Design Leadership: On belonging and loneliness

Matthew Godfrey
UX Collective
Published in
9 min readJun 4, 2021
Image by wirestock courtesy of www.freepik.com.

In this article, I’m revisiting my earlier leadership series to cover the topic of belonging and loneliness in design leadership. It’s something we’ve likely all experienced at one time or another and is born out of a disconnect between you, as a leader, and those we work with.

As Ryan Rumsey talks about in this Twitter thread:

“We need to talk more openly about the loss involved in moving into management and the loneliness that loss generates.”

Twitter thread on loss and loneliness from Ryan Rumsey.

Leading from the wings

Leadership, at the best of times, can be a lonely affair and I believe this is often amplified in design leadership. If you’re familiar with the popular British comedy The Inbetweeners, we (design leaders) can fall somewhere between the confident, outspoken, archetypal leadership figures, the quirky, non-conformist creatives, and the analytical, more introverted technologists.

By the nature of the role, it’s likely we don’t belong to any single tribe and are instead party to a number of different social and functional circles. As such, we’re reliant on being comfortable drifting between these groups and a a result, may experience looser relationships and affiliations.

The BBC’s The Inbetweeners (a British comedy series).

It’s likely we’re members of the senior leadership teams, but due to the nature of these roles, we, and our leadership peers, can often feel like ships passing in the night. We have our agendas and while there may be an innate desire to collaborate, our work will often take us down very different paths. We’re united by the practice of leadership, sure, yet each discipline has a unique set of motivations and challenges that are native to our respective profession.

We’re also members of a functional team or practice where we’ll operate at arm’s length from other design team members and their work day to day. As a consequence, this often puts us out towards the periphery of their worldview. We’re not living and breathing the challenges or victories that bring them together as a cohesive team unit.

The stark reality is that the more abstract we are from the work, the more we struggle to identify as being part of the team.

As a result, we may occupy a space in between, resulting in a somewhat confused identity as we flip between team member, leader, manager, peer, colleague and friend. We lose that sense of comradery where these social and functional groups have differing motivations, needs, and challenges; even though our overarching goals and objectives may be well aligned.

We’re part of the same ecosystem but exist in different concentric cycles, each with its own distinct micro-culture.

Resilience of belonging

This is exacerbated, if, like me, your team is organised in an embedded model. Here your team may be part of any number of cross-functional teams or squads, where they are principally accountable to their immediate colleagues and the objectives of their local strategy. The embedded nature of their roles creates alignment with their immediate colleagues, who are united through these local challenges and successes.

While you’ll likely find ways to orchestrate collaboration and nurture design culture across the practice, ultimately, as a leader, and being at least a few steps removed, means it is inevitably harder to relate to and form strong team-like connections. Try as you might, you’re something of an outsider. A figurehead, not a colleague. A manager, not a peer. A boss, not a friend.

Richard Banfield touches on this, by what he refers to as being “in the friend-zone” in his great article on The Soft Skills are the Hardest.

What ensues is a real balancing act. On the one-hand building credibility and momentum as a senior leader, while at the same time being able to form healthy, lasting connections between you and your team. You are part of the team but at the same time not part of the team. You’re a leader first and foremost and need to carry that torch, but this can and often will be at odds with a desire — a very human desire — to just be a good colleague and friend.

As humans, we crave a sense of belonging. No one likes feeling alone. But a leadership gig can feel lonely place.

Stuck somewhere between multiple groups and interconnected circles, trying to figure where and to whom to devote our time and how to apportion our cognitive and emotional energy. As design leaders, we have to be comfortable, more often than not, operating in the grey or the spaces between these communities, where in the most extreme of cases we might feel something of an outsider.

This is a great example of resilience in leadership; namely the resilience of belonging. This (a detached state of belonging) can be triggered and exacerbated by the following leadership experiences:

The consequence of context

I like to think of context as one of your leadership superpowers. As a design leader, you’re both a messenger of hard news and a recipient of difficult conversations. Managing down, you provide situational awareness, business alignment and financial or resourcing constraints; having to deliver sometimes unfavourable communications around organisational changes, resourcing policies or some correction to strategy and direction.

Managing up you’re always trying to do right by your team — whether they see and recognise that or not. You’re an ambassador of your discipline and are there to champion and where necessary fight for the needs of your team. But fighting the good fight can be tough and can eventuly take its toll! There are no doubt occasions where you’ll experience that pinch of being both a representative of leadership and an emissary of your practice; leaving you feeling like you are not doing — or able to do — right by anyone.

