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How to effectively lead design teams to ensure that your people are well taken care of, while driving product success.

Overview

Many times in your design career, you will be called upon to lead your team. This may be part of your job description, or it may happen naturally.

Either way, today I’m gonna share with you how to effectively lead design teams to ensure that your people are well taken care of, while driving product success based on my own experience of over twelve years.

Let’s get into it.

The cardinal rules of design leadership

The following rules are essential when leading design teams, because they help you cultivate the following attributes in your team: efficacy, flexibility, and resiliency.

These traits will serve your team and organization well, along with ensuring that if something happens to you (God forbid) your team will continue to function as a cohesive unit.

1. People do well when they can

This is first and most important rule of design leadership. Internalize this rule. Never be without this rule. DEEPLY understand this rule:

“People do well when they can, not when they want to.”

→ If a person is doing poorly it is because they lack the tools, resources, and/or support to make it happen effectively. NO ONE WANTS TO DO BADLY.

Never tell someone that you need them to do better; ask them what’s going on, where they’re struggling, and what you can do to help them out.

As a leader, it is your job to check in with your people consistently, and make sure that they have what they need to get the job done, and feel comfortable in their skills to make it happen.

If not, get them what they need, so that they can do well.

2. The buck stops with you

When you’re a leader, everything is your fault, and everything is your responsibility. There is not one thing that your team does that does not ultimately rest on your shoulders, and you need to act accordingly.

Anytime there is heat from stakeholders, management, or anywhere else; take it gladly. Anytime someone on your team gets called out, stand in front of them, and take the rap.

Most importantly, any time there is blame being handed out, own it.

Why? Because YOU are in charge of your team, and you bear the responsibility of your team. When exemplified this shows your team that they can trust you implicitly, and that you’re not going to throw them under the bus to save your own ass.

3. Take nothing personally

There is not a single thing that will happen during a project that is aimed at you personally. If someone insults you, let them know that’s not okay, but don’t take it to heart, there’s a high likelihood that they don’t actually mean it.

Take people’s frustrations in stride because it shows that you have enough self-control to realize when someone is venting.

→ Leadership ABC’s: always be chill.

Your ability to stay calm under directed pressure will be directly proportionate to your ability to control the situation, and redirect it in a more positive direction.

4. Be hearty in approbation and lavish in praise

Taken straight from the timeless classic “How to Win Friends & Influence People,” anytime your team does something right, make sure you tell them what a great job they did.

What this does is establishes a shared identity for your team in which they believe that they win more than they lose, so they WILL win more than they lose, because they will try that much harder to win.

This is emotional and psychological, but indispensable and important for you to apply in your leadership practices.

5. NEVER make an example out of someone

Never, and I mean NEVER take someone out in front of other people and humiliate/discipline them to set an example.

This is one of the absolute worst things you can do for your team’s morale. If you have a member who is out of line, it is much better to call them to a private area and speak with them one-on-one to address the issue.

DO NOT let the rest of your team see you discipline someone, because it scares people into not trying and hiding things from you that would honestly be better if you knew about.

Mistakes will start creeping into production, quality of work will start to drop, absenteeism will increase, and your team will grow to both fear and hate you.

Don’t do it. Deal with people equitably, discipline in private, and if you need to let someone go, let them go with honor and dignity to the best of your ability.

6. Step up, step back

This one can be a little confusing for leaders who are new to their position, so I will attempt to break it down here.

• If you notice that your team is struggling, step up and show them what needs to be done.
• If you notice that your team is working together well, step back and let them figure it out as they go. Don’t micromanage.

This approach works to cultivate an environment that is conducive to learning, working together, and failing forward in a positive direction.

It is far better to let your team learn, and to help them when they need it, than to try to do it all yourself, they get used to you doing it, and then you get sick or get hit by a bus and they have no idea how to function without you.

Let them try and fail, but make sure they learn from it. Step up when needed, step back when they’ve got it.

7. Lead from the front

If you want to see your team act in ways that are beneficial for what you’re trying to accomplish, than you’d better be demonstrating those qualities twice as hard.

→ You want to hold yourself to a professional standard that is between 150% to 200% higher than you hold anyone else on your team to.

The reason for this is simple: demonstrating what you want to see is much better than just telling people.

Show them that you would never ask them to do anything that you wouldn't be willing to do yourself. Hold them to a standard, of course. Give them something to strive for, but hold yourself to a much higher one because it is necessary for your team’s success.

8. Emphasize effort, learning, growth, and trust

If you want to see your team experience explosive growth and gains in terms of overall efficacy, there are four things you want to emphasize:

• Effort
• Learning
• Growth, and
• Trust

These four aspects of your team’s culture underpin virtually everything that your team does, and serves to continuously reinforce your team’s identity.

• If you say “I expect you to fail, and that’s more than fine, as long as you learn from it and share what you learned with the rest of us,” that’s what makes great teams.
• If you say “I don’t care about your shortcomings, as much as I value your willingness to try and learn,” that’s what makes great teams.
• If you say “I appreciate your drive to continue pushing yourselves outside of your comfort zone, but not to the point of panic or fear, in an effort to grow yourselves and broaden your horizons,” that’s what makes great teams.
• And if you say “I trust you implicitly, and if you fail me, I know that you didn’t do it on purpose,” that’s what makes great teams.

Cultivate these four things and you will see rapid growth and gains in your team’s overall efficacy.

9. Address issues as challenges

If you come across a problem, don’t address it as a problem; address it as a challenge.

“Alright everybody, we’ve got a new challenge…”

This is how you start the conversation. Don’t frame it as a problem to bemoan and complain about, frame it as a challenge to be taken on and won.

Teams thrive on their ability to come up with solutions to complex problems, and your team is no exception. Give them a challenge, give them space to consider all avenues, and watch them grow together as they solve it.

10. Tell your people to go home early

If you want your people to stay healthy, happy, and engaged, tell them to go home early as often as you can.

“You guys killed it today, why don’t you take the rest of the day off?”

This is what creates a rewarding atmosphere: give them their time back. Show them that you value their contributions and time.

Always remember what your team is doing for you: they are trading their hours for dollars, and most of those dollars go going towards just maintaining their lives so that they can keep trading you hours.

Respect their time, and respect their lives, they only have so much of it.

11. Celebrate your team

Finally, when the project is over or if your team has hit a big milestone, celebrate them.

Buy them food and drinks, tell them how much they mean to you, show them what all they’ve done, and how far they’ve come.

→ Above all, credit each and every one of them with their contributions. Show them that what they’re doing is meaningful and important.

This is how you create real buy-in, how you cultivate ownership within your team, how you drive equity, and how you maintain standards: by actively showing your people that their efforts are worth it.