20 lessons for new design managers

After a year and a half as a manager at my current company, I’ve decided to write down my insights to help those interested in leading teams. The list includes reflections and advice — take what serves you and leave behind what doesn’t.

1. Hiring a team is nerve-racking, but fun.

One of my fears when hiring for my team was that I would hire someone who wouldn’t work out. I know if I’m a manager long enough, this will happen, but I wanted to figure out if there was a way to reduce the likelihood. The fear of this turned out to be positive because I spent a long time thinking about my hiring process. I wanted it to be a great experience for candidates while providing me enough insight to confidently extend an offer.

I didn’t want to scare good candidates away with a design activity that felt like “free work” but I needed a way to assess on-the-job skills. To address this, I created activities relevant to the products that they would work on centered around problems we had already solved.

Then I gave these to candidates during the final interview round to see how they solved the problem. This gave candidates the opportunity to work alongside their Engineering and Product counterparts, enabling all parties to gauge how well they would work together.

Although it required more effort on my part to set up the scenarios, it was time well spent, because I ended up hiring an incredibly talented UX team that has been a joy to work with.

2. Firing someone is emotionally exhausting.

I knew this would be the case, but experiencing it firsthand as a manager was intense. In fact, I was shocked when I realized I would have to navigate this path within my first year. Drawing from my teaching experience, I understood the impact one person could have on an entire classroom, so I knew I had to be thoughtful about the decision.

I went through all of the steps — feedback, coaching, a performance plan, etc. In the end, I realized that the direction I envisioned for the team would not support this person to do their best work. To achieve what was required, we needed someone with a broader skill set. The process was excruciating. The person remained kind, professional, and engaged throughout the entire process. They fit well into our company culture, so it was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do.

I spent many nights crying, trying to figure out how to handle the situation, and playing it through in my head. My entire support system heard about it for hours as I discussed the best path forward. I knew it was the best thing for my team, but it didn’t make it hurt any less.

This reminds me of the quote “fire quickly, hire slowly.” I DID NOT fire quickly, and that’s something I would change going forward. I spent months agonizing over if the decision was right. I think I might have made it harder for the person affected in the end. If I had to do it again, I would move through the process quicker. I would trust my gut and what I was seeing sooner instead of second-guessing myself.

3. Being transparent can be a gift and a weakness

This ties into a growth area for me. I am naturally very transparent. I’m a direct and open communicator without much filter. I’ve always appreciated leaders like this, so I tend to do the same thing. Unfortunately, at times, there are things that you can’t tell your team. There’s information that you’ll be privy to that you’ll have to keep to yourself until it’s made more public. I’ve had to grow my capacity in this area and it’s been uncomfortable at times, but growing pains…right?

The best thing I’ve found is realizing that my urge to tell my team something actually comes from wanting to share an experience with them. Sometimes, it’s in their best interest to hear things when they are official. There’s a lot that can change and it’ll be distracting and frustrating to a team. I can see it as a gift to allow them not to worry when most problems disappear. Yes, it can be lonely as a manager sometimes, but it can also be really rewarding when you know you’ve created a nice place for people to work.

That being said, there are many situations where you can share things and you should. During these times, I try to give my team as much context and information as I can. This helps their work better align with the current strategy and helps them be more successful in their roles.

4. Build relationships with other managers

If you want to feel less alone, build out your relationship with other managers. I often feel a strong sense of belonging on my team, but there are certain times when it would be inappropriate to rely on my direct reports for support. In these situations, it can be extremely helpful to have relationships with other managers — both inside and outside your company.

I’ll take a moment to thank Molly Wilvich — NN/g UX Master Certified who was immensely helpful to me in my first year of management. Without hesitation, she let me talk through a difficult situation, gave me resources, and told me about her similar experiences. I’m forever grateful that I was able to receive this support from a fellow design leader. It’s a privilege I plan to pass on to others.

5. Start with a good foundation

If you’re interested in management, take a moment to self-reflect before entering into it. I did this for many years leading up to management. I knew one of my strengths was the amount of time I’ve spent working on my own internal landscape, being able to recognize my triggers, and having good tools to move through difficult situations.

I wish more managers would do this. Having a solid foundation to handle the emotional part of the job is extremely important. It can also be hard to put the work down at the end of the day because it involves people you care about.

If you don’t have something to orient yourself to, you can have a huge negative effect on your team. I’m not saying that I don’t lose my footing from time to time, but having a base to come back to when things feel like they’ve “blown up in your face” will be important if you want to manage for a long time. Things happen and you will need to have tools to deal with this.

It can be breathing, exercise, meditation, therapy, people to talk to, creating things outside or work, team sports, spiritual practice, etc. Whatever works for you that can center yourself when times get rough will work.

