Design thought leadership

Happy October, it's decorative gourd season, mkers! 🎃 As we ring in the last quarter of the year, change is in the air. With the arrival of cooler weather and ubiquitous pumpkin spice, this past week felt unusually long.

Reorg & Awareness
Last week's experience with reorganization left me feeling both anxious and bittersweet. Tracking my activities brought me awareness about how difficult choices can be:

It is hard to stay at a job you hate.
It is hard to chase after your dreams.
It is hard to be in a conflict with yourself.

It is hard to know who you are.
It is hard to stay as you are.
It is hard to take risks and leap.

It is hard to trust your instincts.
It is hard to not fall back to old habits.
Sometimes you trust your knowledge.
Sometimes you trust your emotions.

When you say “yes” to one,
It's “no” to the other.

Everybody gets to choose their version of a hard choice. At my core, I often feel alone. By normalizing the hard choices, we validate each other, resulting in us not feeling alone.

The deeper form of having self-care is putting in the work, often it isn't exciting. Doing the thing that nobody else is willing to do, so you can be who you want to become. Resiliency is built on patterns of prolonged discomfort and rising above, evolving into instinct, emotional intelligence.

Leadership Learnings
I aspire to be a leader someday where my feedback will be fair and balanced. I will believe in people's vision for the future, even if they have no proof or authority, to accomplish their dreams. While all ideas are fragile, I've learned the importance of trusting one's instincts and patience to reserve judgment.

Leadership isn't a person. You can only be a student of leadership. Your job as a leader isn't about you, it's about how to take care of the people in your charge.

A Design leader has a clear vision for a better future and why it matters. That future can be 2, 5, 10 years. The leader knows what they are executing today and where they are on that path. This leader is fair, balanced, kind, human first, and inspires others to dream of the same futures.

How will you build to become a leader you dream of being?