In our CMCI program, we have a Design Leadership class. When I enrolled for the program, I didn’t know what Design Leadership meant and didn’t understand why it is crucial to know about it.
However, as I learned and realized that the Design Leadership is the skeleton and the foundation of the company and my vision of life, it allows me to think about where I should stand.
There are so many elements to think about how I should design the work environment. For me, three things are most important: transparency, collaboration, and communication.
Explicit
As a leader, I want to be as explicit as possible. There is nothing to hide. If I don’t tell something, then that is not explicit. People should know before hearing from someone else. For example, right now, the Coronavirus is the hottest issue. The data should be relevant and as explicit as possible. Even in the work and school environment. Everyone has the right to know how and who was exposed.
I might be a little off-topic, but Japan is not explicit in its COVID-19 cases. According to the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 data, it shows there are only 701 confirmed cases compared to other East Asia. Of course, in China, there are more than 80,000 confirmed cases, and in S. Korea, there are about 8,000 confirmed cases. It’s only 1/10 compared to S.Korea and 1/000 compared to China.
[Four years ago, I remembered watching Rio’s closing ceremony and Japanese promotional video to introduce 2020 Tokyo was amazing. I’ve viewed a few times and liked how they intertwined their strength with anime and narratives that represent Japan.]
I assume that the reason that Japan is not explicit is the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declared that he would run the Olympics as they planned.
As much as they are prepared, it might be very disappointing if it’s canceled. According to the LA Times, Japan could end up spending more than $26 billion on the 2020 Summer Olympics and Paralympics. But if it’s canceled, all that money, time and space become useless.
This is where explicit leadership comes in. Abe and his government are not explicit enough to the virus, and it makes their citizen feel insecure and fearful. If I am a leader, I would tell people as much as I know about the problem. If I don’t know how to solve it, I will say to them that I don’t know, and I need your help to figure it out. The higher the position, the heavier on responsibilities. But that doesn’t mean they can do everything. They are just a human being who is vulnerable as everyone else.
Collaboration
Honestly, I like to work by myself. I am more efficient and productive when I work alone because I can concentrate. I am bad at multitasking, but when I focus, I can work all day and night and finish things on time. Then recently, I changed my mind.
I do like to work with a team. I can get different perspectives on solving problems. Especially when I’m working on UX research, I can ask for different approaches to resolve the issues. Also, when we work as a team, responsibility is a lot lighter than working alone. But that doesn’t mean I’m not working or not motivated. I want to work harder, so I don’t harm anybody. If everyone can work a little bit harder, we can produce a better quality of the product than working myself.
For example, in our team project, we collaborated by using Figma. We all hopped into one board and started designing and sharing feedback at the same time. Because we were all in the same space, the work was very efficient and easy to give feedback. In UX, feedback from others’ perspectives is very crucial because I’m not the user of the product.
Communication
For me, I always thought the problem of communication is the language. Because I am bilingual, speaking English and Korean, I thought the problem was in me with my English skills. But it wasn’t.
When we had orientation last semester, we practiced ‘yes and..’ instead of ‘yes but..’ as I work in different people in a group, I realized how important is to accept others opinion in positive ways.
Also, we as a team have to always think about our goal is to help people. When we acknowledge that we are not the user, we can accept all the differences.
In the group, there are sometimes that I have difficulties following the conversation. When it happens, I take notes on the whiteboard. So when he or she talks, they can slow down the conversation and wait for me to write down the lists. Also, it is a lot easier to stop the conversation and ask for clarification.
When I was an intern, I was afraid of asking questions. I thought I should know everything that they know. Also, I did not want to stop the conversation because of me. (When people use the abbreviation, I had to remember and google later to know what they meant. Especially marketing terms.) But I was wrong if I don’t ask the questions, people may think that I’m not interested and not involved in the project.
Conclusion
As a leader, I will always think about our people and our users. I genuinely want to be an honest, explicit, collaborative, and communicative person. At work, and even at school, I don’t compete with anyone. I want to help our users to use the better product. Even with my own risk and sacrifice, I want to design a good product for the people. This is where I stand in design leadership.
