Image credit: Alaina Johnson

What I learned in my first 6 months as a UX director

Context: Almost overnight I became director of a small team of senior designers, strategists, researchers, after having been peers with some of them for years. I barely slept for the first 2 months. Cried every week. Suddenly related to Michael from the Office more than I wanted to.

Many of these insights came from heartfelt talks with my amazing boss Willy Bravenec. Being sandwiched between a great leader and a great team is a great way to learn leadership.

What I learned about leadership

1. Everyone has hidden innate superpowers. It’s our job to see it and name it, even if the person doesn’t see it yet. Once people hear their superpower, they grow into it. Then rise up and beyond it.
2. When a person isn’t being proactive — it’s not a personality trait. A lot of experienced designers have worked in places where they were exploited or misunderstood. All they need is time, space, and to be surrounded by good people with good intentions. With those 3 things, they have room to heal. It’s our job to provide a safe environment, not to demand people to feel safe.
3. We don’t have to agree with how the team does things. We just need to support them.
4. When we don’t agree with someone’s tone or style, we need to let it go. Otherwise we are trying to control so many things that are not that important and are also not our job to change.
5. We need to pick our battles. We can’t ask people to take on 20 new changes.
6. Time with a team is temporary. We are like foster parents who have responsibility for a short time. We need to give and give and give, and to expect nothing in return.
7. When teams feel supported by their bosses, they are so much braver and able to take risks. Because they know that even if they fail, we have their backs.

What I learned through trial and error

1. I thought I had to be fierce, cool, good at my job to earn the team’s respect. But looking back, these are the times when I listened the least and was not present for the team.
2. I thought because our team had diverse styles, backgrounds and skillsets, they would all want to learn from each other. Some of that happened naturally, but I soon realized that each designer’s superpowers came from years of lived experience: much of it painful, and much of it completely unrelated to their current career. And it wasn’t feasible that people would be able to or want to absorb each other’s superpowers.
3. I thought that I had to push people to work a certain way, in the ways that had worked for me in our startup. This often backfired, especially with experienced designers whose process was a huge part of their identity.
4. I thought I was ‘woke’ but I have pretty strong biases toward my own identity (female, asian).
5. I thought I would be good at staying friends with everyone. But it was really hard to go from coworker/friend to director. Looking back I realized what made it difficult was that I changed the rules on my relationships without notice — my friends were talking to me in the way they always did about work and leadership, in the snarky shorthand designer-speak we’re used to — but suddenly I felt responsible, hurt, or that I needed to solution for them.
6. Meanwhile I still talked the way I did as an individual contributor — pretty blunt, with somewhat snarky shorthand. But I realized that this influenced the attitudes and feeling of safety on the team, especially for people who didn’t know me as well.

What I learned about being an individual contributor

1. When I work as a designer, updating senior executives outside the team is sometimes a second thought. And then as a leader I realized this: even if you’re not directly doing the work, you’re still responsible and you care. When individual contributors proactively communicate updates, they reciprocate the energy leaders have towards their work, and it is so appreciated.
2. As an individual contributor, it was easy to criticize how things are run, or advocate ‘we should do X’. But being in leadership, I realized there was much more context and many fires to kill. Sometimes the right thing wasn’t the right thing to do, because it was the wrong time. And even small wins took a lot of careful navigating and planning. And most wins were invisible.
3. Leading a team vs being a designer is like lifting weights — you build up muscle by alternating between light and heavy weights. You try a role in leadership and build up muscle. Then you go back to being a designer and apply what you learned in leadership. And as you repeat, you become both a stronger leader and designer.
4. Leaders are people too. They want to be liked and valued too.

Final thoughts

The 2022 tech layoffs cut my time off short with a team that I thought I would support for years. It drove home for me that time with a team is temporary — and the best use of my time is to be with them and support them as much as I can.