6. It’s not about you, it’s about your team

I can thank my current manager for many things, one of them is his insight into a manager’s role. In one of our first 1 on 1s, before I became a manager, I asked him what he thought made a good manager. One of the things he said was that a good leader is someone who is willing to step aside to let others’ work shine (I’m paraphrasing). They don’t need the limelight or to take credit for things.

I couldn’t agree more as I’ve been in rooms in the past where people have both taken credit for my work or given me credit when others didn’t know the work was mine. You can guess who I wanted to keep working with.

There’s a need for self-validation when you are a manager. There’s unseen work that you will do to set up an environment for your people to shine. You’ll need to be ok without the recognition that you once got as an IC. Instead, your accomplishments come from watching what others have achieved, knowing that you positively impacted it too.

7. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel

In the months leading up to managing a team and since then, I’ve read or listened to countless books. Some of these I’m still reading, and some of them I finished before I hired my first employee. Not all of them are management books, but I think they work well for a design or product leader…

• “The Making of a Manager” by Julie Zhuo
• “Org Design for Design Orgs: Building and Managing In-House Design Teams” by Peter Merholz and Kristin Skinner
• “Dare to Lead” by Brené Brown
• “Radical Candor” by Kim Scott
• “Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High” by Joseph Grenny and Kerry Patterson
• “Creativity Inc” by Ed Catmuli and Amy Wallace
• “Empowered” by Marty Cagan and Chris Jones
• “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” by Patrick Lencioni
• “The Power of Full Engagement” by Jim Loehr
• “Essentialism” by Greg McKeown
• “Good Strategy, Bad Strategy” by Richard Rumelt
• “Trillion Dollar Coach” by Eric Schmidt, Johnathan Rosenberg, Alan Eagle
• “Just Listen” by Mark Goulston

8. What made you successful before, might not work now

When you go from being an individual contributor to being a manager, you have to realize to some extent, you are starting from square one. It’s not the same as being promoted to a senior level where your previous work builds on itself.

Instead, you have to try to leave behind what you were doing previously and learn new skills. If you’ve spent your whole career letting your work speak for itself, you will have to learn to speak up about your team’s work, so that it’s highlighted to the company.

Doing something yourself is also different from coaching. You have to avoid the urge to get into someone’s design document to fix things. Instead, you have to give them feedback and allow them to go in and fix those things so that over time they’ll get better. At first, this can feel frustrating because it would be quicker to do it yourself, but you have to think about the long-term success of the team for the times you won’t be around.

9. Let go of control. Trust. Delegate.

This brings me to trust. Sometimes your direct reports will do things differently than you, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s wrong. Keep an open mind and see where it leads. This can turn out better than you expect.

Let them know that you are there when they run into problems. Create an atmosphere of open communication. Make it safe to come to you when they see a problem. Then trust that you’ve hired good people.

I also found it helpful to assign my direct reports to certain products. This allows them not only a sense of ownership but a way to work holistically across a product producing better results. It’s also a good way for me to force delegation and not take on tasks that belong in someone else’s domain.

10. Give feedback often and quickly

The worst thing you can do is hold onto feedback because you are trying to make it sound perfect. I would rather give a bit of rough feedback quickly than hold it in until a problem grows/

One book that helped with this was “Radical Candor.” Kim Scott gives great examples of feedback that she was given promptly by her manager at the time, Sheryl Sandberg. She describes hallway conversations where you can give feedback right after someone has completed a presentation.

This doesn’t work very well with remote work, but there are other ways to give constant feedback. For example, I run a design critique once a week where designers can bring their work and get feedback from the entire team. This is also a time for positive feedback too, when they hit it out of the park. I can also give feedback quickly via Slack, in 1-on-1s or longer-term feedback in detail reviews, but nothing that goes into these write-ups that they haven’t heard before.

11. Ask for feedback from above and below

Speaking of feedback, asking for it is invaluable. The best is when you ask multiple people and start to see patterns in the feedback. This happened to me a few weeks ago when two of my team members answered the question “As your manager, what can I start, stop, or continue doing?” in a very similar way. This made it very easy to understand the feedback as I was able to hear it from two different perspectives.

Feedback from above is equally important. Looking for a promotion? Ask, “What would a (title) do in their role, that I’m not doing now?” This gives you a clear path for the skills that you can be working on to prepare you for the next step of your career. In my experience, my role didn’t come with a job description in hand, so it was important to ask. There were things in my first year that I was blind to and wouldn’t have noticed unless they were pointed out.

12. Make the decision

Speaking of acquiring new skills, a more difficult one for me has been quick decision-making. I spent a lot of my career learning to be less biased, to not consider my own opinion so that I could listen to users and build the best products for them.

In a leadership position, you can’t keep gathering information until you feel confident enough to make a decision. Sometimes you’re going to have to take a guess. Sometimes waiting to make a decision is the worst decision you can make.

