Openness is just better.
Everyone can count on me to provide and solicit honest feedback, and invite feedback by offering self-criticism. Teams need space to work effectively, so I clearly communicate trust in them, and give them the space and freedom to assume ownership and responsibility for their work. The biggest part of Openness is listening – to what people say, how they say things, and what they don’t say.
Work needs relevance.
At some level, everyone’s work should have meaning, and teams should understand how their work contributes to the success of the team and the company. For that reason, it is important to help partners across the organization, from individual contributors up to the C-Suite, to understand the relevance of our work, and that we understand them.
I value people, regardless of who they are.
A team’s success is driven by its members, but structural inequality limits diversity and diverse teams create better products. That has to be address at the top of the hiring funnel to ensure a balanced candidate mix, and everyone on the team needs a supportive environment and opportunities to help them blossom.
Make sure people always understand the “why” – both within my team and in our interactions with the organization
Experimentation is the engine of innovation.
I always encourage the team to push the envelope: they should lead with blue sky – but have a practical fallback ready. This can only be accomplished by providing an environment for them to fail safely, but also the support and guard rails to ensure their success.
Building teams.
I strive to create what I call the Heist Movie Team – in most heist movies, there is an extended sequence of the leader and sidekick building the team. Each team member they recruit is an accomplished thief, but each also has their own special talent that they bring to the caper: a safe cracker, a computer/tech expert, accomplished driver, an explosives expert, a forger — you get the idea.
I often use this metaphor to describe my approach to building a team with a diverse, but heavily-overlapped set of skills. A good team typically has members with similar core design skills, but with a varied set of specific expertise. Some team members might be experts in information architecture, some in user research, others content strategy, etc.
All my teams have been comprised of some combination of UX, UI, UX Research, Information Architecture, Content Strategy, Design System, Design Ops, Front-end Development, or Quality Assurance, and they have ranged in size from 7 to 27. Some were flat, others had Managers and Directors reporting to me.
Developing people.
People need to grow vertically and horizontally.
They want to get to the next level, but they should also increase the breadth and depth of their expertise. In alignment with the principle of Openness, my job is to make sure that they understand what their growth path is, regardless of their level or nature of their role, and ensure their success by providing coaching, mentorship, escalation, and advocacy.