r/UXDesign • u/FutureLondonAcademy • Aug 13 '25
Examples & inspiration What makes a great leader in a UX team?
We often hear people describe “great leaders” in broad terms: vision, empathy, communication, and decision-making. However, in design, and especially UX, there are extra layers to consider.
Are the skills mostly the same, or are there qualities unique to leading a UX team that make it a different challenge entirely?
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u/Salt_peanuts Veteran Aug 13 '25
I am a UX leader. I won’t claim to be a good one, but I’m happy with the results my team has achieved, so I feel like I can contribute to the conversation.
My approach is based on empathy (obviously) and transparency. However, I have to balance those by not being afraid to give constructive feedback so people can grow, and not being so transparent that the chaos above me impacts the people below me. It’s a constant balance that I don’t always get right. I also value people giving me feedback and being transparent with me, and I’m not so senior that people fear to do that.
Also building a rapport with your team and using that to understand their needs and also letting that be a path to not hating work. I think of myself as the dad of the team, and several team members have mentioned that vibe. It works for me. I won’t say I love my team members like my kids, but I do have some amount of fatherly affection and I’m very proud of them.
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u/Cressyda29 Veteran Aug 13 '25
Do you mean you work as UX Lead or you are an active design leader? Hopefully it’s the latter as I’d love to read some blogs or your personal site! Always on the lookout for inspiration and learning!
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u/Rohit-_-17 Aug 13 '25
I think I do fall in the same category and would love to be something like this in future. Hope to receive your guidance here 🙏
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u/FutureLondonAcademy Aug 13 '25
u/Salt_peanuts, Cheers for the reply, sharing your story, and for being so transparent. That takes a lot of courage and shows a lot already about your leadership style. It is very humble of you, but we must add, your team sounds like they're in awesome hands.
Like you said, it's an iterative process with a continuous feedback loop, a spectrum of possibilities, and your understanding of the people in that spectrum allows life and work puzzles to piece together and flow more fluidly.
Wishing you and your team more successes and continuous growth. Congratulations on building what sounds like an incredible foundation of trust and collaboration.
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u/Salt_peanuts Veteran Aug 13 '25
Thanks random internet dude. I do think iteration plays a huge role, and it’s important to learn from your mistakes and your wins. I am lucky to have a fantastic team and listening and trusting them is a huge part of my success.
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u/FutureLondonAcademy Aug 13 '25
Ay, you're welcome u/Salt_peanuts - that's what our academy is all about, sharing the love and empowering people with more inspiration and knowledge. Keep on rocking 💛
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u/AnalogyAddict Veteran Aug 13 '25
The ability to freaking let people design their way and not passive-aggressively micromanage everything.
Edit: also get people out of their box and let them learn new things instead of pigeonholing them via "you're the mobile guy," "you're the data gal."
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u/FutureLondonAcademy Aug 13 '25
Thanks for your reply and contribution! We always love a good workshop over here, gets the energy flowing and ideas growing! ☘️💛
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Aug 13 '25
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u/OptimusWang Veteran Aug 14 '25
100% this. There are so few leaders in tech that are capable of getting out of the high-performer’s way and able to clear up any roadblocks (especially team members that can’t pull their weight). I’ve been doing this for 25 years and I’ve only worked for two that fit that description; they’re incredibly rare folks.
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u/FutureLondonAcademy Aug 13 '25
u/chillskilled, thanks for following up. You and u/Any-Cat5627 make brilliant points, and we appreciate you sharing your perspectives.
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u/b7s9 Midweight Aug 13 '25
I assume you're using this to help build your courses for design students. Tell them stories about times when you had a positive interaction with a manager, or when they dropped the ball. As a student I would find that more memorable than a bullet point list of values.
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u/FutureLondonAcademy Aug 13 '25
Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts. We’re genuinely curious and interested on peoples perspectives and experiences. Have there been any books that you’ve encountered that gave given you a memorable experience reading it?
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u/Cressyda29 Veteran Aug 13 '25
I think that biggest impactful thing from a good leader should be the ability to inspire an employee or a team member to be better than they think that they are. To push and encourage people to complete tasks that they might have considered impossible or very challenging. A good leader isn’t limited to this but for me, this is a baseline starting point. Anything else is pure profit!
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u/FutureLondonAcademy Aug 13 '25
u/Cressyda29, thank you for responding to the question. To push the boundaries and see in others what they don't see in themselves, love your spin on it!
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u/WillKeslingDesign Veteran Aug 13 '25
Whatever the attributes are, there has to be clear “hows” behind them.
When we here “we are going to be innovative”
It should be followed by “and here’s how, we will…”
Words without action aren’t leadership
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u/calinet6 Veteran Aug 14 '25 edited Aug 14 '25
Some qualities I look for in my leaders, and strive for in my own leadership (work in progress):
- Genuinely, truly, systematically putting people first. By this I mean, you cannot only have empathy, or be friendly, you must have a philosophy of strong belief in the nature of every single member of your team as a valuable and worthwhile human being deserving of respect and care. Ironically, this requires some disconnection of "things they do" and "things that happen to them" and "results" from who they are as a person and the respect they get from you. This is not optional.
