You know you’ve said it: ”We could do so much more if we got involved earlier… They think we’re just here to hit it with the pretty stick… Why doesn’t it get built as we design it?” The list goes on. So how do we change our organizations – or perhaps our own behaviour – to fix it? In this full-day workshop, Kim will help you build skills in both change leadership and daily practice leadership. These skills aren’t just for managers; designers at all levels can use them to be more effective.
We’ll cover:
- Principles of effective leadership.
- Roles for practice leaders (of which management is only one).
- Assessing and coaching others in design and collaboration skills.
- The relationship between leadership and culture.
- Assessing your organization’s culture.
- Adapting your design and leadership approaches to your context.
- Determining how much your team should adapt to culture or try to change it.
- Helping key individuals through change: conversation tools.
- Planning your approach to wider change.
Come prepared to share some of your best (and worst) leadership moments, and to try some specific skills via role plays and other exercises. You’ll leave with both a personal leadership development plan and some clear next steps for organizational change.
What you’ll learn
- What organizational culture really is (hint: it’s values, not whether you have beer in the fridge) & why it’s hard to change.
- How to assess and adapting to the existing culture, with specific project management & communication approaches.
- Why individuals resist change, and how to help them through it
- How organizational change works at scale: principles and specific approaches for UX.
- The difference between management and leadership
- How familiar UX concepts (like design principles, context, process, and deliverables) can help you tackle leadership and culture change as a design problem.
- Essential leadership principles and how they relate to “style”.
- How to develop a hiring plan.
- How to assess designer skills (in hiring and coaching, then deliver constructive feedback in a way people can accept.
- How to handle other leadership conversations: negotiation & conflict management.
- How to identify and address your own less-than-ideal leadership behaviors.
Take-away material
Slides depicting principles, models, and exercises. Role play documents and example skill assessments and change plans.
Who should attend
Mid-to-senior individual contributors. If you are a UX Leads, Design Managers, Team Leads, Head of Design – this is the workshop for you!
