leadership By Design
The Role of a Leader.
My leadership philosophy called ‘leadership by design’. I am a designer by heart; I use design thinking methods to plan and grow experiences, teams, and relationships. I start by empathizing with my employees and partners to ideate strategic solutions through collaboration. I use quantitative and qualitative data to make decisions and design experiences for my team, my company, and their products. Let’s talk about the things great leaders do.
Qualities of a good leader
These are characteristics I believe you should strive to embody as a leader.
- Servant-leader
- Exploratory thinker – don’t kill ideas, grow them
- Transparent
- Advocate for and sponsor people
- Challenger
- Empathic
- Open and welcoming
- Future-focused
- Coach
- Humility – Step aside – allow people to achieve organizational goals
Actions of a good leader
This isn’t comprehensive but it covers a lot of the ground.
Hiring
- Find and hire great talent
- Find and hire diverse talent
- Envision the growth and evolution of teams and roles on teams
People Management and Coaching
- Set priorities and expectations for success
- Grow and cultivate communities of practice
- Set examples
- Grow talent
- Groom leaders
- Celebrate and reward your teams and individuals
- Make connections for talent
- Succession planning
Evangelism and Storytelling
- Drive alignment on design strategy
- Celebrate the wins of your teams with leadership
- Promote a customer-centric approach
- Promote company and design roles externally
Partnership Management
- Drive alignment
- Set share vision
- Collaborate on plan on how to deliver company goals
Strategy and Vision
- Align teams on what we are striving to be to our customers (external or internal)
- Layout a vision on how we should be fulfilling promises to customers (external or internal)
- Set forth plans and vision during times of change