The success of a visual designer working for a design agency is NOT the same as the success of a first designer for a startup is NOT the same as the success of a Product designer in a design team of 100. As we switch projects, teams, companies, or roles, we need to adapt and understand how to have the most impact in a team.

To set yourself apart, you have to change your literal and perceived impact on the product, and the individuals around you.

My journey from associate to senior designer has given me the opportunity to learn and experience working in different situations, which I would like to share with you. Let’s get right into it–

1. Drive alignment

Ambiguity in project goal/direction, your role in the team, processes to follow, and determining the decision maker can leave individuals is a tough spot to doubt their own abilities. To no surprise, ambiguity is one of the top five reasons for employee burnout. The reason this is not brought up more often is that it’s very ubiquitous to every team/project at work; but not taught formally in school or other trainings.

You’ve got to be the driver for clarity — which means you’ll need to have context, answers to some tough questions, and know when to forego a part of the project. At each stage, you’ve got to create a source of truth that’s widely shared with the respective stakeholders, helping everyone be on the same page and inviting criticism early for any misalignment.

Example: If you see a customer problem that’s not addressed, you can bring the right people into the room and state the problem with context. Dive deep and align on what the problem is, and based on that, find the DRI who’ll be able to take the project further. Additionally, you can create a Slack post [or any shared communication channel] summarizing the decisions and next steps to make sure everyone knows what’s expected.

2. Help others shine

“Attributing and giving weight to other people’s contributions to your success reflects on your own success and amplifies it.”

Being a catalyst in someone else’s success improves the perceived influence you have over them. Doing this overtime increases your effectiveness over the team’s success, and you will not be far away from your manager/leadership learning of your impact. Also, always be sure to thank others who’ve supported you, given you direction/feedback, or helped your work or you improve in any way. I got this advice from one of my mentors.

Do not limit yourself to design partners and go xfn with engineers, data scientists, customer success, internal ops and more. It’s particularly important for designers since design is never the only function contributing to the success of the overall product (read more about the The End of Navel Gazing talk I shared).

Example: If you designed a component that will be used by multiple teams, be sure to allow the developer to shine since they’re the ones truly making it accessible for other teams to implement, and by virtue of that, scaling your designs across products will reach more users. You can do so by making a Slack post or highlighting the person in a presentation.

3. Prove your impact with metrics

Metrics are not only a measure of business success but also serve as proof of your individual impact. Traditionally, designers believe metrics are primarily owned by PMs, data scientists, and developers; you (the designer) are an outsider to this math world to truly participate. Designers, as drivers of WHAT the feature will do and HOW users will use it to get the job done, have the power to drive these metrics, and you should feel confident not only understanding what’s being measured, but also pushing for the right metrics if necessary.

Example: For the self-serve account lockout feature, we measured: #CX queries; Overall time to resolution; translation of this into CSAT;

I understand, not all companies are data first or as forward as Airbnb developing an internal data education program; but there are tons of resources out there to start learning and start measuring your impact. Get started with these-

4. Be a culture champion

Not speaking up is like ditching your team. You’ve earned your spot on the team by going through a rigorous process. Trusting yourself to now prove you deserve the spot should drive you to action to propel yourself and the team.

This one is contextual to individuals’ company values and team micro-cultures. I’ll break down how you can navigate first within your XFN product team (aka company) and then on the vertical team (ex-design team).

XFN product team. As a member of an xfn team, you must always remember that you are not only representing yourself, but the design organization as a whole. How you collaborate and work with the team will set expectations for their future interactions with designers. The key here is to identify how you can be most effective in the product development process and execute to fill those gaps-

• Is the process missing focus on customers?
• How can you bring user research into the process?
• Do other project partners change how they think about design and customers?
• What level of design (workflows, wireframes, hi-fi prototypes) is needed to help make decisions and improve clarity

Vertical (design) team. It can be more intimidating to work with designers who are unicorns and superstars, as they can make you feel inadequate about your own skills. I have been hit by imposter syndrome many times while digesting the evolving talent within the design team. I want to tell you this–

You can start with how you do jams with other designers, how critiques are held, working to bring transparency to your work, contributing to the design system and more. If you don’t know where to start, simply reach out to your manager and ask :) One of my favorite reads has been Jennifer Gergen’s building a design team and culture at Meetup.

Example: Being the first designer on the Risk org within Brex, I drove conversations with customer journeys via Figjam. Soon, PMs and other Risk stakeholders onboarded onto Figjam, loved the tool, and started creating customer journeys at the start of every project! Design democratized :)

That’s all for today! Hope this was helpful.