My goal as a design leader is to inspire and enable design teams to create experiences users love.
Personal experience and formal study of leadership theory have led me to my leadership values.
1. People first. At the core of any successful business are people who believe in what they are doing and feel supported in doing their best work. My passion as a design leader is to inspire design teams to create experiences that users love. This provides meaning, satisfaction, innovation, and a healthy foundation for business.
2. Empower teams with vision and supporting philosophy. Rather than engaging teams with a list of tactics, always share the rationale behind a strategy decision so that others can share ownership of the outcome. This keeps the team and organization focused on important principles. Through practice, I have learned that this empowers teams to confidently move forward with better decisions. [1,2]
3. Do the right thing and adjust from there. In order to lead from an authentic and truthful place, I always aim to do the right thing ethically and morally, even when it may be tough and unfavorable. This provides a stronger foundation for subsequent decisions and builds trust.
4. Embrace ambiguity, but show the clear path forward. Strategy changes are inevitable, and organizational discomfort is also inevitable. It is imperative as a leader that I model how to embrace uncertainty and thrive in a changing environment, while helping others to navigate change.
5. Don’t try to boil the ocean. Identify the important things and do them extremely well. In large, complex organizations it is easy to get pulled in multiple directions. In order to be effective, it is important to limit the scope of concern. This takes discipline, social intelligence, and the ability to say 'no' to the right things.
References:
1. Northouse, P. (2019). Leadership: Theory and Practice (8th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage., Ch. 11.
2. Waytz, A., Mason, M. (2013) Your Brain at Work: What a New Approach to Neuroscience can teach us about Management, HBR, July – August 2013