Move From UX Designer to UX Manager

1. Intro: Hi. My name is Jeff Crowe, yours designer based in London. I've headed the U Extremes and both a successful startup, the lyric and a couple of the largest investment banks here in Europe. Be party Bob. And in each time I've moved Rose. It's always been starting from a designer and progressing onto a managerial responsibility . So today I wanted to share some of the insights again throughout my career with you. What is it like to be your ex manager on a day to day basis, beyond just the perceived prestige of the role? Hopefully, that will help you figure out whether it's something you want to do yourself. And if it is, we will outline a few steps on how to get you there will do a couple of practical exercises . Things that you should have already done on your careers is your designers will create the persona for the your ex manager role. That should help you empathize with the role and figure out whether it's something you wanted to yourself. If it is well than outline, use a journey on how to get there outlining the practical steps for you. So let's get your next career move going 2. What Does UX Management Involve?: What does your ex management actually involved To help you get the sense for the day today Feel of the role. I'll highlight the main areas of responsibilities I expect to see from your ex manager Now . No. Two companies. No. Two teams are the same, so there will be significant deviation between the setups and different organizations, and I'll highlight a few of the scenarios I've seen in my own career. So hopefully you get a sense for what your time is that your expenditure might be spent on so three main areas of work. I expect you, Teoh CIA's your ex manager first, Hands on design. You don't need to be a designer to be a your ex manager, But this talk is more tailored towards your designers progressing onto a management role. And so I expect that you will want to keep some hands on design element to your role. How much? That depends on you If you still want to be creatively engaged yourself, I think even a your ex management role can accommodate that outside of your own project work, creative, independent work. You will be expected as a manager to help others with their own creative work, so dipping in and out of projects, assisting others is gonna be an important part of your creative work. I expect that you will benefit from hands on involvement, that there is such face of most projects. So you have to know how you have the understanding for the functionality of a project, and then you should be able to contribute throughout the project. If you understand the context in Fulop stages off interaction, design and usability with advice and facilitation outside of project work, actual creative work, you will be expected as your ex manager. Also handle standardization across processes across creative methods. Eso sometimes spent on documenting style guides documenting the standard creative work flows. All of that you can obviously delegate, but some of it you will need to drive yourself. So that's kind of what I put into the hands on design element Throw. It isn't necessarily only project work. A lot of it will be, um, around methodologies that team management, all the activities you expect to see to just keep the team happy, really, which is a lot off coaching. So providing career guidance, creative guidance, frankly than personal guidance to each team member. That can be incredibly satisfying, but likely people take up a lot of the time as well. Team reviews So leading and organizing some form of creative collaboration. Team critique. Know how dispersion Any meetings, too kind of bring out the dynamics of a group of designers and help disseminate that knowledge and energize creatively that the whole team that you will need to structure You don't need to do all of it yourself, but likely will need to be involved. And then let's not forget all the HR. So hiring, firing suddenly on just the administrative work around HR departments. You will need to be doing that. Even if you can again delegate, a lot of it will need to be driven by you. The last area of expertise I expect you to have a serious manager is around organizational work, so reaching out outside of your team to ensure the proper small functioning of your team. That means project management prioritizing across potentially conflicting priorities. So you have limited resource is within your team on potentially unlimited demands on on your time from different projects, different requirements, different client groups. How do you prioritize those How do you ensure that the right resource is a channeled in the right areas? That can be time consuming and it can be a really daunting work. At times, evangelization is really important. If you want to grow your team, you have to reach out both within your organization and outside of it to build a brand for your team. Um, you don't involves a lot of brown bag Gibbons. Then, was lessons learned reaching out to other departments reaching out to industry events? Building up a name for your team? It can be very rewarding, but again takes up a lot of your time. And lastly, stay called the management incredibly important. If you want to build lasting relationships with your clients, that means likely regular meetings with important stakeholders. It internal or external client representatives on some form of team reports have done weekly report emails compiling status updates. All of that can be a few minutes a week, but it adds up when you when it's done across multiple projects and programmes streams, so significant demands on your time. How do you balance those out? How do you structure your work to incorporate all of these varying responsibilities. I've highlighted three set up set seen in my career. So first in a small dog or more off start up environment, we expect you have a smaller team. So a lot less requirements on on team management. Also, much more nimble organization, so likely you will not have much administration much strip overhead and likely each team member will be expected to do actual design work themselves, so you'll need to contribute continued contribution of your creative energies. So