Management Approach
Relationships are the beating heart of my team, project, and people-management philosophy.
As a former teacher, I learned that the best results came from authentic connections built on trust, and a keen understanding of what motivates a given student. Managing designers, and engaging with stakeholders requires the same level of authenticity and connection. Everybody wants to feel heard, motivated, and effective.
Managing People
I want my direct reports to feel like they have a coach in their corner, advocating for them and setting them up to succeed. Designers, being visual people, also respond to visual models that capture expectations and progress. These are things I uncover, to build that trust:
Knowledge of their previous role(s) and what experience they bring to this one
A self-assessment of their strengths, desired growth areas, and blockers
Data from any professional development models or tools offered by the company
Insight from other managers
Authentic engagement with their life outside of work, hobbies, interests.
I have used a variety of tools and methods to track progress, including:
1:1 Meetings
A wiki or document to track these weekly meetings
Visual boards that use the JD to organize growth areas, feedback, and wins.
Managing Projects
One of my goals as a manager to make sure that at any given moment, my team members know what is expected of them, and why. This can be accomplished in several ways:
Use tools to track project related tasks, deadlines, points of contact, unresolved questions, stakeholder approvals, associated tickets. (e.g. Wrike, Jira, Smartsheet)
Project team check-ins with and/or without stakeholders present
Multiple feedback channels at different scales; team and project level
As a manager, I may have heavier involvement in the earlier stages of a project, in order to solidify expectation and model behaviors, but my goal is to become less necessary over time.
I want designers to build their own relationships with product, engineering and SME counterparts.
I take an active role early, to model behavior. But eventually teammates should feel trusted going right to a SME for feedback, or a PM for clarification (including me for visibility, of course).
Case Study:
Team Motivators
This is an example of an exercise that I ran with my team, as a newly minted manager, following the departure of our director.
I diagnosed that the team was in need of visibility, understanding and belonging
I designed this workshop to get to the heart of their motivators
I led a follow-up workshop to brainstorm new behaviors and activities to uplift them
The team ranked and prioritized these activities, for implementation
“Tell me about a time you felt…"
“How Might We…"
Breakout team exercise to brainstorm activities that address the items on the left
Team prioritization exercise of brainstormed activities