Leading through adversity

I was challenged to lead through adversity was when I had newly joined an organization and one of the core teams was on the brink of losing all it’s key talent through attrition.

I navigated by identifying who was most critical to retain and “circling the wagons.” I spent time in understanding the people, what they were looking for, and making them feel invested in. I also investigated what was going wrong but meeting with designers, partners and leaders, and shared the themes I was hearing transparently with the team. I gave the team time to vent as a group and share frustrations. Lastly, I identified the most critical aspects that needed to change and made an achievable plan and committed to the team to support them through it.

During COVID, Rooms became a company priority, MZ was essentially our PM, lives were impacted from the pandemic and the demands on the team were extraordinary.

I was open and honest about how I am feeling. I helped get others to see multiple views, higher altitudes of value, and point in time mentalities: what can we learn in this moment, etc. I implemented flexible working models to load-balance the work. It was important taking time to connect as humans while not forcing unwanted social time, getting to know individual needs by creating more space.

An example of a time I didn’t get it quite right is when I took some time to balance supporting executive decisions, learning how to be transparent and genuine with what I believe in vs not.

An example of a time I didn’t get it quite right and learned from it is being more open about my personal feelings and reflections on a matter. Sticking to much to the party line caused a lack of trust in some of my reports.

I was rebuilding the an inherited team while sprinting on another feature with a large amount of public scrutiny. I faced an understaffed team, rapid change, low team morale and burnout. I navigated these challenges by leaning on my leadership peers, while focusing on what was not changing.

Something I didn’t get quite right was not prioritizing my own self care. I learned if I don’t protect myself from burnout, I can’t protect my team.

I was challenged to lead through adversity was when we went through a re-org and ended up managing someone who didn’t ask to join my team. I started by understanding this new direct report’s needs. I was transparent about where the team was at, our next challenges and our future and how these would map or map to their goals.

Something I didn’t get right was when one of my team members learned about their team being dissolved informally, but through it I learned I needed a visual way to keep track of quickly evolving comms and who knows what, when.

An example of a time I was challenged to lead through adversity was when my last company’s IPO imploded and we had to standby for 6 weeks while the business changed shape. Then I had to manage out 75% of my team and re-calibrate around new leadership.

Through it, I learned how to prioritize what’s important about people, communications, transparency and leading with purpose and belief in what you do.

An example of a time I was challenged to lead through adversity was when parts of our team believed usability only mattered if it could be measured, and I had to argue (endlessly) that not all UX changes that improve the experience will show a change to product metrics.

I learned to spend time educating the team on the role of design, building documents which introduced the fundamentals of usability through the academic, external and research lenses, and dedicated discussion to understanding our metrics and what the team members were working towards.

An example of a time I was challenged to lead through adversity was when, at my previous company, we were near completing a project and we had to transition to WFH and support team members dealing with health and family issues.

I learned to spend time educating the team on the role of design, building documents which introduced the fundamentals of usability through the academic, external and research lenses, and dedicated discussion to understanding our metrics and what the team members were working towards.