The label of authority

Unfortunately, for any manager or leader, the position and title come attached with the stigma of authority and hierarchy. An inevitable consequence of being a leader is the reality that you are no longer part of the contributor tribe. Whatever you do and however strong your connections with your team and individuals, you are still seen first and foremost as the “boss”. The very nature of being labelled as “leader” or “manager” is met with the social science of group identity; making you, despite all intentions, an outlier from the group.

Being the “boss” puts you at arm’s length with those on the team. Your words and actions carry authority — like it or not — so you have to behave, communicate and act with caution. Having deep, candid and honest conversations with your team can be difficult. However hard you work to earn trust, you’ll inevitably experience a different and somewhat guarded dynamic in both 1–2–1 and group scenarios. Let’s face it, we all communicate differently with our bosses, only now you find yourself on the receiving end.

What we often see and experience is a veneer of truth as a consequence of authority.

The abstract purview

Being in a leadership position means you’re now acutely aware of the business and system in which you and your practice operate (see context). This gives you a privileged purview and with that the ability to spot opportunities and identify where your team can have an impact. However, your mission and strategy for creating credibility, driving demand and scaling impact is somewhat abstracted from the more immediate, locally-focused goals and objectives of your team.

While you attempt to steer the ship and raise the bar for the function, these initiatives can be viewed as a distraction, or an overhead, where the team has its own set of commitments and priorities within their embedded teams or squads. It’s the paradox of sharpening the axe while trying to use said axe. Without dedicated operational resources, we’re reliant on our teams to straddle both local and global agendas. To help us on our leadership mission of scaling practice and culture, while at the same time delivering great products and services.

Same book, different chapters!

The expectations of privilege

At times it feels as though leadership is assumed to be a privilege and as a result, leaders are expected to act, endure and be challenged, sometimes with very little in the way of thanks or recognition. It’s entirely possible this is what we signed up for, but I’d like to think hierarchy does not exclude us from being thanked or shown appreciation when we do go the extra mile to help someone. Common courtesy should, in my opinion, be ignorant of title or hierarchy!

Maybe the difference with leadership is that it’s just assumed that we should endure. That we’re obligated to go the extra mile. That we’re expected to put others before ourselves and that the title of leader is recognition enough. Our job should be inherently more challenging, more difficult, more complex and we’re not entitled to the gratitudes we might commonly afford others. After all, we signed up for this didn’t we?

Sure, we expect a heightened level of challenge as we climb the leadership ladder, but that shouldn’t be at odds with our base psychological needs for appreciation.

The emotional rock

There is an assumption that leaders must be steadfast and resilient in the face of adversity. That we can and should simply roll with the punches and accept the hand we are dealt. That we’re somehow different from our team members in our ability to switch off or detach from an emotional state. Leadership often implies strength and robustness, but again, as humans, we’re vulnerable and just as susceptible to the emotional triggers and responses likely experienced by those we lead and manage.

There is, however, an expectation of heightened resilience and being better equipped, as leaders, to manage our emotions. Over time we become attuned to reading the signals early and being able to cope with and adapt to emotional situations. On the face of it being calm and resolute, but on the inside still experiencing a range of emotions from frustration and anger, to sadness and self-doubt. While we might protect ourselves better from the effects of our emotional state, that does not make us emotionless.

We still need support. We still need people to look out for us and our wellbeing too!

You are not alone!

So if you’re a leader and feeling like an “inbetweener” what can you do? My best advice here and what has certainly helped me is to find a community and seek support from those who might find themselves in a similar situation.

While still in relative infancy, the design leadership space is growing year on year. Connect with these communities and build your leadership network. Meet with like-minded individuals and openly share and reflect on your experiences.

I’d hightly recommend, as an example, the events orchestrated by folks Clearleft in the form of thier Leading Design conferences and associated networks.

Whilst it might feel that way, it really doesn’t have to be lonely in leadership.

Quoting Jason Mesut in his article Design is hard. Design leadership is harder.

Design leadership is getting harder, but the field is getting larger. We need to lower our barriers and keep connected. To support each other. To coach each other. Debate the nuance. And not feel alone.

I currently co-organise a peer mentoring community and am generally interested in sharing my experiences with new and aspiring leaders. I’d love to hear from folks who have similar stories to share and experiences to trade and would be happy to connect and help facilitate these discussions.

Other articles in this design leadership series include:

The UX Collective donates US$1 for each article we publish. This story contributed to World-Class Designer School: a college-level, tuition-free design school focused on preparing young and talented African designers for the local and international digital product market. Build the design community you believe in.

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Responses (1)

What are your thoughts?

Hi Matthew,
Just wanna let you know that I love your articles. They're giving me a ton of great input and inspiration. :)

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