Remain a force of influence throughout your (design) career
Foster your value, voice and vision to create impact anywhere.
Ch-Ch-Changes
After four awesome years at IBM, I recently transitioned to an opportunity at Google. After leading design teams on my previous job, I became the only UX designer on my new product team. Throughout this process I looked into past failures and contributions and pondered how (or if) I could have an impact in another company. As I changed jobs, responsibilities and teams, would I still be able to make tangible contributions and bring value to the company? Six months into the new role I realized that I’m most influential when I focus on putting three key principles into practice. They are finding my: value, voice, and vision. And they might work for you.
Let’s break them down.
Value
Uncover the person’s story
Everybody has a story. And the interesting bits are rarely work related. When you start a new job or join a new team, take the initiative to book time with each of the team members or stakeholders and get to know them better. Depending on the size of the team, this might feel overwhelming, but I assure you it’s time well spent. On my last team at IBM, this practice was the norm and it didn’t take me long to notice its value.
Starting to build a human connection with the people you’ll be spending time with goes a long way in showing them you care about their role and the expertise they bring.
When meeting with stakeholders, focus the conversation around their motivations, what they enjoy doing outside of work and how they are measured by their manager. The latter becomes useful when you’re trying to get their buy-in or tailor a presentation to them. Keep the conversation casual and steer away from project specifics. You want to show you care about who they are and not just about what they do. A 20–30 minute meeting is a good range, as it should feel more like speed dating and less like an interview. When stuck, I come back to a few questions that often catch people by surprize: What makes you smile? and When are you most engaged?
Whatever you ask, treat this time as a precious opportunity to build an understanding of what that person cares about. Show that you value their perspective. You don’t need to become close friends, but getting a solid understanding of their background and setting clear expectations all you need. Those will become useful if/when the project goes haywire.
Voice
Expand your niche
You’re hired to do a job. There’s normally a detailed job description outlining what’s expected of you and setting the edges of what you should and shouldn’t do. But, roles, titles and project scopes are amorphous things and you should treat them as such. Whenever you begin a new job, or discuss a role with your manager, make sure to push, bend and question the current definition of the responsibilities. Make sure you it includes areas that you’re an expert on with opportunities that push you to grow. And when possible, negotiate this early during the hiring or interview process.
Because job descriptions are snapshots of a single point-in-time, they rarely steer you towards your next career move. A past manager gave me some great advice about planning ahead that I still follow:
Always look at the job description for the next level up in the ladder. It tells you what you should be striving for in order to maximize your impact or move into leadership roles, if you so desire.
All this is to say that you should be upfront with yourself, and others, on what you know you can bring to the team today (your niche) and the areas you wish to strengthen in the future (which crafts your voice). Whether on a current team or a new one, focus on meeting your job responsibilities, but challenge yourself with activities that push you out of your comfort zone as they might be an entry point into the responsibilities you will own at a higher level. But, don’t overextend yourself and be mindful of letting your workload impact your wellbeing and team’s performance.
Vision
Define your team’s focus
Across my design career I’ve come to learn that a team or product vision doesn’t magically appear, nor should be dictated by one person. Instead, a common vision should be the shared understanding from the people who are working together on a thing. When joining a new team, focus on making transparency the core tenet. Stop preaching to people about collaboration and openness and show them how it’s done. Over-share your artifacts, schedule ideation sessions, invite them to whiteboard with you, or even test design concepts with them (without forgetting to do real user research).
The sooner you nudge people away from guarding their artifacts and processes, the quicker you’ll build a unified team able to tackle project hurdles and pressures together.
The design leaders I most admire always seem to know where the team should go. They never seem lost or out of place. (But trust me, we’re all lost in some way). What I noticed is that great leaders look at a problem as a point-in-time event instead of an unchangeable state. They are quick to question the status quo and even ruffle some feathers when needed. They see a solid wall, not as a blocker, but as an opportunity to build a doorway to a new place. So, whenever you start on a team, use questions to drive curiosity. Open questions make room for everybody’s unique perspective and allows the team to explore possibilities and answers together, without jumping to conclusions too early. (I love the How Might We model to drive team ideation).
These open questions serve as communication tools to foster meaningful discussions, surface existing conflicts and make everybody’s voice heard. When you help the team come to their own conclusions, you’re having the biggest influence a designer can have: facilitating the alignment of both immediate tactics and long-term aspirational goals. A collaborative working model always leads to greater insights and better outcomes for teams and end-users alike. When you build a shared vision together, everybody wins.
What remains
Across job, role and company transitions one thing remains: your approach to the people you work with and the respect with which you embrace the tasks at hand together. As your journey continues, use these principles as guiding posts, or even better, create your own. Define things you value and show how you intend to create impact in your team. It’s your responsibility—not your employer or manager—to find how best to work with others, move a project forward and create lasting impact. When you define your value, voice and vision you’ll have a solid foundation to bring forth wherever you’re headed.
🙌 Special thanks to Steve Willis, UX Writer, for his guidance and for helping my words make more sense than they originally did.
Esteban Pérez-Hemminger is a husband, cat dad, and design thinker living and working in Austin, TX. The above article is personal and does not necessarily represent my employer’s priorities, thoughts or opinions.
