Moving into design leadership: 4 ways to create visibility for your work

Designers, there’s a lot going on in the world right now. Structural inequalities are increasingly revealed . A big obstacle for many of us is the “broken ladder” problem, where qualified individuals face major obstacles to entering even the lowest rung of leadership. This stunts our ability to rise up in the ranks of an organization. If people are unable to “see” our leadership, then we are unlikely to be recognized or rewarded with leadership positions.

It is ABSOLUTELY on institutions to own making meaningful change in how they guarantee equality in the workplace. We may not be able to change people who have outright decided to operate by bias. That said, everybody grapples with information gaps where unconscious bias can creep in. It is possible to help fill those gaps with real information that can enable people to make better, informed, choices.

If you have an opportunity to help correct those gaps in a way that enables you or your colleague to get beyond the broken ladder—why not try? What I offer here are some ways to try. This is not intended to replace courageous and conscious action from people already in positions of power. It can, however, be a supplement as we try to recover and correct against mistakes of the past, present, and future.

The composition of design leadership teams continues to contrast starkly with the composition of the general population. This shows we have a long way to go. As many teams are entering their review cycle, perhaps this can help us cut through some of the bias and create more visibility for the wealth and breadth of creative talent we have. I hope it helps more of us find solid footing in the career ladder. With that, let’s dig in…

In my previous piece “How do I become a design leader?”, I observed that leadership is typically recognized rather than anointed. The tl;dr on this is simple: if you are serious about exploring leadership, don’t wait for permission. Instead, look for opportunities to lead now from wherever you are in your organization.

Once you’re starting to do leadership work, it’s important to make sure that the people around you have sufficient visibility into that work. For one thing, this enables your impact to scale. For another: if it’s…