Lessons from building a design team

Introduction

I had many roles during all of this including hiring manager, people manager, and design lead. Lots of new responsibilities, very little experience!

I joined Sidekicker in later 2019 as their only Product Designer. Part of the reason I joined was because of the growth story that was happening there and the opportunities that presented for my own career. In 2021, with fresh funding and with a new Head of Product joining the business, this growth really kicked off. We doubled our total headcount within 12 months.

The business created a new Design Lead role for me and I was tasked with growing the design team. Though I had some experience in leadership, it was nothing compared to what was ahead of me.

So how do you build a design team? There are so many challenges I’ve faced as part of this journey. But for the purposes of this case study, I’ll focus on three areas and the lessons I learned:

• How do you hire designers?
• How do you setup processes that empower rather than impede?
• How do you create a positive, psychologically safe culture?

Hiring designers

Intuition, experience and learning from mistakes seems to be what separates a great hiring manager from a bad one. I had virtually no experience and for better or worse, my boss, the Head of Product was happy for me to take the lead as the hiring manager.

My team are wonderful. They are talented designers and excellent human beings and I would hire them all again in an instant. What I have learned though, is that a great designer in the wrong role is a bad hire.

To find a designer who was going to thrive in a given role, I needed to be more conscious of the demands of the role, their team and the company. I needed to look beyond the surface level competencies.

• What’s the product they are going to be designing?
• Are the problems they’re solving simple or complex?
• Is there a particular emphasis on UX, visual design, research?
• Do they need to be a strong writer?
• Are they going to creating something new or optimising or maintaining something existing?
• What team are they joining?
• How experienced is their Product Manager?
• Etc.

The interview process should then have been about working out how good of a fit the candidate was in these areas. In particular, I think the design exercise is the best opportunity to understand this. Rather than creating some generic exercise that tests basic design competencies (i.e. what I did…) create something that aligns more closely with the reality of the role.

It all seems so painfully obvious now…

Job description to hire a mid-level product designer

Processes that empower rather than impede

I love a process. I’ve just got one of those brains. What I’ve had to come to terms with over the years is the fact that others don’t love processes as much as I do. Some, in fact, dislike them… So when I think there’s a need for a new process, I approach it with curiosity and humility. I know I’m probably not going to get it right first time.

My general approach to creating a new process is as follows:

1. Feel pain
2. Understand what’s causing it
3. Work out a process that will remove it
4. Work out if that process is actually worth the effort and is going to be followed

One of the earliest examples of pain we felt as we grew the team was staying connected and aligned with our work. An obvious solution to this was of course to set up a routine like a weekly design critique. Easy right?

I set out with the best of intentions. I did my research about how other successful design teams do critiques, picking and choosing the parts I liked. Our critique was well organised. I tried to send out an agenda early covering who would be presenting and what they’d present. I got the team to provide the details of their work early so attendees could pre-read and use it as a reference during the session. I included Product Managers and the Head of Product as optionals to make the session more open and collaborative.

But I soon realised I had a problem… No one was putting their hand up to present.

I started to hear the refrain “it’s not really ready to share just yet”.

But it’s critique? The whole point is to share work in progress!

So what had I gotten wrong? I’d lost sight of the original problem: to stay connected and aligned as a design team.

Did having the Head of Product there intimidate the designers? Absolutely.

Did having the PMs in there mean half the conversation was focused on product decisions? Of course.

Did the well intentioned, but over the top structure make it feel like too much effort in the middle of all the other work that was demanding their attention? You bet!

Did I over-correct, remove all of that and find a whole bunch of new problems created by a lack of structure? Naturally.

Today, our design critiques are a highlight of my week. They are still not perfect by any means, but like with many of the processes I’ve tried out in the last few years, through curiosity and humility I’ve found something that empowers the team.

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Some of the design team during a design critique session

Creating a positive, psychologically safe culture

The biggest challenge I’ve faced moving into leadership has been overcoming aspects of my personality that are so core to me, but conflict with what makes a great leader. For instance, as an IC designer, I’d argue that a healthy level of perfectionism is needed to create truly great products. As a leader however, it’s no longer my role to produce. My role is to coach, direct and empower other designers to create those truly great products. Do this right, and I can have a hugely positive impact on those designer and the product they are working on. Get it wrong, and you can create a culture that is negative and authoritarian.

For me, my perfectionist tendencies manifested in a desire to provide REGULAR feedback. I had the best of intentions of course. I craved feedback myself, and saw the ability to provide timely and frank feedback as a signal of a good leader. So when I saw issues, gaps or any sort of room for improvement, I happily shared this with my reports.

For one of my reports in particular, this approach wasn’t working so well. To add to the fire, he had his own challenges when it came to taking on feedback (defensiveness, internalising the feedback). But with my lack of experience, instead of changing tack, I doubled down. And of course, our relationship began to deteriorate.

Feedback from a report during a quarterly performance review

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Eventually... I realised that the problem was 1000% me. I was providing reactive feedback instead of being his proactive coach. I was focusing on negatives without taking opportunities to celebrate his wins. I was talking far more than I was listening. And I certainly wasn’t letting enough of the little things go.

I sat down with him and hit the reset button. I apologised for my overbearing approach and promised that I was going to work harder on being a coach rather than an a boss. But I also asked him to meet me halfway and accept that it meant I would sometimes need to give him frank feedback.

This 20 minute, open, vulnerable conversation turned the relationship around in an instant. And it, as well as the experience that led to it, will forever be a lesson for me in how not to create a positive, psychologically safe culture.

All of this is of course still a work in progress for me and probably always will be. In times of stress for instance, I find it easy to slip back into these patterns. But more and more I’m able to step back and have some self-awareness in the moment.

Conclusion

Above I’ve shared some of my failures. It’s through these I can explain what I’ve learned and how it’s changed my approach for the better.

But I should probably add that it hasn’t all been failures! In the almost two years I’ve been leading this team, we’ve had many wins. Some highlights have included:

• Creating a team that feels safe to share raw work and provide feedback without judgement
• Developing our Product Designer capability framework to be able to have more meaningful career conversations
• Creating guidelines and processes that have created a step-change in our effectiveness and impact as a team
• Establishing our identity and growing our influence within the business, allowing us to push for things like continuous discovery, design sprints and visioning work
• And even the simple moments like Friday afternoon games, or getting bubble tea, or a 1-on-1 that left us feeling energised.

I’ll leave you with a quote from Meg, our Brand Designer that is perhaps the best testimonial I have ever received and will ever receive:

“Designer goals - when I grow up I wanna be Patrick even if that means I have to have a beard it’ll be worth it” - Meg, Brand Designer

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Extract from the Product Designer capability framework that I developed

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_{Hero image by Ju Guan on Unsplash}