Leadership in Design
Leadership Chat | February 27, 2024
As second-year students of the Masters in Design Innovation (MDES) program at Massachusetts College of Art and Design (MassArt), we got the opportunity to organize a live Leadership Chat event on February 27, 2024.
Professor José Manuel dos Santos introduced us to two prominent leaders in the field of design, Julie Casanave, who is the VP of User Experience and Digital Product Owner at Fidelity Investments, and Heather Reavey, who is the Head of Innovation Delivery at EPAM Continuum — whom we invited to share their extensive experiences in user experience, digital product ownership, and innovation delivery.
They delved into their personal leadership journeys, highlighting the challenges and successes they’ve encountered in driving innovation while managing diverse people in their organizations. Julie and Heather emphasize the importance of human-centric design, agile methodologies, and fostering a culture of innovation to stay ahead in the rapidly evolving digital landscape while trying to lead in the best way possible to drive motivation and success.
In their introductions, something stood out, making them seem like two strong leaders who could relate to one another in many ways. Despite the slight differences in their ethos, they complemented each other.
Julie described herself as someone with the heart of an artist, the mind of an engineer, and drive of an entrepreneur, while Heather described herself as someone with the mind, heart, and drive of a designer. Each leader has their own distinctive leadership style that evolves from their inner ethos and this event gave us an insight into theirs.
Top 5 key insights from the chat:
Shifting from an Individual Contributor to a Multiplier
Julie reflected on a common crossroad faced by designers in their career path, highlighting an existential dilemma between continuing as an individual contributor, focused on the direct creation and design tasks (“form giving”), versus transitioning into a managerial role, where one becomes a “multiplier” by overseeing and guiding the work of others. This shift to management is often uncomfortable for many designers, as it requires a different set of skills and a move away from hands-on design work. However, taking on a managerial role can significantly increase one’s ability to make an impact within the organization or field.
Heather also added that managing people with this vast set of skills was a different type of design problem to solve, suggesting that the skills and mindset as a designer in a leadership role can be used to effectively manage and lead teams of such diverse complexity to drive innovation.
Importance of Resilience and Flexibility in Leadership
The chat revealed the complexities and nuances of managing people, where Heather emphasized that it is an art and also a significant challenge. Julie and Heather both highlighted the importance of tailoring their approach to the individual needs and motivations of each person they manage, acknowledging that different individuals require different forms of support and motivation. Heather also touched on the challenge of maintaining a human connection and fostering personal growth within an increasingly automated and impersonal work environment, where interactions can often be reduced to robotic emails about productivity. She also reflected on the added difficulties brought about by COVID-19, which made the task of effectively managing and connecting with people both more challenging and critical, noting a shift in workplace culture and the ease of creating a tangible culture pre-pandemic.
Driving Motivation as Leader
Julie discussed the book Drive by Daniel Pink, which describes what people need to feel motivated — Autonomy, Purpose, and Mastery. It helped her understand what was going on with her team. Autonomy allowed her team to own and self-organize their work in the agile work environment while she supported their continuous learning to develop mastery in their domain and provide them with a purpose that would finally drive their motivation to contribute better. She emphasized “purpose”, stating that it is one of the most important aspects of leadership where she spent the most time understanding what problem her team was solving and for whom, and how they would know if they solved it.
Heather mentioned that managing a team of innovators where everyone should be able to creatively contribute wasn’t easy because innovators want to keep working their minds. She emphasized the need to control and stop her team from getting burnt out so as to allow them space to have some time off, which allowed them to access greater creativity and ultimately produce better deliverables.
Creating a Work Culture as a Leader
Heather emphasized on the need to create a fun environment and work culture to boost innovative thinking and productivity. She believes that shaping her team of leaders to lead their teams better was crucial and was driven by the ‘fun’ culture that she maintained in the organization. Heather shared about fun activities her team would have that drove innovative thinking to maintain strong touchpoints and human connections among her teams and people.
On the other hand, Julie mentioned that creating a culture and fun environment wasn’t her strongest suit, so she would always find a ‘minister of fun’ to lead and maintain that fun culture among her teams through activities every other week or so, and her team loves it. Julie emphasized that transparency was something she strongly believed was important to build trust and provide enough space for feedback among her team members. Embedding fun activities in this transparent work culture was important to her to understand her team and also help her team members get to know each other better.
Women in Design Leadership
Julie mentioned that her advice in leadership would be more gender-neutral, and she suggested it was a better option to seek growth in an organization with other women in leadership roles. She said that being a leader is not about being someone who has all the answers in the room and that leadership is more about being a force multiplier and the one to bring out the collective intelligence of the rest of the people. She gave an example of this inverted triangle where the leader is at the bottom and supports everyone else to ensure they have what they need to get things done. She also added that one of the traits of a leader who is a strong team player reflects in their willingness to amplify and elevate someone else’s achievements and success in a team.
Julie also believes that for one to achieve an upward trajectory in their career, it is really important to seek out mentors and talk to people as it creates an opportunity to learn something new from someone experienced in that domain and also builds one’s network.
Heather talked about how she was in awe of the millennial and Gen-Z women who are so much more authentic to themselves and demanding of the organization than previous generations. She believes the best thing for people who aspire to lead someday is to be themselves. Early in her career, a lot of the encouragement she got was more about “trying to be this successful person/woman”, it took a long time for her to realize that it was impossible to be a great version of someone else. She learned over time that being authentic is what helps create a greater impact and that’s how she is able to lead better by following her own inner ethos.
To conclude, this Leadership Chat event was truly inspiring — Julie and Heather shared many examples from their own experiences that were either something new to learn from or relatable to the audience. Leadership in the design industry can be very complex, but the resilience and flexibility coupled with their empathic designer attitudes are what reflects in their successful leadership journey.
#design #leadership #innovation
