Leadership
"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."
- Antoine de Saint Exupéry
My approach to leadership is to align work with purpose, create a shared vision across organizational lines, and not just give lip-service to empowerment, but take practical steps towards individual growth and leadership.
Purpose-Driven Work
Aligning work with purpose is essential to building high-performing teams and combating burn-out. It is leadership’s responsibility to help teams identify and define their purpose for themselves.
Intrinsic Motivation
Purpose cannot be handed down, it has to come from within. Individuals and teams need to own and define it for themselves for it to be internalized.
This type of work will never happen on it's own, leaders must prioritize and create space for teams to define their purpose.
Rituals
1:1s
Meet people where they are, identify and track motivations, and set purposeful goals.
Purpose to Principles Ceremony
At the start of a new year, I conduct a series of workshops to define/refine our purpose as a team. As facilitator I try to identify patterns and curate the strongest themes.
Year over year we refine our purpose to principles as the team evolves and needs change.
Retrospectives
Project and quarterly retros are good times to reflect on alignment and progress towards our goals.
Consistency
Any kind of team mottos or catchphrases are gold. Providing immediate feedback in the form of shout-outs and Slack messages also go a long way for reinforcing our purpose.
Positive Work Culture
Psychological safety, mutual respect and trust are not a given, it is earned through your behaviors. Go out of your way to help others, be an advocate for your team, and be open about your own vulnerabilities to build up those factors over time.
Be proactive in celebrating wins and showing appreciation. Positive feedback is just as, if not more important than critical feedback.
Keep it chill. Pay attention to stressors, take a beat to huddle up, determine the root cause, and make a plan as a team to overcome them.
References:
Creating a Shared Vision
“Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprang up.”
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
Where are we going? What are we working towards? Many organizations struggle with these questions. Design is a superpower when it comes to communicating a vision. We have a unique ability to not just conceptualize but also visualize the future.
Prototyping
“A prototype is worth a 1000 meetings.”
So much time is wasted talking about ideas. Don't wait for permission, don't wait for prioritization, just build it.
Most non-designers have a hard time picturing it without seeing it. Prototypes are crucial in the early stages of creating a shared vision for giving stakeholders context and an opportunity to provide feedback.
As the vision becomes more solidified prototypes and proofs of concept act as the picture on the puzzle box, helping teams breakdown complex problems into individual pieces.
Leverage the strengths of generative AI to express your ideas. As we enter a new technological era, every company is scrambling to figure out what the future of their business will be. Designers are uniquely poised to envision that future.
Vision-Work
User Needs & Innovation Workshops
When a team is unsure of it's vision, this a good first step into getting teams thinking about the future, without getting bogged down by implementation details. Identify emergent themes to explore further.
Demos
When working with remote and international teams, recording and sharing demos can help amplify your vision. Luck is preparation meets opportunity, record a demo of your prototypes and poc's to stay ready when opportunities to inform the roadmap arise.
Decks & Case Studies
Let's be real, the primary output of exec-level leadership is putting things in decks. Fast track alignment by outlining your vision in the form of a deck or case study so senior leaders can easily disseminate your vision.
Nemawashi
The art of consensus building. Don't let your vision get railroaded by execs with their own agenda. Loop them in before decision-making ceremonies to gain agreement and voice their concerns.
References:
Empowering Individuals
It's one thing to atol the virtues of empowerment, it's another to put it into practice. Empowerment is a tricky thing to pull off. Many leaders' efforts backfire when they try to force it on individuals who are either unprepared or unwilling.
Empowerment is more than lip service—it’s about creating the conditions for people to do their best work and grow.
Practical Approaches
Two Types of Workers
Those who know how to do good work, but are not motivated.
Those who are motivated to do good work, but don't know how.
Three Emotional Needs
Competence: Provide training, mentorship, and clarity through a well defined process and vision.
Relatedness: Understand your team's intrinsic motivations. Connect work to purpose.
Autonomy: Let doers be deciders. Fine tune control as individuals gain competence and clarity. Establish a foundation of mutual trust and pride of ownership.
Motivation
There are many models of behavior, but I defer to Fogg model (Behavior = Motivation + Ability + Prompt) for it's simplicity.
If it's too much work, find ways to lower the bar, aka ability.
If they just need a push, establish reminders or triggers, aka prompts.
If there is zero motivation, take the time to understand why and come up with a plan together to evaluate and make the best of the situation.
Overcoming Learned Helplessness
Utilize these approaches to overcome mindsets that have been poisoned by systems of control and compliance.
Make the Permanent > Temporary
Complete; don't continue
Use time-bound strategies to regroup before proceeding
Make the Personal > Impersonal
Observe; don't judge
Focus on the situation, behavior, and impact
Make the Pervasive > Isolated
Provide context
Call a timeout to address negative feedback loops
Freedom & Innovation
Designers are not just ticket takers. No one is going to instruct you to go out and innovate. But that is exactly what business need to stay relevant.
Set aside time to experiment and share ideas as a team.
Involve other departments in your experiments to drive cross-org innovation.
