Good designers are great communicators. This is probably directly connected to how they have been educated. Design education has a unique focus on articulating and justifying design decisions, which is useful in numerous professional contexts. Designers are charged with developing solutions diplomatically while meeting user needs and addressing stakeholder constraints. Good designers have an innate ability to navigate nuanced conversations toward optimal outcomes.

“The goal of a designer is to listen, observe, understand, sympathize, empathize, synthesize, and glean insights that enable him or her to ‘make the invisible visible.’“ — Hillman Curtis

Creative and effective information sharing and communication is paramount in high-performing organizations. So, it makes sense that non-designer members of the team might try to adopt some of the communication skills that come so naturally to good designers. Here are 20 strategies to help you communicate like a designer.

1. Listen to understand. It is common to simply listen for certain triggers or queues or moments for you to chime in, but to navigate toward an optimal solution it is necessary to first understand the problems you are facing.
2. When first responding, respond to confirm understanding, not to provide your solution. Sometimes the simple act of restating what has been said in a different way allows a team to better understand a problem. Designers are very good at this.
3. Think about what you’re communicating as if it were a design decision. Explain why when you are articulating different choices. Part of design education is standing in front of a group with your design and explaining why it is the way it is.
4. Foster consensus. Rally support. This might mean more 1-on-1's to get each person on board. This is worth the extra time as it makes it easier for the team to work toward a common vision.
5. Understand the themes of the conversation or project at hand. Even something as simple as an aesthetic or a vibe is worth noting. Whether it is defined by the team or customer or user, it is important to understand what themes exist in the project.
6. Have a long-term view. Sometimes the purpose of a meeting is simply to get another meeting. Keep the ball rolling with your work. When you are communicating, make it about more than just the present moment.
7. Don’t try to win the conversation. Your purpose as a communicator isn’t to win. Your purpose is to create understanding among your team members. There is no need to pursue a “right answer”.
8. Remove and ignore distractions in the conversation. Designers are very good at distilling information. They do this by carving out information that doesn’t feed the purpose of the conversation.
9. Anticipate reactions, but don’t be reactionary. It is much easier to communicate when you’ve thought about what needs to be communicated. Designers are good at considering what kind of feedback and reactions could come up. At the same time, it is important not give in to knee jerk reactions. Put another way — be prepared.
10. Understand the context. Consider what it is you’re communicating in the realm of a broader conversation. As a designer, you might think of an app inside a phone in someones hands in the middle of the street of a crowded city in the Western Hemisphere. As a communicator, your should have some awareness of all of the different relevant layers of the conversation.
11. Get to know your stakeholders. Tell their story. Show you understand them. It is much easier to develop a shorthand when you know someone. Your communications can be far more efficient when you know the stories of the stakeholders involved.
12. Know thy self. Understand your role and your identity. It is important to play you part in whatever organization you are in. It is also useful to know how your strengths and weaknesses fit into those of the team.
13. Do your homework. Be prepared for the conversation. So much of communication is about navigating different dynamics. Just like navigating uncharted waters, when you are prepared you are better off.
14. Always follow-up. There are always opportunities to provide clarity after a conversation has ended. And, even when a conversation was well understood among all parties, it is useful to summarize the outcomes of any interaction.
15. Manage expectations. This is something that all good designers master early on in their careers. Especially when you are talking about deliverables, it is very useful to go beyond understanding the expectations and actually grab hold of them and manage them as necessary.
16. Add constraints. Good designers love constraints. Constraints breed creativity, and they also help you communicate in a succinct and efficient way. Constraints enable you to create short hand ways of talking to your team in a way that the team appreciates.
17. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of done. Communication is a tool to help you get things done. Define what done is when you are working on projects. Also, it is important to define when decisions have been made. So often teams will not make a decision as they are pursuing the perfect decision. Forgetting to make a decision can be problematic.
18. Unpack the conversation into smaller pieces. Good designers do this all the time. So often we get together as a team, and the problem is just too big to tackle, so to communicate the problem better, we have to unpack it. This also helps when proposing solutions and communicating the value of different ideas.
19. Develop trust among team members. Trust and high-performance go hand in hand. So when things are communicated, hold people accountable to what they communicate. This will build trust among the team members and lead to higher performance.
20. Stay positive. Remember to give constructive criticism means to build up an idea while shaping it. That means you don’t tear people down, and you don’t tear their ideas down. Designers learn this skill very early on, and it is so very useful particularly when communicating with junior team members.

“Great design is a multi-layered relationship between human life and its environment.” — Naoto Fukasawa