by David Wenk | Jan 10, 2022 | Career Advice
Are you a UX manager, mentor, leading a small design team, or taking on more responsibility in your job as a Designer? This advice is for you. I want to share three things I learned about leadership in my two years as a UX Mentor at CareerFoundry.
Besides my personal experience, the book Ego Is The Enemy by Ryan Holiday has also been hugely inspirational. It helps showcase my UX/UI Designer journey and mentor from a bird’s eye view.
As a UX Mentor: talking is silver
I’ve observed that the more authority a leader has (e.g., being responsible for a team or having a fancy title), the faster they jump into solution mode instead of exploring the problem. They also tend to talk more in meetings than their subordinates. To be fair, I’ve also recognized this behavior in myself.
Leaders have to make decisions quickly. But sometimes, we want to make decisions too quickly to get the problem out of the way. But by jumping to conclusions, we can miss valuable information that other team members could bring to the table if we took the time to ask a few questions.
We risk overruling our team members because we think that being more experienced always means having the correct answers. This is how we are losing diverse perspectives to solve a problem – by talking instead of listening. I need to remind myself often about the meaning of the proverb “Speech is silver, silence is golden.”
Having the answer is more comfortable than listening
As a UX mentor, telling my students precisely what to do felt very natural. I have the answer because I’m the expert, right? Yet, this behavior can be counterproductive. It creates only a one-lane road of collaboration. Aside from doing a disservice to my mentee by helping them find their own solutions, it’s also closing the opportunities for me as a mentor to grow since I already know all the answers. Talking about our knowledge comes so naturally. Maybe we are doing this because it’s easier to have an answer than to listen.
“You can’t learn if you think you already know.”
Epictetus
I had the most productive and fun mentoring sessions when I learned something new from my students. It was moments when the student/mentor relationship was on eye level, and I was open to recognizing that I didn’t have all the answers. As a mentor, I am also limited to my own viewpoint and will always have much more to learn from my students!
Always be a student
To learn, we need to listen. The moment you talk, you are unable to discover new facts. I found that being humble enough to learn from my students allowed me to expand my knowledge and improve my job.
It can be challenging to admit that your student has a better idea or concept than you. But isn’t that an excellent opportunity to grow and expand your knowledge? In the end, this is how we can grow professionally.
Conclusion
Remember the quote “speech is silver, silence is gold.” when your mentees or co-workers present their ideas. Dare to sit still and listen to their ideas. You could learn something new.
Having the answer can feel the right impulse. Instead, listen, and help your mentees come up with the solution.
Having a student mindset is the foundation to grow personally and professionally. Accepting you don’t know it all will open your mind to learning.
by David Wenk | Dec 8, 2021 | Career Advice
UX Design is one of the best-paying and future-proofed careers you can have right now. The job title UX Designer made it onto the Glassdoor list Best Jobs in America 2021. Many people want to switch into this fantastic field but don’t know where to look or how to get started.
I switched careers from Architecture to UX Design in 2017, and it was a bumpy road to call myself UX Designer eventually. The whole transition took me around 1 – 2 years.
Here are the principles and mindsets I used that helped me make the switch. You can apply these principles with any career background!
Know Your Why
A lot of my success as a UX Designer is built on the foundations of my Architecture studies. The constant focus on discussing my work with an audience helped me develop solid presentation skills. Furthermore, I got conditioned to visualize my idea through sketching. This still allows me to this day to think through ideas and move them from my head onto a piece of paper. I love it.
Yet, the professional Architect life can look very different from the sheltered University life.
I started my career in the very regulated and risk-averse construction industry. I couldn’t live out my creative drive. These days, at least in Germany, most design aspects of a building are regulated through DIN (Deutsche Industrie Norm e.V.)
Four years ago, I asked myself how my life should look within the next ten years. It struck me immediately I had to make a change. I wanted to work in an environment opposite of construction – risk-taking, innovative and celebrated change and movement. I knew that I wanted to go into the tech industry, but I had no idea how.
Learning By Earning
I took my first steps as a designer with a weekend WordPress course. With this knowledge, I created simple landing pages for small businesses—a website for a non-profit here and a law firm there.
My eyeopener: For five years in university, I learned how to get a job in an architecture firm. It took me two days of practical learning to deliver value to clients as a UX designer. The experience of monetizing recently acquired knowledge gave me a lot of confidence. I felt with enough diligence, I really could get a foot into the tech space.
I didn’t do unpaid internships or get extensive design education before freelancing. Some designers disagree with me because “it’s not fair for the client” if you are not experienced and ask for money. I see this differently. It’s not the knowledge you possess that qualifies you to be a designer. It’s the ability to deliver value to those who need it.
Position yourself as a Business Person, not just as a Designer
In 2018, I completed The UX Design online boot camp from CareerFoundry, and I can recommend it if you are looking for a head start in the field.
I was always worried that people might see me as a designer only as a “creative snowflake” and not take me seriously. I compensated for this feeling by reading a ton of business books on top of the coursework.
The following books helped me get a general understanding of the business side of product management:
- Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters by Richard P. Rumelt
- The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries
- INSPIRED: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love by Marty Cagan
In hindsight, reading business books was an essential ingredient for my success. I could participate in product discussions with Product Managers or Hiring Managers, which gave me confidence in job interviews.
5 things you can do today.
- If you want to do an online Bootcamp or coursework, focus on building an industry-ready portfolio and an online presence.
- Build your website – it’s your stake in the digital realm.
- Reach out to non-profits to design their websites for a bit of money or free. It will give you some practical portfolio projects among the more theoretical boot camp projects.
- Always keep in mind, it’s about delivering value to your customer or employer, not the number of years you spent learning a subject.
- Start reading one business book out of the list above. Reading business books helps to broaden your horizon as a designer. Business people will recognize when you can speak their language.
