. Having a strong perspective or setting clear expectations for the quality of output only makes a difference if you have a team that’s motivated to do the best work of their career. A few ways in which you can ensure that you continue to grow the Design discipline and build an awesome team:
Hire a strong team
This one’s a no-brainer. Highly motivated people who are masters of their craft and eager to grow and learn often thrive with a little guidance. I often tell leaders and managers not to wait until they have a job description to tap into their network. If you see brilliant folks out there looking for their next challenge, reach out to let them know that you would like to connect. You never know how your paths might cross in the future (the tech industry is a small world) and I generally feel like it’s always great to talk shop with others in the industry to expand your perspective. As a manager, you’ll also be expected to make a case for growing your team. Once you do have open headcount, streamline your hiring process to deliver a great candidate experience.
Foster an environment where everyone feels safe and empowered to do their best work
I know, much easier said than done. Creating a psychologically safe environment takes time and effort (and a whole lot of discomfort) to question current ways of working, allowing yourself to be vulnerable with your team at times, creating a safe space for everyone to express their thoughts and frustrations, and much more. There’s a lot that goes into fostering a culture like this, which is why it’s not very common to see workplaces that can truly say that they’re built on trust. To be able to commit to building a more trusting and safe environment, organizations and leaders must start making small tweaks to their already existing processes. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel; small changes will add up to a big shift in culture over time and will hopefully have a ripple effect across other parts of the org.
More here: A guide to building psychological safety on your team
A culture of progress(ion)
Alright, you feel great about the team you have. You’re collaborating well to ship meaningful products that users love, but one fine day, you realize that folks on your team seem demotivated, looking to leave, or actually handing in their notice. Hiring a strong team is a challenge, but retaining a team of high performers is a whole other beast. There are many reasons why people choose to leave that may be outside of your control (org changes, leadership churn, comp bands, etc.) but one of the main reasons why people leave is because they feel stagnant in their role. They feel stuck and can’t see a path forward. They don’t understand what they need to do to move on to the next level. This is where progression frameworks come in. Clearly defined career progress frameworks for each role on your team can go a long way. Each member of your team can use these artifacts to identify their areas of growth and work towards them. As a next step, I would also highly recommend leaders to implement training programs. Unfortunately, this is pretty rare, but if done right, can be a great incentive for team members to stick around and continue to grow in their craft and skillset through some sort of formal training.
Having business acumen, threading pieces together to see the big picture, and building a strong collaborative team are just a few of the many responsibilities of a Design Leader. As a leader, you’re there to inspire your team and others around you so they can see the value that Research and Design bring to the success of a product. If you’re a designer who wants to step into design leadership someday, or if you’re already a design manager, I hope you’ll take some of these points into consideration as you start or continue on your journey.
thank you for this and for all the linked articles too!