It has always been my dream to run my own design team. To build a team of daring visionaries and lead them through award-winning work. That has been my goal since I got out of college. So I worked every day to master my craft, but nothing could have prepared me for the difficult lessons I would learn when that day finally came. Being a good designer or artist or strategist does not a good manager make. So, here are a few hard lessons I learned along the way.

You don't need to have all of the answers. But you should have the questions.

When I started as a director. My team would come to me with questions. Some questions I thought I knew the answer to, some I needed to investigate. I thought as their fearless leader, I needed to be the one with all of the answers. However, while I researched the right answers I bottlenecked projects. And sometimes my answers weren't correct and I missed out on some very important opportunities. Opportunities to capitalize on my team's knowledge.

Your team is more than capable of finding the answers on their own, you just need to give them the fuel to find those answers. So now when my team comes to me with a problem, I ask them to first define the problem, then give me 3 suggestions, and one they prefer. As a manager, I should know the bigger picture of the project and what could go wrong. So I can then follow up their suggestions with questions. "How will this hotfix affect load times?" "Would you have a different suggestion if you had one more or less week?" "How would you have done this differently?" "Are you including testing in your time estimate?"

You aren't annoying when you ask questions. You are empowering your team to provide answers and feel useful.

Share your plate with others

You're the director, you should be able to handle just as much as your team, right? It would look bad if you offloaded your projects on to others. That's just lazy. Wrong.

As a director, you are doing much much more than just designs. But remember, your success is no longer measured by your individual skills and abilities, but by the progress and development of those around you. Your team is looking for a challenge. They want to grow and some of them may even want to be a director too. So give them the opportunity to surprise you. Your team should absolutely shine brighter than you. Empower them to do so. You aren't helping them by keeping tough tasks away from them.

Be 10% less nice

This was an incredibly hard lesson for me to learn. I want everyone to like me. I don't want to be mean if I don't have to. But what do I do when a team member is constantly missing deadlines, or didn't do what they were assigned, or slacked off all day?

Ask yourself this, who is your favorite boss you've ever had? Were they always nice? Would you rather havea boss who was your drinking buddy or a boss who held you accountable for your goals and your actions toward them?

I'm not asking you to be mean. I'm telling you to be a leader. Reference their goals and fight for their growth. Sometimes that means being 10% less nice.

Be curious

So how do you approach a problem? How do you be 10% less nice? You don't do it by pointing a finger. You always start with curiosity. This applies with anyone, even if it's your own boss. If you don't like a decision, you don't just explain why it's bad. You ask why they think it's a good decision. If someone royally f*cks up, they usually know they did. You telling them they did won't solve it. So ask them how they felt about it. Ask them what went wrong.

If someone misses a deadline: "Hey, I know we discussed having this by yesterday evening. What happened?"

If someone slacks off: "I only expected this project to take 4 hours and normally you would have 3 iterations by now. Did something slow you down?"

If someone makes a mistake: "I noticed this on your last project. Were you aware this happened?"

Be picky

So your designer brings you work after working on it all day. It's been 3 revisions already and it's nearly perfect. Nearly. There's one little mistake. Do you tell them to fix it, or do you accept it and just fix it yourself? A developer spent hours making a drop-down menu, such a simple tiny detail. But the border is the wrong shade of gray. Do you let it go?

You are the last line of defense, and 9 times out of 10 those little mistakes will come back to bite you. Then you only have yourself to blame, but your team will feel especially guilty. You have to hold your team to high standards. They should know to review everything before giving it to you. It may annoy them, sure. But they will respect you for it and it saves everyone trouble later. Be the picky boss.

Check in

This is a no brainer, but it is so easy to forget in the chaos. Check in with you team. Pull them aside for 10 minutes just to ask how their doing. Are they happy? What's new in their lives? What's stressing them out currently?

‍

I know you'll do great as a manager. Lead with empathy and be curious and you'll do just fine.