IWD 2025: Learning out loud: building the team you wished you had
I'm only a few years into my career. I've had a roller coaster ride and squished extra experience into my few years. Where has this gotten me? Well, it means the team I am leading is also my first design team. Sounds a little crazy, right?
Or is it? Every day, hundreds of thousands of people go home with a baby even though they've never looked after a baby before. I'd say a lot of them do fine, some bad, some great! I'd like to be great. To be great, you need to know why you might not be great. As my own self-appointed harshest critic who bats between imposter syndrome and being queen of the world, I'm going to talk about how.
Know your strengths
I'm certainly not the best designer (if we are talking strictly craft) on the team. I'm not afraid to admit that. My skills lie in seeing the bigger picture, steering my little ship, being a good communicator, knowing when to cut corners, and when we really shouldn't cut corners. What this all means is I get to learn from my team while I make room for them to be awesome. It's working so far. We do design crits and have stand-ups and all that fun stuff. (And no one must pretend to notice the difference between design A and design B.)
Learn from where you can
I don't have a designer above me, I never have. (Apart from a short 8-week stint.) I'm in an engineering-led organisation. What was obvious in interviewing for this role was that despite being engineering-led, they knew that UX was important. This is very different to knowing how to integrate it into a team, but it's an okay start on the bumpy road that is being the first designer. Better than starting behind a brick wall anyway.
What this does mean is it takes a little bit more effort on your part as a designer to figure out your growth. It also takes a bit of compromise from what you expect in terms of your road to design earning its place in your organisation, and patience when it comes to people learning what design constitutes outside of pretty visuals.
For me, it's been key to maintain relationships outside of work for a bit of perspective. Design recruiters (the good ones) are an excellent friend to have, they talk to far more designers than I ever will, meaning their insights into industry trends, opinions and guidance on how your role is going are incredibly important. (This, and sometimes you make a genuine friend out of it.)
Building the team
I was meant to hire 1 person. I had 2 strong candidates who seemed like they'd be fun to work with (important) with complimentary but different strengths – that were also complimentary but different to mine. Lucky for me, I was then allowed to hire both. I've never understood people who look to hire someone just like themselves. How is this well rounded? It's not. It's easier (questionable) to work with. Thankfully for everyone involved, I am under no impression that I would enjoy working with myself as much as the team I have now.
I knew what my gaps were, where I needed the most help, and I tried my best to find people who would fill those so we could do our best work and learn from each other. Which is great. Everyone is kind and we laugh whenever we talk to each other – completely necessary as we do design payroll software. It's not a naturally funny subject. It's also necessary because we are trying to build a design culture, which is difficult, and things go wrong. If we don't laugh, we might cry. And I do sometimes. But it's all part of the process and I cry when my neighbour's baby says my dog's name so I wouldn't put much weight on that.
Curiosity, flexibility and forgiveness
I would love for everyone in the world to admit when they don't know something. Wouldn't we all move forward quicker if we did that? But this can't just be on the individual. It also means creating a safe space for everyone to be open in the first place. The other day I pitched to one of my designers that we go into a session criticising each other for something and then laughing it off to make everyone feel safer being honest. We haven't tried this yet so if I get fired in a week, you'll know how it went down. I'm just kidding (sort of).
A conversation I've had many times is about the delicate balance between giving and receiving feedback, knowing when it's time to push and when it's time to take someone else's push. It's tough, and there are no hard and fast answers. The only thing you can do is be open, be curious, be flexible and kind to yourself. Unless someone shouts at you and says 'you're stupid', it's likely not a personal attack.
Being the leader I wish I'd had
I try to be the leader I've wished for in my career. I can't sit here and say I'll be the best lead that anyone has ever had. But what I am is a huge advocate of design, one that understands we need to balance the commercial side and that we have technical restrictions that mean the answer is 'no but sort of yes but maybe' a lot of the time. I want my team to grow. I want us to collaborate and want everyone to have space to be confident and excellent in the way they want whilst also being part of an efficient, creative, well-oiled machine. But most of all I want to help influence an exciting culture of design, innovation and creativity. Which is really a group effort, one that I'm incredibly grateful to be a part of.