I expect that you will be doing more than 2/3 of your time. Still, actively hands on engaged with design work. A lot of that will still need to be channelled to assessing the work of others, helping others creatively so spreading your amazing talent You have that put you in the U X management role on onto the work of others. Now, if you go into a medium or a large organization, you can still keep on that hands on element to your role. I've been in roles where more than half of my time has been involved with actual project work, even in a large organization that is still possible on. But if you have a strong attachment, your creative work. You can have that we didn't know you expansion role a swell, but it does. It does add a lot of responsibilities in you to first delegates some of the work across your team on the administrative for stuff on, then also be very disciplined on time management. In a medium large organization, there will be requirements on reporting on a child reviews specific requirements on coaching regularly. All of that will take up your time. I expect to see at least 30 to 40% of your time were filled up with ministry work. The importance of project management and prioritization within a large organization is incredibly strong. You will need to spend a lot of time reporting building relationships with stakeholders on communicating within the organization. Lastly, if you choose to be a hands off manager, I've seen incredibly good your ex managers not doing any your ex project work themselves and doing a great job of it s oh, that suggests you have a larger team and that suggest you have a large organization as well . What you will be putting your creative energies enjoys assisting others with their own work which can be incredibly creative itself can be a really nice challenge, but it does suggest that you're not doing your own creative work anymore. So most of the time within the larger team and the larger organization will be spent out with administrative work around communications within the organisation, communication within your team, communication outside of the organization as well. All of the internal and external meetings take up a lot of the time. Plenty to think about all of it, I hope exciting work and has your energies flowing already. So start thinking about which one of these scenarios you would like to fall into on depending on where your passion is, how you would tend to to see your responsibilities divided in a potential ideal, your ex management role. 3. Will I Still Feel Creatively Engaged?: well, I still feel creatively engaged. That's a tricky question on my answer is it depends, but you certainly can be. It depends on how you structure your role, and it depends on where your creative interests, like most designers, will feel passionate about creativity in. So as you transition into a management role, you want to keep that. So in the next few minutes we will outline a few of the challenges I've seen for me personally, as I've moved on from a design, your management role in keeping that creativity and keeping engaged with the creative side of the role. The first very obvious challenge is really the fact that you would be doing a lot less hands on design. So how do you stay creative in environment where you do less design? Well, the obvious outlet for creativity is really the design work of others. You will be dipping in and out of all the projects throughout the team, and so that presents a much wider variety of creative problems. It presents a much wider a platform for you to practice creativity. It really switches your creativity from more of a depth to breath. Focus as a designer, especially UX designer. We do focus on understanding a problem, properly researching and really getting into the depths of a problem. And as a manager, what you will have is many problems. You will not have time to focus in that much detail in each of them, but the number of them will make up for it. So it really is a trade off between depths on breath for me on both off incredibly interesting, somewhat different but still incredibly engaging creative opportunities. So if you embrace that, this could be an incredible source of creativity for your work. Another aspect you should be aware of when talking about creativity in design management is around the type off work you'll be doing for the for the hands on part of your job. You will have access to a lot more system architecture style, guide, level of design. And so, while as a designer, you have the opportunity to shape up a feature of a product of shape up one product. As a manager, you might have theologian. Did you kind of merged all the features in Joeckel? His if offering or create create systems rather than just a single a single offering. And so that is, Ah, whole new level of creativity. It's very different to solving specific product or project challenges, but certainly a very interesting source of creativity. Problem with that is, you might not have the time to do it, because you will. You will have periods off, um, high administrative overhead. You might not be able to take up those interesting architectural projects. So really, what? I've found my hands on work as a manage eyes a mixed back of very interesting like senior architectures setting projects together with dealed PowerPoint, slide a favorite, your senior stakeholder, Aled. These small bits that it's faster for you to do, then delegate to others. Or you're the best place to them because everyone else is busy with a long term project and you don't have the time to take up a long term project. And so, um, it really is a mix back in terms of what you'll be doing as a hands on work in you X management. I I think you have some fantastic architectural level projects on then, some just small tasks. So really, it depends on how you structure your team on how you delegate how disciplined you are around finding the space to to contribute, uh, your hands on work and then the last, no doubt like to say, in terms of creative output from your expanded just that discipline Teoh place business value ahead of creative freedom. Designers will often feel passionate around innovation, experimentation and as the U. S. Manager, it's zero