Design Management – Year Three

I’ve been managing in User Experience for three years now, and each year has brought its own lessons that have shaped the way I think about design and leadership. While past year has been easier in some ways, it’s also brought new and unexpected challenges.
Some of the more traditional management tasks, like delivering feedback or being a facilitator, have become second nature, but there are a lot of areas I expected to get easier that haven’t yet.
Stepping into UX leadership, I knew there would be a lot of things I don’t know, but if I could go back and talk to my past self, I’d look at myself, widen my eyes ever so slightly and say, ‘No, you really have no idea.’
A Look Back At The Start
When I began in design, there was this energy I had. I was doing what I loved, getting paid well for it and it was fun! Being able to dive into creative projects, collaborate with passionate people, and see my ideas come to life felt incredibly rewarding.
Amidst all the positive energy, I’d occasionally hear some of my coworkers say things like, ‘I want to start my own side hustle.’ or ‘I don’t want to design forever.’ And hearing those comments made me slightly sad at the time. Why were the colleagues I viewed as design leaders so eager to move on? It had me second guessing myself, asking ‘Am I going to feel the same way some day?’
Why were the colleagues I viewed as design leaders so eager to move on?
Years later, I think I understand the sentiment more clearly. For me, it’s not that I’ve stopped enjoying design or lost the creative drive that got me into this field—I still love design. But the nature of my work has shifted almost entirely. Instead of crafting something beautiful or innovative myself, I step back and let other talented people do it. And while I truly believe in that purpose, I can’t ignore the fact that I sometimes feel like I’ve lost a part of myself—something I’m truly good at and comes naturally. Acknowledging that fact has brought me to say ‘Well, this part really sucks.’
It does suck. Every job, promotion, or career path comes with trade-offs. You might be like me and grow up in a company, and have good people around to help shepherd you ‘in the way’, but it doesn’t change that being the boss is different and hard. I’ve found maintaining perspective and a clear mindset is really important. It helps you evaluate where you are and find fulfillment in the parts that don’t suck.
Which brings me to an ongoing realization that…

Management ≠ Design
I’ve mentioned this in some of my previous writing, but I need to say it even more plainly: UX Management is vastly different than being an individual contributor. I’m restating this because I’m learning more and more why my initial feelings were spot on.
Management has required me to leverage an almost entirely different skill set to be successful. Managers need to live and breath soft skills like empathy, communication, and adaptability. As design careers progress, soft skills become increasingly vital, and the reliance on pure technical skills seem to diminish to an extent.
A senior designer might need to mentor a junior designer on their project or collaborate closely with cross-functional partners to align on strategic goals, while someone who is earlier in their career might be taking more direction and focusing on production rather than soft skills. This graph helps illustrate what I’m talking about:

It isn’t meant to be scientific, but you get the gist. You’ll always need some level of soft skills working in a professional environment, but you were likely hired for your technical skills. Once you begin working beyond deliverables and production tasks, soft skills and strategic thinking become more important. How you handle tough conversations and how you influence others can quickly become some of the more important things you do each day.
Why is it so quiet in here?
Picture this situation: A new designer speaks up for the first time, offering a suggestion that clearly won’t work for the project. The call goes quiet, and those seconds of silence stretch into what feels like hours, and the designer eventually scrambles to backtrack and explain themselves. The next time comes around where they have a chance to contribute, well… they hold back instead of sharing their idea. After some time, you find that others are starting to be hesitant about sharing as well.
What happened?
How we respond when someone is being open or vulnerable doesn’t just reflect who we are as people, it also reflects the culture of our teams as a whole. And if people don’t feel comfortable giving the wrong answer, it’s going to be hard to get them to feel comfortable giving any answer.
To put it more simply, if the fear of contributing outweighs the perceived ‘risk’ of staying silent, some people just won’t ever speak up. When we set the expectation of perfection, we may get filtered and polished communication that occasionally results in a great idea, but we consequently lose far more by discouraging the sharing of imperfect or even bad ideas.
If the fear of contributing outweighs the perceived ‘risk’ of staying silent, some people just won’t ever speak up.
When you put in the effort to create a safe and comfortable environment for your team, that’s when people become more their authentic selves and thrive. They start having fun, embracing their creativity, and finding greater success in their projects. Yes, bad ideas are going to be shared sometimes, but at least people felt safe enough to share them. The good ideas and outcomes you’re hoping for will come, eventually.
The Podium Is For Your Team 🏆
Here we go. You partner with your designers, mentoring, guiding, and unblocking them. You anticipate the needs of multiple teams all while trying to keep a strategic vision clear in view. You joined calls at a moments notice and came in with a strong voice for your team and the user. The project finally gets completed and you notice the same thing you’ve seen before:
There isn’t a podium finish for leaders. Once a project is complete, you see the outcome of your team’s hard work and you know their success is your success. But speaking from experience, it’s hard to remember the hundreds of small moments you contributed that led to the final result. When you can’t touch or see the tangible output of your work, it’s hard to truly feel success of anything. It leaves many of us in leadership with a feeling of being in limbo.
And I’m not saying there aren’t tangible metrics you can tie your value to. They might be the best thing to list to land your next gig. But the most significant accomplishment for me in these past three years has been seeing the growth in the people on my team and seeing the growth in myself, both as a person and as a leader. That’s something I have been able to ground myself in.
Fuel for the Journey Ahead
In looking back at all of the people I’ve managed, particularly in that first year, I wish I had today’s version of myself leading back then. I would have handled so many situations differently. And while that can feel like regret, it also shows how far I’ve come, and it makes me curious about how much I will change and grow in the next three years.
Becoming a design leader has its rewards, but the role is largely one of servitude. You serve your team, the business and the user. Nudging your way to a pixel-perfect design and then dusting your hands off isn’t a common occurrence. You’ll rarely get a research insight that changes your perspective so much that you quickly rush to design a new solution with the new context.
What you will get is moments where you truly help someone and things click. You’ll have more and more moments where you give direction that is exactly what the team needed, and you’ll find yourself saying “Well, this part really rocks.”