On being a design leader

I’ve always wanted to be an artist and grow things. But I didn’t realize till I was in college learning computer science, that I could be designing stuff people loved with technology. Today, I study how technology shifts mindsets and design ways to amplify human agency for good using technology. I look forward to growing my own technology agent that feeds me and keeps me safe in my old age.

The following are insights and learnings from my journey. I walked the path I created, there was no map. I was curious, and followed what energized me to each milestone. What’s always been important to me is to empower people who do good and inspire transformative change. I’m doing both at Mad*Pow and at Healthero.io.

Here goes..

Superpowers

Look for signals on the horizon. What conversations are happening in the fringes? Does it resonate with the future you’d like to see? Have a point of view or a perspective that’s unique to you. Purpose driven. What you create in the world matters. Your words matter. Dig deep and find what fuels your energy. Hopes and fears. It might be to fight an injustice, or it might be to raise consciousness to heal the planet or it might be to create something beautiful that make someone smile, or feel good about themselves.

Strengthen this POV till you feel it become your superpower. It might look like an ability to write in ways that move people to action. It might be the ability to capture the essence of a conversation visually, making people feel heard and seen. It could be the use of words to influence decision making that shifts power. It could be your charisma that changes hearts. Don’t underestimate the power you have to transform and change the world with small shifts.

Model what is good

Share your power. Make yourself accessible to others who want to learn from you. Be a coach. Make time for others. Your actions are a model of the behaviors you would like to see in the world. If you want to see more kindness in the workplace, then you need to model what that looks like. Think out loud for others to learn critical thinking. Inspire to motivate.

Be transparent about what you believe is good for the collective, the unified whole. Challenge assumptions. Your belief system should adapt to the collective need. Take the time to update your beliefs ever so often. It drives your behaviors. Model behaviors that show how you adapt to new learnings. Your thinking can grow and should evolve with time. As a first generation immigrant to the US, this was a key principle to building resilience without immediate family for support.

Show empathy and value creativity and kindness over performance. People are not machines. Interactions are not transaction, people need relationships. Build emotional intelligence. Make people feel like they belong and are respected for what they bring to the table.

Abundance mindset

Design solutions that matter for humankind, the planet and for the next 7 generations. Raise the level of creativity so that we may address more complex and chaotic challenges through cooperation within an ecosystem, not competition. Be curious. We are meant to live in social networks. Engage to connect, limit consumption and remove bottlenecks. Sometimes that means adding friction, not reducing it. Think about how your decisions align to outcomes larger than yourself, your community. society and over time.

Success is enabling space to change mindsets, behaviors and hearts. Design when described as a model, takes as input a problem hypothesis, frames uncertainty and outputs stories of hopes and fears as experiments. Designers have a huge responsibility for creating an equitable future and bringing forth cultural change. It’s a responsibility design leaders should not take lightly. Generate hypotheses through public discourse and experiment to validate outcomes.

Co-create. Open a door, hold it open and invite people to come in to play and tell stories. Be part of leading mindset shifts. Champion change through inspiration and your stories. Know when to apply your superpower to bring people together. People are inherently good. Recognize and celebrate good over success.

Look for weak signals of change and spaces of ambiguity to create opportunity. I love solving problems, so I gravitate to tackling big gnarly issues. I won’t always be able to solve the problem, but I hope my perspective helps frame what might be important to tackle first or have the biggest impact.

Reframe skills

Make living easier. Make work purposeful. To successfully navigate uncertainty and transformative change, the soft human skills that are also core design principles, are what matters most — storytelling, compassion, co-creation, creativity, adaptability and kindness.

Titles only matter in toxic environments. Titles are important in environments where you don’t feel heard, or respected for what you bring to the table, where you don’t belong. Don’t put up with bad managers no matter how well they pay you. Being at the leadership table as a POC in a toxic work environment is debilitating. I know better now. Know when you need to cut your losses and leave. Better yet, listen to your intuition and look for the red flags before jumping into a toxic organization. In time I learned that storytelling skills that could translate ideas into valuable outcomes were what moved me to the leadership table. You don’t need to be at the leadership table or have a title to model leadership behaviors.

Fake it till you make it only works if you’re surrounded by fakers. If you’re not faking and do good work, let me tell you, it’s not helpful for your career to call bullshit or make transparent how inept a bad manager might be. I’ve had executives in large corporations threaten me and force me to apologize for hurt Napoleon egos. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve felt trapped from being able to speak up from micro aggressions for fear of losing my job. I’ve ended up in the ER many a time from panic attacks where I couldn’t breathe from working myself to the ground. I would have told my younger self that this wasn’t the right path for me.

You are worthy of a safe environment where you feel you belong. You are a gardener, patiently nurturing skills that will bear long term fruit. Learning and growing with people at a sustainable pace is what you value most. You manage ecosystems, not nodes of interactions. You are a growth oriented leader. You are a servant leader, growing people from a place of compassion and care. You value honesty and transparency over perfection and believe in the value of your craft in changing lives. You are loved and respected for the time and effort nurturing people.

The feminine perspective

When women show up with their vulnerable self, it can be seen as a sign of weakness. It takes bravery and self confidence to show up as your authentic self. In my past, I tried too hard to fit in with the boys — be less sensitive, push harder, get tough, don’t cry, be competitive, win no matter what. Measures of success skewed masculine and towards perfection. It took a pandemic for me to realize perfection isn’t the right measure for total wellbeing. But having people remember you for how you made them feel heard, the empowering experiences they had because of you.. now that’s leadership.