to promote those values, certainly especially these days. That's where the biggest value of design is seen coming up with something new. But often the business, the business value will not lying innovation. Often it will be straightforward, boring, standard design, and you need to recognize the opportunities for adding value through innovation and then those cases when innovation is done for innovations sake. And you need to have the discipline to promote only meaningful contributions of design to the business value that that can be a tricky one. As a designer, you always want to do the new you are you always want to do on something new and exciting. A za manager. You have to know what's actually good for business. If something new is good, then that's what you need to do. But if it's not done. You need to focus creative challenges in productive ways. And so all of these present very interesting creative challenge is to design us moving onto , um, management. I believe that they can be put to good use in fostering a very creative role. But once again, you need to You need to put the discipline into delegation, your own creative interests and then how you set up your team. 4. Will I Enjoy the Managerial Tasks?: Hopefully, by now you've had a pretty good idea of what the transition from a UX designer at your management would suggest for you. Now is the time to start thinking seriously. Is that the right path for me? What I've done is outlined some of the considerations you might want to think about. We have some positives and some negatives and some question marks. They could be positives or negatives, depending on your judgements in your values. Let's start with the negatives. So the office one administrative load you will have to handle HR budgeting a lot of reporting all of that taking time away from potentially interesting design work. You ready for that? Is that something you have to sacrifice? The political stress factors are not to be on the looked on, so you will have to handle conflict. Designers can be emotional. So thinks my spiral out of control. You will have a lot more communication, a lot more negotiation to handle, and so all of that that's up to emotional stress rather than just workload stress. And so can you handle emotional stress that will come with the wrong, So be prepared for it. Self motivation is something that often gets overlooked. The expectation, often in organizations, is the as a manager. You manage yourself a swell, and so your manager might be a senior stakeholder with a lot less time than you have. And so you will often find that managers taking care of their own career growth. So if you use Teoh having dedicated support, someone to look up to someone to learn from, if you're the head of UX and you will not have that a za creative professional, so you will need to be setting the tone and you will need to grow on your own without the help of others necessarily on DSO. That's a fantastic challenge. It's a great thing to have to go through, but it is Acosta's well, and so it's a consideration for you as you go into into X management, then to meet the core of that consideration really goes with a question mark. Areas first, the creative development, something that we covered in our previous listen. I hope we've outlined the ways in which creativity is different for managers and for designers, and so you need to decide is that something that that's fine for you or not, The career progression is an important aspect. I think often management this seen as a career progression on from a designer role, and to me, that's not the case. I think that you can succeed as a designer and you just become a better and better designer rather than at some point you have to switch to management. The numerator Shen is not there as well. I think. Certainly I have been managing teams where I haven't been the best paid member of the team . I'm not managing anyone. I'm a consultant. That hasn't resulted in really a reduction in pay. And so to me, it isn't about the enumeration. It is more about how you see yourself, which which role is more interesting for you. Beware that once you choose the management role that there's an element of, it's tricky to go back into design. First, you will have a lot less time to build your to build and sustain your boat for Europe. So after a while, you're both for get stated, and so you might be stuck in a management role, something that you might not enjoy, so really don't consider the move drew management. There's a logical career progression. It doesn't have to be. You can progress as a designer, and you can create a successful career growth without going into management. So suddenly, a question mark there figure out whether it's a career progression for you. I'm not. The one big benefit I would see in management is the personal growth that you will go through just exposure jewel of those political and stress elements, all the conversations or the communication of the decision making. That has been a challenge, but an incredibly rewarding experience for me as well. On the personal level, you will have exposure to more experiences. You will have new challenges on that girl's you as a person, so certainly a mixed back. You need to think around the question marks and decide whether those are positives or negatives for you. If the positives that maybe there's a balance there and maybe you are meant to be a manager , 5. Persona Exercise: So it's time for our first exercise. This should be a fun one. We are trying to do a persona for your ideal, your ex manager role that will help you empathize. That will help you figure out whether it's something you want to do. What I have for you is a template. I hope you have that in front of you. I was hoping that you would feel that in with the vision you have for your your ex manager role within your organization or the organization used tribal achieved to join us, a manager first filling the percentage of time you will spend on the different aspect of the role. How much do you want to devolve for actual hands on work for team reviews, for evangelization, for stakeholder and management. All of that will help you really understand what your day will look like and what your weeks