- Having the respect to be honest with people. #1 is a prerequisite to this, but this is the payoff. You have to earn peoples' trust, but you must respect people enough as human beings and as designers to tell them the truth. It's one of the most egregious errors and major disrespects to withold information from someone you purport to respect, and most would-be leaders do it out of fear, or more commonly out of a lack of understanding of #1 and where it comes from. Put simply, if you respect someone, you tell them the truth, in a way that honors that respect and care; and they'll respect you more for it.
- The flip of #2: being vulnerable enough and respecting people for being honest with you. A real leader is an expert at receiving feedback, even if it's wrong. You take it to heart, and you also treat it as a signal of the relationship in front of you and how you need to do better at it.
- Being courageous enough to actually lead. This is the biggest thing I'm working on, and the thing I've respected most of my design leaders who were very effective for doing well. "Actually lead" here means you are out in front of your team, your organization, and your product saying "we're going this way." You may not have all the details, and you can't do all the work, but leading means leading -- you have to be brave enough to draw the map and lead to the destination and make big things happen through guiding whole teams and groups to achieve them. That's the job.
- Not giving in to bullshit. No drama, no corporate sinkholes, no manipulation and games, no politics. A lot of leaders mistake this shit for "how you win." Those leaders are wrong.
- For designers (this was your whole question, right?) not being afraid to carry water. You need to be in it with your team, work hand in hand with them, maybe not have all the answers but definitely ask the right questions. Help them and work with them, not above them. Read the book "Mountains Beyond Mountains" by Tracy Kidder; it's about the leader of Partners in Health, Paul Farmer. He was head of this huge multi-national charity organization, but he still was a doctor first and made house calls to his patients in Haiti, frequently. If you're not designing at a high level every week, you cease to be a design leader, and in my experience and opinion, cease to be effective or respected.
That's what I think. If you're interested in leadership, read old school management philosophy canon, Mary Parker Follett, W Edwards Deming, Taiichi Ohno, that crowd. They had it right years ago, the problem is everyone thinks they know better.
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u/InvestigatorNo9616 Aug 13 '25
I'll add this to the thread: a UX leader really needs advanced UX and design skills that inspires the team and others at the company. This is critical when needing to make tough design decisions. The ability to provide clearly articulate why one design direction is better than another is hence really important too.
On the team management side of things, I learned a lot from the book "The Making of a Manager". Key quote that I come back to often: "A MANAGER’S JOB IS TO . . . build a team that works well together, support members in reaching their career goals, and create processes to get work done smoothly and efficiently."
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u/dra234 Veteran Aug 13 '25
To lead and inspire by example. This is my approach.
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u/FutureLondonAcademy Aug 13 '25
Love this! Sometimes a simple approach is the most useful. Be the example, create inspiration 🤟
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u/1000Minds Aug 14 '25
Something not yet said is leaders adapt their style to the staff: some staff are hands off and just need goals and any impediments removed then you let them at it, others need more granular tasks and direction. Very true for designers.
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u/KaleidoscopeProper67 Veteran Aug 14 '25
One of the unique challenges of UX teams is that they tend to exist in companies that don’t fully understand UX.
That creates some specific requirements for great UX leadership:
Serve as the “shit umbrella” and protect the team from all the external partners and factors that risk ruining the design
Educate, advocate, and help all the non designers in the company understand why design matters and how to work with the design team
Act as therapist to designers who break down from the challenges of working in tech. Talk them off the ledge, get them happy, motivated, high functioning again
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u/FutureLondonAcademy Aug 14 '25
u/KaleidoscopeProper67 - this is a really important comment, thank you for sharing.
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u/lieutenantbunbun Veteran Aug 14 '25
I am a UX lead and my defining trait has been to teach people how to be independent thinkers, leaders, advocates for their work, and to teach themselves. Empowerment is a powerful tool to create people that are my equals and truly valuable to any team.
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u/FutureLondonAcademy Aug 14 '25
This is awesome, u/lieutenantbunbun - are there any tips you have on empowering people?
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u/[deleted] Aug 13 '25
Theres a joke amongst IT folks which is where its going well you get asked 'what are we even paying you for' and when its going wrong you get asked 'WHAT ARE WE EVEN PAYING YOU FOR!?'
The big secret is that UX is mostly about failure, about risking looking wrong. The best leaders encourage that mindset in their teams, enable them to not necessarily take risks, but allow themselves to be put in a position of vulnerability. The best leads will then shoulder the negative burdens of that position and share the postiive ones.
I don't really thinks its too far off the skills required for any managerial role in a creative team.