Anyone Can Be a Leader: 4 Simple Actions To Influence Design In Your Everyday Work
My takeaways as a featured speaker at WiUX Conference 2019 and as a junior designer at Google
A few weeks ago, I spoke at WiUX’s (Women in UX) 5th Annual Design Conference, which aims to empower and connect women of all experiences, and aid their endeavors in User Experience and related fields. This year’s topic was UX Across Borders which gave me the opportunity to think beyond the traditional conventions of what it meant to be a UX professional.
Something that came up from work was the way we typically view leadership. When we think about leadership, we might think of how decisions are made from the higher ups, and as an individual contributor, we simply follow through on those decisions. Even at Google where we try to encourage decisions and involvement from everyone in all levels, it can be hard to disconnect ourselves from blindly following and going with the norm. After all, it is something that we might be used to doing, whether it is part of the culture or environment we grew up in.
During the first few months of work and reflecting on the artistic endeavors I pursued before college, I realized that I had been a “leader” all along, and that pursuing leadership was simpler than what I imagined it to be. Leadership isn’t something bestowed upon you, but it’s a decision you make.
By following these 4 tips and incorporating them into your everyday work, you can start to realize that leadership is based on the actions we take and the habits that come out of them.
- Identify weaknesses and set goals to address them → Start with why
You may have a wide range of things you want to do, but there are things you value above others. Once you discover what those things are and why you want to pursue/are pursuing them, that is your driving purpose. Having a purpose or an ethos statement makes your work more meaningful and influences the decisions you make.
For me, I wanted to get better at public speaking and the actions that led to this bigger goal: practicing for long hours, opting for more presentation opportunities, were based on the bigger purpose of making sure my design decisions get heard.
When you have a purpose (i.e. suggesting change), you can lead by making decisions and guide people to understand and adopt that very purpose into their own work; to introduce meaning into their day to day.
2. Establish relationships with your team → Empower others
Everyone can help and guide other people to achieve their goals, regardless of your level.
To begin empowering others, acknowledge people’s successes and positive contributions. Cait Flood from Invista says that when you empower another person, you invest yourself and take a risk that has the potential to change another person’s life while simultaneously enriching yourself with their story, their culture and their purpose.
3. Forget titles → Focus on solutions, not problems
Hierarchy shouldn’t be a blocker when it comes to creating solutions or working with your team. Find ways to make the most change through your design. This could be looking at OKRs and helping your teammates work on them if there is an opportunity for design before having it get assigned to you. If collaboration is faulty, create a framework for best critique practices.
Decisions made on the leadership level should be, if not already, are based on the day to day decisions we make.
4. Trust your gut → Question the status quo
If you find a better way of doing something, don’t disregard it because it doesn’t meet your organizations standards. Records and statistics can always be broken if it doesn’t directly apply to your team and if you find a better way of getting things done.
Along with giving the talk, here is what I took away from the overall conference:
There are leaders at every level
For a long time, I was used to hearing that only people given the title of “senior” and above were deemed qualified to give talks on their work. Everyone has something valuable to contribute and being able to speak at the conference made me realize that. One of the reasons I was invited, which resonated with me, is that my advice as a new grad designer would be extremely valuable, especially to majority of the audience whom were students.
It was humbling to be the youngest speaker out of the many seasoned design professionals in the panel and I felt like I could really empathize with them. Leadership isn’t based on title or having numerous years of experience, but is based on connecting with your peers through shared goals and ambitions.
Being vulnerable allows for connection
For my talk, I strived to be very honest with my experiences, even if some of those experiences weren’t as glamorous as most people would think. After the talk, people were very comfortable in approaching and speaking with me. They shared their own experiences of working in the industry or finding full-time opportunities post graduation.
Titles can sometimes get in the way of relating to one another. By being open in sharing our personal experience, we can break the barriers that end up being created by the titles of our work. Let’s put less emphasis on our titles but aim for support.
Stories and experiences resonate more than data
Stories are more relatable. It’s what can connect others despite differences and distinguish hard, distant data. After my talk, the people who asked me questions would often refer the stories I shared during my talk such as overcoming my fear of public speaking.
Data doesn’t communicate the whole story behind what compels us to do the things we do. It also isn’t memorable without a story behind it. This made me think about my own design work, how my team makes decisions and how we can collectively encourage our peers to rely on stories, to go along with data, in order to make more informed decisions.
Ending notes
UX is a core part of the overall process and simple habits that can encourage designers to rethink the way they work, in that everyone is a “leader” in their work rather than viewing it as only “senior people” or “executives” are the only ones who can be leaders. I think that young designers, especially females, are not often encouraged to speak up and challenge norms.
I want to encourage more women to speak up and take initiative in their work, to rethink the mindset of “hierarchy” and “gender stereotypes” in that making impact can go beyond societal structures. In order to change these perceived notions, we need to set more examples of assertiveness and to challenge other women to break the gender sterotypical norms that we might perceive in our day to day work.
