5 Pitfalls to Avoid as a New Design Manager
Late last year, I moved from a role as an individual contributor into a new job as a people manager. I have made a lot of mistakes in a short space of time which, of course, also means I have learned a lot.
Based on a talk I gave at Design Leadership 2019 in Melbourne, Australia, here are some of the things I have learned:
Mistake 1: I underestimated the role change
Your day will start to look quite different as a manager. I had always spent time in meetings but moving into a management role added at least six hours a week of meetings onto my schedule. At the start, I said yes to every meeting which made my calendar look like this:
While having more meetings might seem like an obvious part of transitioning to management, I underestimated the difference in how my weeks would be spent. I became a “prisoner of events,” constantly at the mercy of my schedule. I’ve had to become much better at allocating my time and saying no.
Being a manager is less a promotion than…
