During the careers of many designers, whether working in their own firm or as employees, there is often a time when they shift from being designers to leaders. This article aims to offer points for designers who have become leaders.
Often, you become a leader by accident during a project, either because the design leader is unavailable or because you are given more responsibility due to a resource gap. Sadly, most firms lack formal training to manage this shift, and you mostly learn “on the job” rather than through mentoring. The following are basic points (leadership 101) to help you become a leader.
Don’t Fear, Many Have Been Here Before
Becoming a leader is something that many people in the industry learnt through trial and error. My first point is, do not fear, you can do this. Becoming a leader can be rewarding, as it offers opportunities to grow, develop skills, and manage people.
Have Patience
You are not going to become a leader overnight or in a week; it takes time, and you need to be patient with your manager, your team, and, most importantly, with yourself. You will have worries, stresses and also fears about whether you are doing things correctly, but remember that you are learning a new set of skills, and that takes time.
Problem Solving
As designers, we often instinctively solve problems by thinking through various scenarios to find solutions. Becoming a leader is similar, but the problems relate to people and tasks. Recognising that leading and managing people takes a similar approach to solving design problems, it is a process with set tasks and outcomes.
Understand Your Team
Take the time to understand your team, their skills, strengths, weaknesses, and their goals. Some people you will know through working with them or general discussions. You can shorten the process by engaging in conversations with people about their perceptions of their skills and goals. Still, it requires observing people complete several tasks and meet deadlines to truly understand how they operate, their strengths, and areas for improvement.
Have Empathy
As a leader, you need to have empathy for people, whether they are in your team, managers or clients. This is probably the skill that takes the longest to learn (or unlearn from school or training), as it requires you to step outside your own fears and ego to gain the confidence to understand others’ perspectives and personal situations. Understanding other people’s pressures, stresses, and ambitions requires empathy and the courage to set aside your own thoughts, biases, and needs to make decisions in everyone’s best interests.
Differing Approaches
You will need to develop different leadership skills and management techniques for your team members. Not everyone is the same; they have different personalities, backgrounds, knowledge, and skills. Some people need a soft approach, others need to have more direction, and others need ongoing praise. You will need to read and complete training to develop these skills.
Develop Design Leadership
As a leader, to avoid becoming just a project manager, you need to develop your design leadership skills. This includes taking the time to develop your design approach and toolkit (analysis, knowledge, problem-solving, idea-generation techniques), and building design strengths while reducing your weaknesses. You need to show your team that you understand that projects are iterative, not just a set of tasks.
Learn to put the pen down
Many designers, when they become leaders (or clients), fail to learn one critical lesson: when to put the pen down. Too often, the frustrated designer in you will keep thinking, problem-solving, and tinkering with the design. You will tell yourself it is improving the design, but in fact, it often creates more work for your team and yields only marginal improvements. Learning to put the pen down will be hard, but it will also be freeing.
Learn to step back
All designers who become leaders at some point learn to step back and let their team work. The thought that you will have as a leader very often is “I would do it so much quicker”. Your task is to lead the team, not complete the tasks. Although it may be quicker for you to complete the task, doing so will not help your team learn or develop the skills needed to grow. Your time is better spent managing clients, mentoring your team, and developing your management skills.
Another skill to learn when stepping back is not to micro-manage people. Nothing defeats people’s will to work and learn more than a leader who micro-manages, whether it’s the constant “checking in,” providing step-by-step instructions, or being condescending.
When you become a good leader, your ideal situation is that your team asks for autonomy and comes to you for advice and to test new ideas and solutions.
Don’t Play into the Politics
Often, when you become a leader and manage people in a work environment, it can become political due to egos, ambitions, and fears. The best advice is to stay neutral and not play into the drama and politics (e.g. gossip and background). You will have to manage people who wish to play politics, but it is best to be pragmatic and do what is in the best interests of the team, client, company and community.
Remember that any short-term gain from playing politics will, in the long term, affect your reputation, empathy, and rationality, reducing your ability to be an effective leader.
Learn to Praise Often
When leading a team, you can often get stuck in your own head about project timelines, client feedback or design problems and forget to praise your team when they complete a complex task or meet a submittal deadline. Of course, it doesn’t mean team pizza nights or dinners every night, but personal praise, whether one-to-one or in front of the team, can go a long way in energising your team and sustaining team momentum.
