From Designer to Manager
My Move from Player to Coach
A younger Stephanie dreamed she would either be an art director or creative director. Little did she know, she would end up here — an associate product design manager.
I have always lead teams, in a sense. Sometimes I led in small ways, like making a final design decision a team would go back and forth on, and other times I took a larger role, such as fine-tuning, testing, and implementing better processes for the team so we could collaborate better with engineers, work faster, and nurture a confident design voice.
Still, when presented with the opportunity to step into an official management role, I paused. If I was going to make this change, I had to ask myself a lot of hard questions:
- Why do I want to become a manager?
- What is my motivation to become a design leader?
- What would my leadership style be?
- Where do I want to take the team?
- Am I really going to enjoy all these meetings? Let’s face it, there’s gonna be more.
- Will I miss being in the weeds, finding solutions for complicated scenarios?
- Will I be able to handle conflict well?
- Will I miss design?
There are tons of articles and books on what it’s like to transition from design to management, other career paths, and what being a manager is really like. I did my research and dove into these resources.
’s book, The Making of a Manager, became my bible as I made notes, highlighted passages, and reread chapters. All to get my final answer:Yes. I want this.
Why I said yes to the position
I love seeing teams thrive. I genuinely enjoy being a part of making that happen by building an understanding of what process works best for our team. Being in a product-focused company like nCino, we are all motivated by the same goal, and learning how to best cultivate the growth and direct the culture of the team was something I wanted to do.
My biggest motivation is the confidence of the design team.
In the design world, it’s common for designers to feel left out of the big conversations, or deal with clients or agency owners that treat us like mockup churning machines. These are taxing situations that make it difficult to break the designer stereotype and become the design evangelist in those situations. I’ve been there and I understand the heaviness that comes with dealing with those situations. It’s heartbreaking to witness, and something I greatly empathize with. I’ve felt deeply discouraged in these same situations and watched other designers feel their inspiration diminish or their passions completely disappear.
As a result, I realized one of my motivations is to encourage my team and help them avoid those pitfalls. To encourage them to speak up and fight for good design, knowing and believing their voice matters.
Ultimately, I want to take the empathy I have for our users and extend that to my team and colleagues. I understand how important it is to build trust with your team, to be able to talk openly and freely about what drives and motivates me, and even what’s pissing me off that week. I want to provide that same environment to build trust and confidence in a rockstar team of designers.
Can I deal with the hard stuff?
That was something I really needed to consider. How would I handle conflict? What if a designer doesn’t get along with another colleague? How would I handle someone coming to me asking for a promotion or raise that we don’t have in the budget yet, or they’re not ready for? Coming from the designer position and having an environment where I raise all my concerns to my manager, would I be comfortable when people start to raise those very same issues to me?
Admittedly, the hard stuff sounded scary and awkward.
Sure, I’ve listened to teammates share discouragement and issues they want to fix. I’ve even helped solve a few problems by testing a new process or simply offering my own experience as advice. It becomes a whole new realm when your peers, now your direct reports, turn their eyes and ears to you for solid input and solutions.
Eventually, I realized that that’s what will help me; the fact that I’ve been in the trenches with them. I’ve experienced the same designer frustrations and worked out new suggestions and solutions. I think back on the advice my manager gave me in those times and the results that followed. That’s what made me more comfortable with the hard, awkward stuff.
Will I miss design?
I was pretty happy designing alongside an awesome team of designers, working out complicated workflows, and building an understanding of use cases for various roles in the banking industry. I enjoyed the complex combination of facilitating meetings and communicating with the customers and team members. I loved seeing our hard work and designs come to life and getting kudos from customers.
So will I miss design? Sure, at first, but moving into a position where I can help ensure the team has all the tools they need, evangelizing design to the company, and hiring the right people to keep our team of rockstars vibing, seems just as fulfilling, if not more.
I’ll miss the design process initially, but I’ll still be around to join the critiques, watch discussions in our slack channels, and weigh-in as needed. When I need a creative outlet, I have other options, such as drawing, painting, or freelance.
After my questions to myself are answered
I took a long introspective look at myself and my goals before reaching my answer. Doing so made me realize my true motivation behind taking this next step in my career.
Next was prepping for the internal interview.
The process seemed simple; I expressed my interest in the position and my manager and I continued working together on expectations. We discussed what I should read and what I should prepare for, including what kind of questions to expect during my interview.
I should note that quite a bit of this preparation and the actual interview happened during the COVID-19 pandemic, which brought up a whole new round of questions:
- Am I only this confident right now because I’m remote and not in front of actual people?
- Will I come across confident in the video conference then fall flat in person when we get back to the office?
- How can I truly judge the reaction if I get the job through video? Will the team really be happy about it?
I was genuinely worried about this until the actual interviews started. It was two panels of people, then two one-on-one sessions with VP’s. After a brief moment of awkwardness, I sank into the conversations and felt comfortable talking about my goals, motivation, and answering the questions thrown at me—even the hard ones.
As someone brand new to the world of management, I had plenty of questions for each group I spoke with. Of all my questions, I realized these were the most valuable things I asked:
“What are your beginning stories when you first started management?”
“What were your challenges and what helped you in your journey?”
The answers I got were nuggets of advice that will forever remain in my bullet journal and stay with me through my first steps into this position:
“Lean on your peers and instincts. As long as you do it for the right reasons, you’re good.”
“Get to know your team and build trust with them.”
“The relationships you build are important, and more often are built in the tough times.”
Before the interview, I almost expected to have a residual feeling of whether or not this was really for me. In truth, my discussions with everyone gave me a realistic outlook and more motivation to take it on.
I accepted the job
I got the call from my manager on my day off. He told me all the feedback was very positive and they wanted to offer me the position. Yes, and thank you! After learning the position was mine, I went through the following steps:
I did the usual process after learning such a big position was mine:
- Stare off into space in a daze from the magnitude of what had just happened.
- Open a bottle of sparkling rosé.
- At random times throughout the night, comment “Oh my god, this is happening.”
- Continue my evening with the aforementioned rosé.
After returning to work the following Monday, my manager and I synced up virtually on the next steps, as well as responsibilities to tackle now and in the future. We’ve been discussing things like hiring, budget, process, new direct reports, and more.
As this is written, I’m in a daze about the entire thing off and on and sometimes none of it feels real, though that could be from the pandemic. I’m constantly taking notes, organizing my thoughts on future candidates, planning what to say when things are announced to the team, and what to say when the designers have their first one-on-one with me.
I’m pleased I took the time to take a deep look at myself, and confront both my own strengths and weaknesses. Getting to this point was a long journey with a few stumbles, and I’m sure I’ll face plenty more challenges in my future. I look forward to learning from them and continuing to take obsessive notes, providing empathy for my team of designers, and building a team I’m proud to lead.