and months and years will involve, and so on the right. Then put in what your usual day will be like, How much of it will be work on projects? How much of it will be meetings, communications reports? What are the monthly meetings? Reports? You'll have to be doing the annual tasks. How much of that will take up from from your creative creative time and so at the bottom, put in the challenges. So what are the potential pitfalls you see in all of that on what are the cultivators? What are the good things that you you you aspire to and good things that you will be motivated for in this role? When you fill this in, hopefully you will have a new objective look at it and that should help drive the decision for you. Is this a role you identify with? Is this something you want to do? Is this usual day the way you want to spend your working time, have a good thing and if this sounds like it's of interest, then let's figure out how to get there. 6. Building the Skills for UX Management: If my frank appraisal of the U ex manager role hasn't completely put you off, then you must really want to do this. So let's get you the skills for your next role. I've grouped the skills you need into broad categories. Let's first start with the actual design skills you would need to progress onto a management role. If you're UX design up, you want to shine through a see the best of one of the good designers in your team to progress onto a management role that doesn't necessarily it entirely depends on just your core design skills. To me, that's probably less than half of it. The other half is how you channel those design skills and how you communicate them on. So if you're a good designer and working on boring projects that don't let you showcase your amazing talent, you will be not necessarily seen as an innovator. Is a thought leader on to get that exposure? I think what you need is projects that focus around innovation showcased. The new process is so design methodologies, research methodologies or outputs. New York new concepts, new visual interaction, design, ways to achieve and self problems on so to me, that's what the focus of your design work should be. How do I shine through with a new idea, a new concept, something that hasn't been tried before this company or dearly, anyone else and then the importance of communicating that you don't need to be self advertising to blatantly. But suddenly, if you have achievements you should be, you should be Frank, and you should be open about communicating those to the rest of the team and the organization. You can do that not necessarily invited ways you can. You can file reports I've done like weekly or monthly reports to senior stakeholders off progress on my projects on that can be seen as a way to be transparent and to be open on communication. But it's also a way for you to build your brand Teoh consistently show value and to consistently popularise and showcase the the innovations you've done hopefully on their projects. So my advice on Corning your design skills work on your core skills. Certainly make sure that you have strong foundational skills on research, interaction, design, know your area of expertise, but then also try and focus on new, innovative solutions That's the news that can get your attention. Get the attention of the rest of the organization and help you help you build the brunt for a strong designer, then moving on to the soft skills you need, that's kind of more the management side of the road that you will need to as a manager. Navigate opinions, extinguished conflicts is by others. All of that is skills you learn. You don't necessarily need to be a natural born leader to to get those and this many leadership styles as well. You don't necessarily. I need to be particularly aggressive to be a good leader. And so my eyes would be around not acting as a manager. Joe, you are manager, so don't necessarily try to be pushy on to proactive around your showcasing your leadership skills. I think Team Play Inc are much more important for you to Butte as a skill before you become a manager. Acting like a manager without being one can be seen as an off putting for other team members. Um, potentially it could. It could trigger more conflict brother support within the team. So for me, the skills as a manager you build by being a good team member. Learn to cooperate with this one. To work with with members both of your team and outside the team. Stay away from conflict resolution. So a za manager you will need to handle that. It's often bruising for all parties involved. Rarely there's a big winner, and so there isn't much you can when, by getting involved in conflicts when you're not a manager evil when you're a manager, it's never a good thing. It's never something you want to be doing, but you just have to on. So if you don't have to, don't get involved with it. Try to stay away from from conflicts that you see around you. Don't be proactive in trying to resolve them because you might get entangled in them. You do still need to show you the ship. You want to be seen as something proactive, but I would advise you keep that in your team where you know everyone. You know the stakeholders. You know you're not stepping on anyone's toes, and then it's a safe space for you to show initiative, come up with new ideas and spearhead new developments outside the view team aggressively the ship can be seen as risky strategy. You don't know necessarily everyone outside in the organization you might be stepping on someone stoles. You might get yourself in the middle of a political situation threat very carefully. Suddenly you want to have visibility outside your team, and you want to be seen as a representative for your team with interested the organization . But my advice is, take a slow profile. Don't be too pushy. Onda built that brand slowly rather than to practically again. That depends on the environment in your organization. Some organizations will be much more tailored to cutthroat environments of, um, single wolf leaders, and maybe maybe that would work for them. I found what most organisations, both in terms of values and in terms of results, delivery benefit more from Jim play and corporations. So my advice is stick to those