Be Open to Change or Admit Your Wrong
Previously, I discussed the need for empathy; this also extends to being open to change and having the humility to admit when you are wrong. As a leader, your team will respect you more if you are open to change and new ideas, and if you are willing to admit when you are wrong.
Develop the Ability to Offer Critique
Although you need to learn to praise people and admit when you’re wrong, you also need to develop the ability to offer your team a critique of their work and designs. Providing critique can be hard at first, but you need to be able to offer a strong critique of the work whilst making sure it is not personal or turns into a never-ending debate. Provide clear, pragmatic reasoning, and make sure they understand that it is not personal and that all ideas are valued. But at some point, someone has to make a decision, and as the leader, it comes down to you putting your knowledge and reputation on the line.
Be A Sounding Board
People, whether on your team or in your company, learn to be a sounding board and a listener for others. This helps you build relationships and develop your own listening and responding skills. The best thing is to be a confidant for people; if they tell you something in confidence, make sure to keep it confidential. This skill becomes more relevant later in your leadership career and aligns with the previous point about not playing politics.
Respect Time and Human Connections
The biggest mistake I see leaders make is trying to lead via email, online notification or chat. These forms of communication are great for providing or seeking summaries, updates, or information or setting simple tasks. They should not be used to set comprehensive tasks, make changes, or request major decisions.
Due to the litigious nature of design and also the rollout of project management platforms, most project communication has been digitised and desensitised. The issue is that, as a leader, you and your team spend more time sending and responding to messages than leading projects or completing tasks.
Respect others’ time by sending emails and notifications sparingly, and learn to communicate effectively by phone, video, or face-to-face. This will improve two things: your ability to get timely answers and also solve problems without misunderstandings. Most of all, it reinforces the human relationships within a team and your client and allied teams’ relationships.
Understand the Project Basics
As an effective leader, you need to work to achieve the design objectives by setting and completing tasks. If you do not understand the project basics – timeline, budget, fees, terms, deliverables, etc., then you do not understand how, what, when, and why you need to communicate with your team and work out the tasks and resources needed.
You need to understand the basics of project management (charts, budgets, filing, etc.) and operations (processes, quality checks, templates, etc.). Also learn about your company’s operational objectives around business development, risk, profit and management priorities.
As a leader, you will need to focus on design, people, and processes to effectively lead your team in meeting your project and company objectives.
Managing Up
Unless you own your design business, you will need to manage up to a team leader, manager, director, principal or CEO. Learning to provide timely, succinct updates to ensure that your manager or client is informed of the progress.
Learning to ask for extensions, resources and budget is key to being a leader. If you are constantly pushing an under-resourced team to complete tasks just to meet fees or profit targets, you will eventually fail as a leader or be forced to find new team members. You need to advocate for your team to ensure they are well-equipped and resourced to complete the project.
Managing for your client is also important; understanding their situation and goals is key to a successful relationship. Learn to gather information through questions or by providing suggestions and alternatives they face, so you can better manage their expectations and experiences.
Talk to Others
I would suggest that you find other leaders, whether they are in your company, graduating class, or your professional organisation, to have an informal conversation about your issues and approaches to problem-solving.
Find A Mentor
My best advice to any leader, new or old, is to find a mentor, whether they are in your company, industry, or friend/family group; you need someone to talk to and seek advice from. They need to be someone you trust and who is willing to give you unbiased, pragmatic advice.
Undertake some training
First, seek out some books on design thinking, project management and design management. Also, read some blogs and watch some videos about leadership and management. We all have different preferences: some of you may prefer brash leaders, while others prefer more stoic ones. Any time you spend reading or watching will provide valuable learning you can use. You just need to start.
If your firm does not have formal training in leadership and management, I suggest you seek out a course in your city, either at a college or a management organisation. My advice would be to seek out a course that is certified or provided by a trainer or organisation that others recommend.
When you first start out, moving from being a designer to a leader can be frustrating, disheartening, and tiring; however, over time, you are rewarded by leading people and projects to brilliant outcomes.
Article by Damian Holmes
This article shares lessons I have learned from leading teams and operations at a design firm, as well as from serving on a board. If you would like me to develop a customised leadership course for your design firm, feel free to contact me via email, damian@damianholmes.com or LinkedIn.