Thread by @jmspool

@greghoyna I love playing Devil’s Advocate. (Warning: I currently have the high score.)

It’s a great question. Let me give it a shot.

@greghoyna First: some basic definitions.

There’s a difference between leaders & managers.

Managers are about ensuring the team’s efforts are effective.

Leaders lead the team to achieve the vision.

@greghoyna Someone can be both a manager and a leader, but they don’t have to be.

Managers are appointed to their position by the organization.

To become a leader, one just needs to get a follower. Leaders emerge.

@greghoyna Design leaders focus on what it takes to deliver great designs.

Sometimes that’s directly working in the product.

Often it’s leading others to work on it with them.

That might be political. If that’s what it takes, that’s what the leader needs to do.

@greghoyna If you don’t think selling is part of the job of being a design leader, then you probably won’t get very many great designs shipped.

@greghoyna Because design leaders emerge, nobody needs to open up roles for them.

They need only to step up with a compelling vision that folks want to follow.

(I know. That’s not an easy thing to do. Good news is: you can keep trying until it works.)

@greghoyna I wrote about this here:

How Designers Turn Into Design Leaders
articles.uie.com/how-designers-…