The Weakest Member of Your Team
Is it that guy who always wears a cap? Is it that girl who sits next to you? Is it you? This article is here to disclose a secret that many highly experienced managers keep from us all this time
The content of this article comes from a talk by Dan Willis at Leading Design Conference 2018, London. It’s also combined with my interpretation, and description of how it relates to my experience and condition of the Traveloka design team seen through my lens.
There is one thing highly experienced (and good!) managers have in common. They know that there’s a certain phase in their lives where they suffer in managing themselves. There’s a time when they have to do both managing people and being an individual contributor (IC) at the same time.
Working at Traveloka convinces me even more that these things happen, every lead has to juggle between doing individual’s projects, managing people, and often time there’s hardly any clear cut between the two.
“Even the best design managers treat themselves poorly”-Dan Willis
They all know this but often deny it, or even keep it a secret.
So the mission of writing and sharing this article is to disclose this secret to you who just started in being a leader, who have been one for a while, or who aspire to be one for this very reason:
“Your team is only as strong as your weakest team member. So what do you do if you’re in charge and realize, oh crap, I am that weakest team member.” -Dan Willis
The cause of being the weakest in your team
It can be many. There is no single cause of it, obviously. It can be due to lacking certain capabilities, lacking experience, lacking resilience, or even ignorance. I can go on and on with my own weaknesses. The one thing Dan pointed out here is not one of these.
The funny thing is, according to Dan, there are good designers who get promoted, but it turns out that they are really bad at managing others. On the contrary, there are designers who don’t do things as well, who turn out to be excellent at managing other designers in doing the exact tasks they (the manager) can’t.
Reflecting on my own journey from an individual contributor to people manager, it’s easy to see that many of my team members are much better in doing the exact things I used to do when I didn’t have a team. This isn’t to say that I shouldn’t be an IC, but designers need to identify what their key strengths are, and choose a track in which they can contribute to the organization optimally.
How can a great individual contributor who gets promoted to be a team leader be the weakest team member of the team? It’s because the team’s leader is doing a lousy job at managing herself/himself.
Been there done that. Still there, still working on it.
The following section can hopefully help you diagnose if you are managing yourself well.
Why we suck at managing ourselves
Here are the things we tend to do as designers, and most likely are inclined to keep doing:
- We are obsessed with being “hands-on”
Yes. Design managers are obsessed with that, as all designers are.
One of the most important design aspects is craftsmanship. It feels good to jump in and solve user problems. The big question is: Where are you in the above spectrum? One thing to remember, the function of the spectrum is not to dictate where you should be. I will explain more in the next section.
2. We know ourselves at our absolute best
I’d say, we think we know. We’re afraid that if we get too far from being hands-on, we’ll lose respect from the team. We need to be in control of everything, all the time.
We read and even create job description (JD) for design leaders that, among many other leader’s responsibilities, states this:
Roll up your sleeves to directly contribute in projects
Sounds familiar?
We also have that kind of JD at Traveloka. One of the reasons we write such thing is possibly due to us knowing that we are all fascinated with being “hands-on”(?), hence a selling point. In fact, it’s not a realistic JD, and it’s probably worth revisiting.
I’m not saying to demand one thing from leaders and ask them to neglect the other. It is to recognize the priority as your role evolves, from rolling up your sleeves to craft to empowering your team as they work on projects. After all, people managers’ impact is seen and measured through the people they manage.
3. We hate meetings and other things a manager does. We undervalue management overhead.
I’m not sure if you had been working in other industries prior to your design career.
Dan pointed out that with other professions, if you’re managing, then you’re managing. We designers, on the other hand, resent suits. We despise meetings and writing emails.
We do not see them as activities that get the job done. We do not have respect for them, we underestimate them. As a result, we do not invest enough time and effort to actually do them well.
I used to see meetings as mere meetings, a waste of time of sitting down and talking with stakeholders, while other people are “making true impact” outside the meeting rooms. The more I learned, the more I realized it’s not the meetings that are at fault, it’s the way we conduct the meetings; inefficient, no context in the meeting invitations, no clear agenda and objective, no clarity who should facilitate and track time, no one bothers making meeting notes, no action items, no follow-ups. No wonder they were a waste of time.
Meetings are actually a crucial part of getting the job done. They are a form of coordination, communication, decision making, alignment. In one word: progress. It takes skills to conduct one, to facilitate one, to make sure the objective of the meeting is met, and that things progress.
4. We confuse capability for need
The job of a design leader is not to do all the work, or accept all the work for the team. The job is to balance the work of the whole team. Just because a people manager is capable of doing something, it doesn’t mean that she/he has to do it.
We need to clearly define what can be done vs what needs to be done.
5. We set ridiculous deadlines for ourselves
As high performing and ambitious people manager, we set a 10-hour deadline when, in reality, it’s a 20-hour work. And yet, we would never expect this from another human being. Even if we do, we’d soon find out that it’s unhealthy.
As I reflect on it, this is why I pay less attention to my own well-being. I end up being not effective in the long run. I don’t listen enough to my own limit.