How do you do that? So practical practical tips on um, steps you could do to do to address some of these um, skills, I would advise within your team. You try on request feedback from other from other team members on your designs or on your processes that can be seen a so a good outreach. I would always be very flattered if someone asked me to review their desires. Andi. Frankly, if if you ask someone to review designs than likely, they would ask you to review back. See, that's your chance to shine through as a good advisor, as someone valuable someone who can be seen as helpful within your team. And that's how you start forming a good relationship with others as well the same strategy you could use outside of the team as well. So on your projects, you could set up regular status updates with senior stakeholders outside your usual feedback loops and your ex processes. Do like a quarterly or monthly review of the work where you can ask for on his feet back. Show progress on Start building that relationship with your outside stakeholders who see you as someone at the go to person for for design within within their projects. So those are some of the examples of activities you could be doing to start placing yourself and the shoes of the manager on getting this kills to, um, progress onto the management role 7. Finding the Opportunity: even if you have what it takes to be a good your ex manager, you need the right opportunity to become one. So you need the job opening, really? And so you want to position yourself in a place that will promote a U X management expansion, Hopefully, in the near future about Lined a few off the main roads have seen work in real life on we have three main roads I would like you to consider. First, start the brand new team toe position herself in a small company with a high potential growth. Andi, you can be the first designer that builds up the design offering for that company. It's a nisi sell four years designer. They will not be looking there surgery for a manager or managerial expertise up front so you can start. There's UX design and an organically grow with the organization to develop your managerial skills. It certainly is a slow growth. You're dependent on the growth of the organization. There's no one to learn from. So frankly, you'll need to develop when your own or the managerial expertise you might be making wrong choices on. It's a risky strategy, but in the end. You have completely full control over the team structure. You'll be hiring people that you want to and would like to work with Andi. You have full control over the process, the outcomes, the designs through strategy. So it's a very, very, very gratifying brought to take. You know that you're personally responsible for the success or failure of the design team, and that can be very motivating. You also need to be aware of the stakeholder management and design evangelization you'll have to do in that in this pathway. Essentially, you'll need to be credibly proactive in highlighting the need for the organization to scale the design offering, highlighting the value of design, the contribution it does to the organization and that involves a lot of good relationship with the rest of the organization. A lot of stakeholder management relationship and that process will ultimately help you grow your managerial skills organically. So to me, that's probably the best way to do it. Frankly, coming from a UX design and going into your ex manager organically just by putting up a team around you. I've done this a few times, and I think it's worked fantastically well. Another opportunity for you is to grow within an existing team. So you already ux design within a larger established organization on How do you progress on your leadership role within within that organization, that could be a slow growth as well. You basically need the opening, so either your manager needs to progress onto on your level or the organization grows organically. And thats more need for design leadership eso that can take time. And you need to assess the gross opportunities in your specific organization whether you're well positioned for promotion in the near future. But it does afford a lot of learning opportunity. You will have leaders. You will have designed managers who will contribute their experience and who can teach you a lot of valuable lessons. Hopefully, it also gives you a large, established platforms. You don't need to fight that much, for Resource is on. The design team is already an established design team, so hopefully the organization is already a lot more aware of the contributions of design to its success. And so you get a lot of your homework done already. Suddenly, that also comes with a pretty find legacy. Resource is, and policies so your design team is already functioning. The ways in which it works already said you might like it or you might not. If you do that, that's great. But if you don't, you will struggle with change management. It can be a good opportunity suddenly, but something to be aware of at the last route, I wanted to highlight appropriate the default road that any any new aspiring you expenditure would think of. We'll just go out the window. An interview for a leadership role. That's the fastest way to do it. Certainly, if you win that road and you're instant manager, that's good for you. On sadly, is a risky route. You are parachuted in a new organization without any understanding for the political environment. Onda. As a manager, you might be stepping on people's toes. You don't know what the specific interests are within your area, so certainly a very risky place to start with, especially if you haven't managed before. It's also quite unlikely that without a managerial expertise, you do get a managerial role outside of your organization. So to me, really this'll route, even if it's that the most obvious one is the least likely one somehow. It's certainly not a bad one. If you do get a chance to progress on your managerial role outside of the organization, you get the benefit of a larger established platform. I used to have, like a city sources and policies with you with a fresh pair of eyes. You should have the remedy to to change them, evaluate them. Eso likely