Critics are labeling it as a “Must read for Elon Musk”
Published in · 9 min read · Dec 24, 2022
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So it has been six months since I was appointed as a lead UX designer at my current company. Even though this is not the first time I am taking on a leadership role, it was certainly different from my last one—this one is in a different country, in a different environment, and in a different industry—but the lessons I learned were a lot alike.
Before we dive into the lessons, I just want to mention that leadership is the same as creativity. Everyone has a different level of it by nature, but it can be improved with time and practice.
And I know some of you must be thinking, "Can creativity be improved?" For people who think creativity cannot be improved, I would suggest the book “Lateral Thinking” by Edward de Bono.
Okay, but if you still don’t agree, let me give you a different metaphor. Leadership is like a fight between couples. Every couple fights, but it can be… wait… this is not working. Damn it.
Anyway, let’s get into the lessons I learned as a leader.
1. Don’t give answers, give directions.
This is a simple mistake that first-time leaders often make. Most of the people who often get promoted as leaders are the ones who are good ICs (individual contributors). Now, this is a very common behavior: someone who knows how to do their job best is often selected to lead others.
Even though it makes sense, it is actually the other way around. High-performing employees often neglect a lot of things that might be obvious and easy to them but difficult for others. Also, because they perform certain tasks at a certain speed, they assume others can do the same as well. Thus, only a few successful athletes are successful coaches.
New leaders often assume that since they have been promoted as leaders, it is their job to give answers to the people working under them. This is one of the mistakes I made in my early days as well.
When you start giving answers to all of your team's problems, you'll run into trouble when you're asked questions you don't know the answers to. I know that when someone comes to you with a problem, it is tempting to give them the solution right away because it will make the process faster.
But rather, you should give them the best approach to solving the problem. This way, you'll build a self-sufficient team, and when you're faced with a problem you don't know how to solve, you can brainstorm and come up with a solution as a group. So please give directions and not answers.
2. You will be wrong more often than you think.
If you are a newly promoted leader, until now everything must have gone the way you’ve planned, or even better than what you’ve planned. But let me warn you: you will be wrong at times, and that is perfectly fine. I mean, just look at Elon Musk, and if you're Elon, (⊙ˍ⊙)
Research shows that only 10% of people are natural leaders. So think of this new endeavor as learning how to ride a bike again. You will fall and you will stumble, but you can achieve it.
One of the most important pieces of advice I can give you is to never make assumptions. In my time as a leader, I have made a good amount of decisions based on assumptions. And when I dug deep into it, I found out that I made certain decisions just because I liked them.
When everything is going perfectly in your career, you automatically start thinking that since you like it this way, your team will like it as well, which again is an assumption. So, to avoid being wrong, stop making decisions based on your assumptions and go talk to your team.
Don't base decisions on what's going on in your head because your team doesn't live there.
3. Being a leader is different than being a manager.
I feel like we are all old enough to know the difference between boss and leader. You must have seen that picture of how the leader is helping the team and the boss is just giving orders. So we are not going to talk about that.
What we are going to talk about is the leader and the manager. A lot of companies don’t know how to give a name to the role (don't even get me started on naming UX roles), so there is a good chance that someone with "leader" in their title will be given the responsibilities of a manager. So it is important to understand which one you are.
The simplest way I can explain this is that a manager does not necessarily have the same education and skillset as the team he or she is managing, whereas the leader has the same skillset as the rest of the team and is often better than them. While the manager understands how to get the most out of his or her team, the leader understands how to find the best solution with his or her team.
Therefore, in order to provide the correct solution to the team, you must first understand your own role. There are some overlaps as well. So there is a chance that you are both of them. The ideal situation is to have both a manager and a leader. In my current team, I work under the product manager, and I act as the design team lead.
4. Building a good feedback loop is more important than building a culture.
I know this is a controversial statement. But hear me out (especially if you are Elon Musk). When I first became the design team leader, my first thought was to create a design team culture that every designer would love. I always wanted to work at companies with an amazing culture where you have cool activities every Friday or you can openly work on a side project and share it with the team. I mean, who doesn’t love working at a place where your side projects are appreciated as much as your work for the company?
Thus, I was blinded by the notion of creating a similar culture for my team, and don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with the idea of having an amazing team culture. But what I missed was that all those companies have everything else well structured, and then they are focusing on building an amazing culture. On the other hand, I am working at a startup where there are so many different things that need to be fixed before we can start thinking about having fun on Fridays.
All these things will be different for every company, but one thing I have seen most common amongst them all is a bad feedback loop. Almost every early-stage startup leader I've spoken with has a feedback process going top-to-bottom in place. This is pretty common because of the nature of startups.
You particularly need to work on the feedback process, which goes up. So instead of deciding on a new tool or process and then gathering feedback after a few weeks of implementation, try taking the team's suggestions before making any decisions about the new tool or process and then gathering feedback after a few weeks. This way, you have a feedback loop that goes up.
This way, you're already focusing on two points we discussed earlier in this article: 1. You're providing direction rather than answers. 2. You are not making any assumptions.
5. Give credit and take the blame. (Please read this section twice if you are Elon Musk)
When I started my current job as an IC, I was directly reporting to my current product manager. One thing I have seen him often do is never blame any team member for missing the deadline.
Even though it was a team member who was not able to finish the task on time, he never mentioned that the project was delayed because of that person. He used to say that we underestimated how long the task would take and thus missed the deadline.
As a result, the other team member and I will work even harder the following time to make sure that we do not let him down. So when I became a leader, I continued the same practice, and it certainly helps build a stronger team bond.
6. Work on invisible problems.
When you are a new leader, you often have a lot of things you want to improve. But rather than jumping on things you want to do, you should try to see what benefits your team and company the most.
Oftentimes, these problems are invisible. Otherwise, it would have been taken care of. As a leader, you need to find these problems by observing your team and their workflow.
For example, as a design team leader, I focused on reducing design debt and improving communication between designers and developers rather than creating a new icon set or redesigning the "about us" section of a website. Those tasks needed attention as well, but not as much as tasks that increased our team’s output by 20%. After identifying these invisible problems, the simplest way to prioritize them is to sort them by the impact they have on the company.
7. Measure the Metrics that Matters.
Just like your team, you need to take care of yourself as well. After one year of your appointment as a leader, there will be an evaluation, evaluation of your team and of you as a leader. This is real life, so you will only be considered a good leader if you can prove it.
So my advice is to start working toward that by setting a clear goal of which areas you would like to improve (those invisible problems we just talked about) and, more importantly, how you would measure that progress.
When you have identified those invisible problems, measure the current metrics regarding those problems in such a way that you can compare them in your year-end performance review.
8. Track your team’s progress.
This is an extension of the previous point. After having data from the start of the process, it is important to measure it continuously so you can track how your team is performing under different circ*mstances.
I know this is no-brainer advice for people who have been in leadership positions for a few years. But as a first-time leader, it is important to build this into your routine.
After working on a few different types of problems as a leader, you will start to see patterns, and once you identify those patterns, try building frameworks around them.
9. Have fun.
I know it can be scary when you are appointed as a leader for the first time. You will have tons of extra responsibilities that you have never taken on. But trust me, it will be fine. The most important thing is to have fun. If you are having fun, people around you and your team will have fun as well.
We can say that being a leader is like playing your favorite sport. If you are having fun while playing, you will perform better, and because of that, your team will perform better as well. I mean, just look at Elon Musk; he is having fun, and his team… wait… this is not working. Damn it.
