I was promoted to Director of Design in 2018. It was something I had worked towards and had been preparing a long time for. Even then, it was a sobering experience to be tossed head-first into the deep end of leadership. I immediately had to deal with a team that had taken a morale hit after losing our previous director, I needed to kickstart a hiring process to bring the team back to capacity, and I had to have some tough conversations about performance.
I learned a lot very quickly. Luckily, I had great coworkers and fantastic mentors to guide me. Over the last few years, I've found a leadership style that focuses on respect, trust, openness, and, above all, service to my team.
I believe that a good team is more than the sum of its parts when people compliment one another and can gel together. This is why I think it's critical to have an inclusive hiring process. Not only will this allow for a new hire's future coworkers to provide invaluable insight into candidates, but it also works to counteract biases, helps broaden the pool of candidates, and gives candidates a better picture of the team they're applying to join.
The hiring process I established on Lendesk's design team went through a number of iterations, but this is the latest version:
01 // Resume Screening
Who's involved
Entire Design Team
What we do
Review the resume's and portfolios of all candidates as a group
Who moves on
Any candidate who gets 2 "yes" votes from the team.
02 // Phone Screening
Who's involved
Myself and 1 other designer
What we do
short conversation so I can pitch the job to the candidate, figure out a little more about them, check for cultural fit and give them an opportunity to ask us any questions
Who moves on
If the other designer and I agree, we move the candidate forward
03 // Interview
Who's involved
Designers, PMs, Devs
What we do
Interview in 3 parts: a general/cultural check done by 2 designers, a portfolio review done by 2 other designers, and a cross-functional check done by a PM and a dev.
Who moves on
Design team picks top 2-3 candidates to move forward based on everyone's feedback
04 // Design Challenge
Who's involved
Entire Design Team, anyone who wants to be there
What we do
Candidates are given a take-home design challenge, then come back and present their solution. Design team takes the candidate out for lunch beforehand to see them in a more social setting.
Who moves on
Best candidate will get the job based on consensus from the design team.
Each team's culture is unique because, at least in part, it grows organically. My job is to create an environment of respect, honesty, and trust so the culture can grow in a positive direction. How did I do that at Lendesk?
Hire the Right People
People are the fundamental building blocks of good culture, that's why I like to give people as much exposure to job candidates as possible. I believe that if you have two people who are both capable of doing a job, picking the one who is the better cultural fit is the best choice in the long run.
Team Building
Getting a team to gel requires everyone to work together, which can be challenging for a design team where each member is working with other teams. At Lendesk I've set up weekly review sessions so everyone can see and give feedback on each other's work, as well as a weekly workshop to focus on big-picture design work like design systems, refining our processes, updating our tools, or watching webinars.
On the social side of things, before Covid we sat together and chatted about whatever every morning, had a weekly lunch, and drinks on Fridays after work. We also went to art galleries, science world exhibits, and the ever popular weekend dim sum. After Covid, we've reduced the lunch to monthly, kept the drinks, and introduced standups three times per week to make sure we stay up to date on each other's social lives. We've also leaned on our private slack channel to pepper each other with GIFs and memes.
Encourage Experimentation
Supporting people who want to try something new and being enthusiastic about it is a great way to show you trust them. Experiments we've run have included design charrettes, new workshops, art lessons (lovingly dubbed "Artsy Fartsy Time"), weekly 2 minute presentations, and improvisational comedy exercises for brainstorming. Some have been successful in yielding new activities to run at workshops, feature ideas, as well as levelling up the teams skills in drawing and presenting. Sadly, we never figured out a good use for improv comedy.
Mistakes Are About Learning
Mistakes happen and when they do I believe in reinforcing that it's totally okay. I focus on solutions, which sets a tone for the rest of the team that this is an opportunity to learn and there won't be any finger pointing.
I tell every designer on my team that they're probably not going to stay at Lendesk forever. Eventually they will move on, and it's my job to make sure that when they're ready to leave, they're in the best position to make that move. It takes a lot of the stigma out of the conversation and lets us talk honestly about their growth.
Self Evaluation and Goal Setting
With that out of the way, the first step is figuring out where someone is starting and where they want to grow. At Lendesk, we use a tool based loosely off of Sigin Joseph's Programmer Competency Matrix. It outlines a pretty comprehensive set of skills, the idea being to broaden people's ideas of what "core" skills are for a designer. I like to stress that everyone will have their own mix of strengths, weaknesses, and areas they want to focus on.
Once we have a baseline, it's time to figure out goals. I've had success using the Sticky Note Game, a brainstorming exercise in which the designer, a sponsor, and I come up with goals based on that designer's long-term career objectives. At the end the designer selects a specific set of goals to work on, setting up regular check-ins to review progress, problem solve, and figure out next steps.
My Approach
I adapt my mentorship style to each person. I keep their goals in mind when I'm assigning projects, giving people a good mix of things that are comfortable, but also things that will stretch them in the direction they want to grow. I tailor my feedback to focus on the skills that the designer is trying to develop, but also based on what I see their opportunities for growth to be. If people want to grow into a specific role, I try to provide guidance for that too. For example, I have two senior designers on the team who both want to go into leadership. To help them, I've set up the 4S Club (Nobody remembers what all 4 S's stand for, but we're pretty sure Scotch and Strategy were in there somewhere), a biweekly after work meeting where we take turns presenting on different leadership ideas and discussing them over a drink.
Design is a scientific process to solve complex, abstract problems. It's useful in a lot of different areas in an organization. At Lendesk, designers run retros for dev teams, help shape the product roadmap through our user research, and test solutions to make sure we're on the right track before the devs sink hundreds of hours into building things. On the leadership team, I've helped design policies, create education programmes, and craft inter-departmental processes.
These are all things designers are uniquely skilled in, but often we're seen as the team that "makes stuff look pretty." As the leader of the team, it's my job to evangelize the design process and make sure the company can see the full value of the design team. I've found a mix of strategies helpful in this:
Build Relationships
I maintain regular one-on-ones with my peers in the company, and encourage all my designers to do the same. Having good relationships with other people in the company will make them more likely to listen when I talk about what the design team can do, as well as creating opportunities where the design team can swoop in and demonstrate their value.
Be Inclusive
Getting people into a room to help with brainstorming, researching, designing a solution, or running user testing is a fast way for them to realize the design is more than just pushing pixels around a screen. Mix in a lively, fun, focused atmosphere and design meetings will soon become most people's favourite meetings.
Volunteer
When opportunities come up to showcase the team's skills, seize on them (presuming, of course, the team has capacity to take it on)
Educate
I run an orientation for every person who joins Lendesk to outline just how the design team functions, the many roles we play in the company, and the value we can bring. I also have individual designers regularly demo what they're working on during our company all-hands meeting to help refresh people's knowledge of the design process and how it fits into their daily work.