if they're looking for leadership outside your organization, they are looking for that fresh perspective on DSO. Really? Those are the three main ways I would like to think about which, which first outcome it's most desirable to do. You want to organically grow a team around you. Why you have to take home on established team on, then what your circumstances are most conducted for. Can you place yourself? Do you see existing opportunities within your team? Or do you see more? An opportunity to, um, lead a team outside of the organization. If you think you can, you can showcase your managerial skills on interview or, frankly, are you happy to look for a high growth new area and then organically start putting up your your team from that? So think about these three. Think which one suits you best. Andi will think about the next sometime next 8. Action Plan: Okay, so now starts the really interesting part where you get to do your own work, define connection. Fun. How do we get to that? Your ex management role that used journey will really be unique to each of you. However, I find that when you put your plans on paper and you put specific timelines, you put deadlines. You list out all the tasks that helps focus your efforts, and it becomes a bit more manageable. It could be daunting to think of house your progress on in your work, but when you listed out in small chunks with specific plan, then then you have an action fund you can follow. So I've put up a template for you. I hope you have that in front of you. I suggest you open it in illustrator and it on a computer. You might want to reorganize at extra steps, customize it to your own circumstances. Of course, you can also print it out and just scribble on top of it, so we'll start with the very left column. Your current state list out your job title at present is present your years of experience where your core competences lay your strengths and weaknesses at the moment and then go straight to the right. Most column. So number number two on blissed out your target state. What do you want to be in terms of sector and company? Are you aiming for your expansion row in the large and small company? What would be your strengths and weaknesses to that role? After you finish with your action plan? What do you hope to have, um, to offer for that role so that the difference between your current strengths and weaknesses in your future strengths and weaknesses will highlight what what work you need to do to get to that new importantly list out the date you want to get your ex management role in place ? A. To very bottom, you will see a date role and so list outpost, the present and the future date. And then, for each of the actions in between, we hope to put in a specific that line as well, to just focus our efforts a bit more efficiently, and then we'll start sitting in the trucks. In between these two targets about the present and the target state its first thought with the desire skills with go through those, but it's put now specific action plans for each of them. Your core competency is really how do you improve your current design skills? So if you're researcher, you wanted branch into interaction designed to just have a large explosion more suitable to a U expansion RL Or do you wanna just improve on your current competency and get more proficient at it? What will that involve? Would you need to do on online course or two? Maybe you want to go to a specific conference. List out the ways in ritual training to upgrade your core competences in design. Police try and be specific in each of these tasks, these things that you, we will generally be able to take off. You can't just put an o improve my interaction design skills. Instead. Put in take up a class on interaction design on complete five exercises or beautiful for you of three sample projects. So these things that you know you can measure and you can take off and you know that well will work towards certain go. Next goes the innovation Oracle. What is the extra mile you will do in terms of design to shine through as Assad innovation leader as a creatively that would in which in your field so think of. If you're currently working already as yours designed, I think of projects that you could deliver more than you're being asked, uh, around. So things like redesigned on existing screen oven application. Perform a new research method. Perform on extra usability study. What can you do to show dedication? But then also practice some of your new core competences on display? That new skills that you've gained try and do as as much as possible innovation ideas. So try and shine through it with new things that no one else in the company system and that's your opportunity to really build that expertise and brand for creatively the ship and then don't forget about self promotion. So if you've done all that good work, how you can let others know about it, that means a specific, um, with specific tasks on communications. So would you be hopefully presenting to others some of your work. So think about who you might involve with with some off your new efforts, I can be emailing a regular report about, um, your regular work updates are gonna be compiling written or slight short reports for the team. Maybe you start the block outside. So how you gonna do that? Self promotion? How you cannot publicize the good work that hopefully you've done so that should get you started footing on the design skills, then going on to the soft skills on more than managerial side of your expertise. How do you get about manager expertise without necessarily managing others so you don't really have the opportunity to practice those in real life circumstances? So first around team standing, how do you ensure that you are well accepted within your team? You have seen it's a good team player, and you have the support and encouragement by everyone on your team. So is that doing more being more proactive on social gatherings? Do you organize a brown lunch brown bag lunch? You organize social outings? Do you really child and initiate design critics with colleagues? I think everyone would love to be asked for advice. That's how you build up a relationship with others. That's how you also start advising