6. We ignore boundaries
We screw life-work balance. We demand sacrifices of ourselves, and forget that we can, and must, ask help from other people and delegate.
This point is closely related to no. 5. Those who are able to set boundaries are those who would thrive.
What now then? Are we doomed?
Familiar questions I heard and threw:
Is it better if designers do not manage others? Is it true that if we get to choose, most of us would prefer not to manage anyone?
Well, even if you choose to be an individual contributor for the rest of your career journey, being awful at managing yourself will eventually make you the weakest person in the team.
How to be better at self-management or in other words, be a strong team member?
The good news is, Dan Willis offered five tactics for this problem in his talk.
- Relocate yourself on the hands-on spectrum
When I first joined Traveloka, I was at the right end of the spectrum. I did things as quickly as I could, as good as I could. I had nothing else to think about except my lead’s expectations, stakeholders, users, and the company. As time went by, I started leading two, then five, then 10, then 20, etc. I slowly (and painfully) dragged myself to the other end of the spectrum. It was hard to delegate, it was hard to trust others, it was even harder to grow others because it means I had to slow down at times, adjust to their pace to be able to hold their hand, elevate and empower them to be independent.
Where are you in the spectrum? Dan advised us to relocate if necessary. Be honest about where your work is, and how you feel about your entire job. Pick one work that really frustrates you, work extra on it, then assess how you feel. Where you are in the spectrum might change over time. It is actually up to you and how you design the relocation. See this as another challenge.
2. Expect less
… from this article. Just kidding.
Our brain has limitations, and forgetting that our brain has limitations is a sign that our brain has limitations.
Dan gives an analogy about *cough* aging gracefully. Aging gracefully is not about stopping the aging. Like it or not, we are all going to age. The one thing we can do is to adjust our expectations as it happens.
What does he actually mean by adjusting expectations? The way I understood it, it’s to let go of our previous way of doing, the things we used to work on when we were fully hands-on. Have you ever heard m̶e̶ people manager saying, “Oh how I miss creating product copy again, how I miss the joy of creating something that users directly benefit from”? Adjust your expectation. There are many other knowledge and skills await you to learn and master.
Speaking of aging, some skincare routine also helps you age gracefully. Say amen?
3. Conduct peer discovery
This sounds madly interesting to me. Conducting peer discovery from leaders with no design background, be it finance, marketing, you name it. Do it in a casual way.
Peer discovery isn’t about seeking advice. It’s about gaining significant different perspectives on how these leaders manage themselves since they too are going through similar experiences.
The problem with doing peer discovery with designers you manage is, while they have valuable insights about leading design, if they’ve never done it before, they won’t be able to share with you significantly different perspectives.
I found out that there are so many solid leaders outside the Traveloka design team I could learn from. The way they lead the team might be significantly different from ours, how product team or marketing team leadership works is so much different from ours. That’s the point. The more different it is, the more valuable insights we can gain.
4. Create critique system
Dan asked, “What’s one of the signs that your company has a terrible business process? When managers create work and approve their own work.”
Ask for feedback from your team, take advantage of a critique system.
A critique system doesn’t have to be complex. The good ones are usually simple. There’s a problem, a proposed solution, and feedback from the team. Here are two exemplary way of giving design feedback: This one’s written by my colleague (it’s in Bahasa Indonesia), and this 6ish minute video featuring second graders that hooked me till the very end. A lesson I got from the video is, you are not your first draft (thanks, Amel for the reference).
Delegate the interesting projects to the team. As a leader, do what’s necessary for a leader to do, even if this means you have to do the less sexy works.
5. Embrace burnout
OK, this one might sound inappropriate and I can see you guys are frowning.
I did.
Why, Dan? Why?
Isn’t burnout a killer epidemic that needs to be avoided at all costs? Dan said that he experienced burnout at least four times in his life. During those times, he felt that his brain had just shut down, and he felt less valuable to his organization with every month that went by.
I could recall some of my burnout episodes, where I could no longer focus on doing my works, going through series of emotional, mental, and physical fatigue as if I was being forced to watch The Pianist over and over again and run a marathon at the same time. All I wanted was to have a break from everything. Some of the worst ones could not even be cured by going on vacation.
However, the burnout that he’s talking about here is not the one that causes permanent damage.
The one he was talking about was when you give everything you possibly can and you almost collapse. Personally, humans interest me, but at the same time dealing with people’s problems drains me. Empathizing can be draining. Listening can be draining. Empathizing can drain my energy and cognitive resources. Even until now, I’m still learning how to constantly care for others without burning out.
The important thing here is to acknowledge that “leading design can be hard,” Dan said, “and it beats you down.” Burnouts can’t be avoided, but it can be managed. The key is to analyze what can be done, what needs to be done, knowing that there’s a gap, and having other people to fill the gap.
In his closing statement he said, “You will recover. As you recover, and if you’re lucky, you’ll be burn out again because you’re actually doing something that is worth doing.”
Are you a people manager? Do you manage a team? Do you aspire to be one? Have you gone through similar experiences as Dan or me? I’d love to hear your stories in the comment section below :)
Cheers.