The best thing to do is gather input quickly and make the decision. You can think about it in your own time if you need to, but don’t put it off — make the decision. You often won’t make everyone happy, but sometimes a decision just needs to be made in order to get things done. I’m still working on this one, but I hope a year from now I’ll be quicker and more confident in the decisions that I have to make on the fly.

13. Don’t be scared to hire people who are better than you

I can confidently say that each person on my team has some skillset or strength that I don’t have. When I was reading “The Making of a Manager,” Julie Zhuo specifically called this out. A few months later I was interviewing a candidate for the role and realized that they would be better at me at some things. This statement from Julie popped into my head right away “Don’t be scared to hire people who are better than you.”

I did and I haven’t regretted it one bit. I don’t need to be the best designer or researcher or engineer on my team — that’s not my role. I get to focus on doing the parts of the job that my team doesn’t have time for and being great at those things. I still have skills I can coach each of them to get better on, but all of them also get to learn from each other because I’ve hired a diversity of strengths. It’s a win, win, so don’t let your ego get in the way of making the best hire.

14. Team building activities are worthwhile

On the surface, these can look like a waste of time. I PROMISE you — They are not. Every time I do a team-building activity, I’m able to better connect with my team and have them connect with each other. This makes work more enjoyable, AND I know that they’ll be there for each other when they need help. I can go on vacation knowing that I’m leaving a strong team in my place who feels confident to move ahead together.

Team building activities across departments are useful too. They help us get to know the people we work with in a non-work context. This makes it easier and more productive when we work with them, which eventually saves us time. As my boss said to me recently, technology is easy, people are hard. Well, people are easier if you get to know them early before you run into a work problem, so make the investment.

15. Patience is key

Another thing I’ve learned from my current boss is the importance of patience. Change takes time when you are working with systems, so you have to wait to see the outcome of the decisions you’ve made. It’s also important to not change things too quickly. The first reason is that you won’t be able to tell what worked and what didn’t. The second reason is that it can cause chaos and confusion to your team or organization.

Know where you want to go. Take steps to get there. Don’t get too discouraged when it feels like there are two steps forward and one step back. Look at the progress you’ve made over instead of how far you are to the goal.

16. Design leaders are different

Around the 6 month mark, I decided that in order to be a better design leader, I wanted to invest in coaching. When I was working with Jesse James Garrett as my design leadership coach, he helped me realize that I didn’t need to conform to the style of other leaders at my company. Design leadership is different from other types of roles because you are often the oddball in the room.

My gift to the organization is my different approach. The best thing one can do is to embrace that. Yes, you can learn to talk in business or engineering language to connect with others but don’t forget your roots. We need all backgrounds to make the strongest teams.

17. Scope. Scope. Scope

One of the biggest lessons I learned was about scope. I’ve had to do this from early in my career when I worked in an agency. Then I was forced to get even better when I was independently consulting in order to make a living.

The definition of this has now increased for me as I’ve managed a team. We would not be able to hire someone else for our team and had too much work for our team size. In order to combat this, I made what feels like a risky decision. I decided that our UX team would not be able to support every engineering team in our organization.

There have been some challenges with this that I’m still working through, but if I made the decision again I would choose the same route. I’ve been able to keep my entire team because they aren’t burned out. We are able to produce high-quality work. I also think it’s a good way to show what UX can do for a product, and what happens when a UX team isn’t involved. That being said, time will tell if this decision is the best one.

18. Take care of yourself

Being a manager is a marathon, not a sprint. When things start to feel like they might spiral, this is your sign to come back to yourself. Focus on the basics. Have you eaten? Are you getting decent sleep? When was the last time you moved your body and got some good endorphins pumping to your brain?

Do you feel a cold coming on? It’s probably more useful to rest now before you get sick and end up out for a week. Even if something is on fire, it can be helpful to come back to yourself and take a few deep breaths, before diving into anything. As they say, put your oxygen mask on before assisting others.

19. Carve out time to think.

It’s easy as a manager to have your schedule bogged down with meetings. You can go from one topic to the next all day long. At the end of it, you’ll feel both exhausted and oddly unsatisfied, because it won’t have felt like you accomplished anything.

If you stay in this space, you will be a reactive leader. There will be no strategy in your decision-making or innovation in your ideas. Protect times on your calendar to just think. I try to do this by taking my dog on an afternoon walk or scheduling longer focused time. I often find that during that time, I’m able to connect dots, better define the core or a problem or come up with better solutions.

20. If it’s for you, it’ll feel right.

I’ve talked to both managers and IC who tried management and didn’t like it. It’s been an interesting experience as it’s felt like the right role for me. It utilizes my natural strengths while continuing to push me to grow in areas I’m interested in.

Last piece of advice

If I can give you one insight above the rest, it’s this — Don’t try to be someone else — be yourself. Figure out what works for you. There are many great leaders out there, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. If you know yourself well, you can take the advice that’s given and use the bits that will best for you.

Good luck!