The player-coach design leader
Every designer I know loves doing design. It’s a passion; it’s creative, it’s exploratory, it’s future-focused. Many people aspire to design because of its hands-on, problem-solving nature.
Experienced designers are experts at balancing the detail of understanding problems with strategic oversight - zooming in and out. It takes time to get good at that, based on years of mistakes, success, and learning.
As design leaders progress in their careers, they often transition into more people management roles. The intent is to scale their impact through the designers they coach and develop. When the focus is too heavy on people and practice leadership, and they’re no longer leading the direction, the best designers are taken away from their most valuable skillset; design.
Design leaders are enablers, facilitators, coaches, AND do-ers.
There’s an old saying, the best designer isn’t the best manager. While that’s true for some people, it’s unambitious. Separating design into distinct tracks for doing and management leads to a situation where managers are not proficient designers, diluting the impact of design.
“Design management needs to swing the pendulum back a bit. We need to get off the bench and take on a little more of that old Creative Director energy: get in the details, push our teams to take one more pass at things, try something totally weird that probably won't work, challenge and inspire their peers in engineering and product.”
Cap Watkins
For design leadership to be effective, we need a player-coach approach*. We need to combine people leadership and design leadership. This looks like:
Building leadership foundations
Distribute the responsibilities of people, practice, and operational management across the team. This might include no one directly managing more than six people, establishing leadership for each practice, fostering communities of practice, and investing in design operations.
Creating a culture of design feedback
Incorporate regular design critiques and reviews into the working rhythms of your team. Encourage an open work environment, making sure designers feel comfortable seeking your advice. Focus on providing feedback on the overall direction and biggest painpoints, avoiding micromanagement.
Leading by example
As a design leader, stay involved in key strategic initiatives and high-risk problems. Dive into the hands-on work, share your experiences across different teams, and have enough understanding of the details to offer useful guidance and coaching.
“Leaders who do the work, rather than just talk about it, help prevent the knowing-doing gap from opening in the first place. Working on the front lines keeps them in touch with the organization’s real capabilities and challenges; that experience allows them to play a critical role in turning knowledge into action.”
The smart-talk trapMaking space for exploration
Encourage designers to explore various aspects of their work, from visual exploration to customer behaviour, and bring these findings back to their product and service teams. Foster a culture of curiosity and problem exploration.
Collaborating with leadership counterparts
Build strong relationships with peers in product and engineering. Value their skills and engage in open discussions about design, sharing your thought process and ideas.
The best design leaders inspire everyone to create better experiences, through coaching people and shaping the work. The very best design leaders are the best designers and the best managers, that’s what makes a truly brilliant design leader.
It's entirely possible to excel at both aspects of the role. Let's continue to focus on action; making products, services, and experiences better for users and the business.
* The linked article, by Andy Budd, talks about the challenges of player-coach roles in organisations where design is not established. In organisations where design does not have recognition or established value, this is a tough gig, and only for the very brave.