“Mastering the art of situational leadership. I found it very difficult when I first became a people manager to delegate responsibilities to others especially when I knew I could do something faster, or more efficiently. I hated watching people struggle. I would want to do it for them to make their job easier.

Yet, being an effective leader means you have to assess the situation, and the skills of your team, and be able to flex your leadership style so that you can bring the best out of your people. Sometimes that means delegating, coaching, supporting, or directing. It's about meeting people where they are and allowing them to develop and demonstrate important skills. It's also critical to show your team that you trust them while offering guardrails to protect them and/or the project from catastrophic failure. “

“I was working in a large legal tech company with a tiny design team. When I wasn't delivering design work, I was advocating for design and building a business case for getting more design resources.

When the company I worked for was acquired, our new leadership tasked the product design team with creating a unified product experience across our entire portfolio of 12-15 products.

One afternoon my manager and his manager called me up and asked me if I would like to become the first-ever Product Design Manager in the organization. At first, I was unsure if people management was for me. I don't consider myself the "bossy" type. Then my manager explained to me that I was already doing 75% of the job by supporting my design peers and leading design.

I was most afraid of what my design peers would say when they learned that I was now their manager. Surprisingly, everyone was extremely supportive and happy to have a manager who truly understood their role and would be their biggest advocate. My team told me I was a natural leader, however, I was the last person to see it.

Now I realize that developing people is my favorite part and I'd struggle to go back to a role where that wasn't part of the job. “

“First and foremost, I feel very strongly that individuals aren’t diverse, teams are. I do believe it’s important to advocate for those from historically marginalized groups. Yet, I believe that diversity is broader than just protected characteristics. There are many attributes to consider when designing a diverse team; skills, experience, backgrounds, personalities, etc. As a people manager, I consider myself a facilitator. My first step is to assess my team and determine what’s missing. Then I partner with recruiting to create a diverse pipeline of candidates. Next, I build an interview process that eliminates bias by evaluating candidates with a standard rubric. Once onboard, I create forums for team members to communicate and build their own culture. I create space to empower all individuals to contribute, especially introverts.”

“This one isn't super recent but it's shaped my leadership style.

Back when I was a design manager in an e-commerce company, one of my product development teams was assigned a new product manager who had a background in UX design. All three of the designers on his team complained to me that he was often extremely critical of their design work and was overall very difficult to work with. Thinking I could save the day, I went directly to the product manager's manager and shared the feedback. The situation escalated quickly from there.

By the time the product manager received the feedback from their manager, it was way too late to act on it. Furthermore, I realized I deprived my designers of learning how to navigate conflict and deliver critical feedback on their own. I learned that it's better to teach people how to develop the skills to navigate conflict on their own versus navigating it for them. “

“The book "The Coaching Habit." Truthfully, I haven't finished reading the whole book yet. I discovered the book when I paired with another design manager to create a training session on coaching and I learned SO much from that experience. I used to think that coaching was about giving specific advice and instruction, like a coach yelling from the sidelines to their team out on the field. Yet, this book helped me realize that coaching is about listening and asking thoughtful questions to help people arrive at their own answers. It's often about being a sounding board, partnering with people to help them connect the dots or see a situation from a new perspective. I've taken that approach with my designers and mentees ever since and the feedback I receive is very positive.“

“Wow, only one piece of advice? How tough!

There's a quote by Maya Angelou that goes something like this "Long after people forgot what you said, and forgot what you did, they'll remember how you made them feel."

I'm a true believer in this. As people leaders, we're often accountable for achieving results for an organization. There are many ways to do this. Do you want to be remembered as someone who achieved results through intimidation and tears or someone who achieved results through inspiration and collaboration? When we eventually leave our roles, there are only two things that we take with us; our results and our relationships. Don't sacrifice one for the other. You'll need both to be successful. “

“One of the most underrated leadership skills is "listening" and it's a decidedly powerful tool. I had always envisioned leaders as the people who do all the talking but that's just not true. Here's how I used my listening skills to help a team resolve internal conflicts and start delivering features:

When I first joined as a design manager at an e-commerce company the product development org had just released the MVP platform but executive leadership had a fast-follow laundry list of features to add to the backlog. However, my product development team had come to a virtual halt. The engineers were complaining that there were no stories in the backlog. The product managers were complaining that the designs took too long and they didn’t know what the design team was working on. Design was complaining that they weren't included on product strategy discussions.

The first thing I did was start my listening tour. I met with product, design, engineering, and other stakeholders to understand the problem from their perspective and understand what they tried.

Then I implemented a cross-functional weekly design planning ceremony to give everyone input and equal visibility to the product development process. This created a forum for all disciplines in the team to raise concerns. We defined and assigned design work based on product strategy priorities. Engineering was thrilled to be engaged earlier in the process to provide feasibility.

Lastly, I facilitated a working agreement. This created alignment on how and where important decisions were made, captured, and communicated.

All of this resulted in increased collaboration, and more throughput of product development work, which delivered key platform enhancements that increased conversation rates. Most importantly, this resulted in a happy healthy team - and it all started with listening. “