them. So you practice building up the trust between team members so they think of ways in which you can engage more with your team on try and become the likeable um, Tim, remember that everyone can depend on that will. That will help with leadership as well. Stakeholder engagement so similar to James standing. But outside your team. How you gonna build those relationships with others outside the design team or your immediate design team? How are you gonna create networks within within the organization to help support your drive for leadership, even if you're not looking to become a manager within your own organization, that practicing that networking and stakeholder engagement will help build those skills in any future environment. So think on, put in specific tasks on reaching out to stay called us outside your team. Will that be more client meetings? Can you do more disability studies with real time uses? Can you do more report meetings with senior stakeholders on your projects? More update meetings. So any chance to communicate and you have contact with external stakeholders where you push your agenda and you practice putting up the network, booting up the trust that will that will help tremendously with boating skills, Future leadership project management so hard you handle balancing between different priorities hard you work through limited resource. Is all of that certainly a course killed for every manager? How do you practice those without actually being in a product management responsibility? Well, try and just practice them on yourself. So figure out whether you want to do a daily task list. So maybe you have my goals for the day for the week for the month. Put up that lines, track them, get used to understanding the trade offs between changes to plants. Too much work with not enough resources. Even if you apply those skills just your own time, that will help you understand the challenges that involve that are involved in a team management skill. And so certainly this this whole exercise that we're doing right now. This action plan is a great example for project management. You've got multiple tasks. You've got deadlines, specific objectives, and then how well you follow up. It's a part of your training, really. If you if you complete this section plan world and you're already doing really well project management so but actually a good start for a leadership role in your excess well communication really important. One as well How you gonna start feeling more comfortable with communication? So that includes both auto and written communication and opportunity for presentations. So, um, reaching out in front of an audience, I feel uncomfortable about presenting your own work or any other work. So think around specific opportunities for maybe you do with their product. Maybe do a training session for others. You comparison training material and you're presented in front of others. Maybe you do written reports so weekly reports of the work you've done or you volunteer to compile a weekly snapshot of the team activity come up with a way that will help you get that exposure to communication opportunities that will will just be invaluable and building up that confidence to speak in front of others, to communicate effectively, to to be able to promote yourself and your gender. And then finally, if you build those skills, But we said you need to find the opportunity to apply them on. So you need that well, job opening. Really? We outlined a few of the strategies you might want to choose whether you wanna start as a single designer in a fast growing company and build your team around that. What do you wanna grow within your existing team on hope for leadership opening sometime in the future? Or whether you just want into externally for really she pro try and keep you one single call competent score strategy Out of those options, of course, the circumstances will change, so you might want to work towards all three opportunities and see what happens. But I think if you focus your goals on one, you can channel and customize your strategies more appropriately to that one. And so, once you choose how you can approach that opportunity for leadership, come up with specific ways to get to it. I haven't put any suggestions in the circles. I'm sure you filled it in. If you If you're looking for interviewing outside your current role, then put in specific measures on how many job ads do you want to review, how many jobs do you want to apply to how many interviews that you're targeting to get within what, a year, two years a month? Whatever your timeline is, you feel looking to grow internally. Then I think around. Do you need the conversation with your manager? Do you want to let them know you're thinking of a promotion at some point. What else can you do in terms of communication to external stakeholders? Maybe others outside of you team who will have that say in potential leadership opportunities. So come up with specific things specific actions that you could do to be well placed and onda take take advantage of, um, graduated comes along and so hopefully if you put in dates on each of these, that will keep you busy for a while. But then also, if you can manage yourself to go through this action plan, you should build the skills to manage others as well, and hopefully that will make you ready for your ex leadership. 9. Conclusion: So this was it. I hope you now have a better idea of what your ex management looks like and can make an informed choice on how it might fit in your career aspirations. It can be on incredibly rewarding journey, but it isn't the only way to progress in design. So make up your mind based on your genuine interest, not on the Pacific prestige of managerial role. You should not have a solid action plan for getting into management. Follow your specific actions. We can build on your design and managerial skills, and you can find the right opportunity. Please share your experiences with the rest of the community here on secure share. If you post the outcome of your exercises, that will try to provide feedback and further guidance on hopefully the rest of the community will, too, as well All the best with doing diverse. And thanks for listening in