Design Leadership Coaching

Everything is designed.
Once you understand your career is simply another thing to be designed,
you can begin to work on creating the solution that meets your needs.

Whether you are moving into an executive roles, or are a first time manager, there are new skills, strategies, and deliverables you will need to know to make transition successful. Unfortunately in most cases there is no one in your organization who has the experience to help guide you.

With over 30 years experience as a designer, manager, executive and co-founder, I have helped dozens of designer successfully navigate the transition, addressing the challenges and frustrations, that come along as you move from designer/creator to leader/facilitator to manager/negotiator to executive/orchestrator, and eventually to C-Suite/visionary.

In my own coaching practice, I draw upon decades of my own experience as a design leader—including both the wins, the losses to help you recognize and avoid unnecessary risks, potential mistakes, and those occasional intentional traps.

Given I view design as being more about life than about creating an artifact, organization, or service course, my coaching sessions tend to be more than just about leadership.

 

  • Reflection: Often overlooked, but fundamental to growth, is the need for leaders to think and reflect. I will help you develop the self-discipline of making space to pause, breath, and take inventory. This will also include strategies to improve time management and work-life balance.

    Personal development: Great leaders know themselves, where they get motivation, where they get distracted. They use mindfulness and situational awareness to address bias and assumptions. I will help you practice those skills, and others, as part of a personalized development program.

    Leadership Skills: At the core of leadership is the ability to align expectations across the organization. I will help you reflect on your strengths, weaknesses, biases, and help you find your super powers as a leader.

    Effective Conversations: Whether your goal is inspire, provide critical but constructive feedback, bridge across silos, or manage upwards, I will help you learn the keys to plan, be present, actively listen, and reflect in the moment, to consistently achieve your desired outcome when you are faced with a difficult conversation.

    Storytelling: Storytelling whether it’s presenting solutions, making a business case, or evangelizing the value of design, I will help you develop simple, humanistic, and memorable narratives that will be both understandable and memorable.

    Design Led Innovation: Orchestrating a combination of process, skills, and organizational structure are foundational to delivering innovation programs. As a design leader, I will help you explore how to deliver greater value to your organization.

    Organizational Design: Talent acquisition and retention are the table stakes. I will help you understand how to effectively manage creative teams, structure trans-disciplinary project teams from kick-off to delivery, including frameworks, tools, processes, etc.

    Creative Direction: each new level of design management requires developing new skills for setting the scope, providing guidance, offering feedback, helping them get unstuck, and tracking accountability. I can help you develop the capabilities to move teams forward with structure and purpose.

    Mentoring & Team Development: As a leader, you are responsibility for developing the next generation of design leaders. I will help you understand how to work with them to develop their management skills, dealing with difficult situations and people, delivering business value, budgeting resources, etc. while developing their own presence and authority as leaders.

  • Are you uncertain of how to take your career to the next level?

    Do you need help facing a personal leadership challenge?

    Are you uncertain about creating a career path for your team?

    Are you uncertain how to set up (or consolidate) design teams?

    Do you know how to manage locally, regionally, globally?

    Do you struggle with (re)framing design in terms of its business value?

    Struggling with providing tangible development goals for your team?

    Are you unable to resolve bring both a leader and a designer?

    Do you need help preparing the case for your next promotion?

    Do you feel unseen working in a trans-disciplinary organization?

  • First we will have a 30-minute conversation to make sure we are the right fit for each other.

    Second, we will set-up two 90 minute exploration sessions to do a deep dive so I can understand where you are at, really flesh out the areas you want to focus on, including your desired outcomes. The second one of these will focus on our work together. There will likely be some homework that will help us work together on.

    From there, we schedule a recurring one-hour coaching sessions. These will be combination of consulting sessions, as well as some experiments, activities and readings. These sessions are about your needs, so we will tailor them around what will help you achieve your goals.

    For coaching to result in change and growth you will need time. I offer packages of 4 or 8 sessions, either biweekly or monthly the frequency really depends on your needs and timeline.

    Single sessions are also available for just-in-time input or with a clear focus point, like a presentation or proposal.

    Drop me a note for more information on pricing or to book a session. It’s useful to tell me a bit about where you’re at and whether this something you’ll be paying for privately or out of a company training budget.

 

I know there is no shortage of leadership books—and in the last few years a number of design leadership books have hit the street, those along with HBR articles, conferences, bootcamps provide plenty of reference material for first time leaders. But as with all things design I find context is critical. I have been fortunate to work with a number of empathetic coaches who were able to reflect my situation through the lens of their own experiences to help me find a path forward.

In my own coaching practice I try to do the same; helping my clients find greater personal growth through straightforward, candid conversations.