The one design skill to unlock them all

Self-awareness will help you hire and nurture a design team that’s curious, flexible, and authentic

Illustrations courtesy of the author

What is the most important skill you can hire for when bringing on a designer to your team?

I’m going to guess that many of you value skills like visual design, prototyping, or sketching, and you wouldn’t be wrong. There are certainly some core design skills that are basic table stakes for each role, and since we’re talking generally here — not looking at just product design or game design or marketing design — any core skill could be a reasonable answer for someone to be able to not only perform, but excel with skills that are specific to a role.

Some of you may have been thinking a little differently in response to my question and may have landed upon a soft skill like communication, teamwork, or leadership. Soft skills are much broader and span well beyond design roles into nearly any job or role, and are definitely a complementary grouping of skills to core design skills.