The split decision: IC or manager?

You are Jean-Claude Van Damme. You’re straddling two 18-wheelers careening through space while doing the splits. It’s very difficult, your groin hurts, and you could really use a strawberry Pop-tart…

Here’s the question that has brought on all the pain and Pop-tart cravings: “Do I continue the path of individual contributor or turn towards management?”

As designers, this is a decision that we all need to face eventually. As soon as we become competent in our craft, we start to realize that we can’t straddle the gap forever.

We all start our careers as ICs. But it’s around the time of Senior Designer that we’re confronted with the diverging path of IC and Manager. This is a challenging question, as both paths require totally different skillsets. I’ve often seen people move into management ill-equipped to teach, mentor, and lead their teams well. They were just good at design and wanted to move forward in their careers.

I don’t want this to happen to you.

Over the last three years, I have been managing a steadily growing team. I now have 5 designers and 3 engineers reporting to me. I’ve been learning a lot about what being a manager is (and what it isn’t). I’ve steadily been answering the questions that I’ve had about the transition from individual contributor to manager. And I’ve learned a lot about what it means to lead and influence others.

Maybe you’re in a similar position I was, questioning what the next step in your career holds. Here are a few things that I’m learning:

Do you know how many people would have killed to be in our position 20 or 30 years ago? It’s only been relatively recently that growth in our careers as designers does not necessarily include management. Companies are realizing the importance of employing and incentivizing expert IC talent in their organization. That’s a really cool opportunity for us as UX designers.

We don’t have to become managers to move forward in our careers. We can keep designing. We can keep doing the thing that we love.

This was not always the case. I think it’s important that we take some time to appreciate it. We’re not in a rush, and we shouldn’t make any decisions too rashly.

In the book, The Servant, Hunter identifies two levers you can use as a manager to get people to do what you want: power and authority.

Leadership: The skill of influencing people to work enthusiastically toward goals identified as being for the common good.

Power: The ability to force or coerce someone to do your will, even if they would choose not to, because of your position or your might.

Authority: The skill of getting people to willingly do your will because of your personal influence.

He spends the book communicating that while using the lever of power may be necessary in some situations (firing a bad employee for instance), as leaders, we need to be practicing authority and influence in order to lead the people around us.

When I read this for the first time, I found it incredibly empowering — I didn’t need a particular position to lead.

If we’re to advance in our design careers, our craft, and our influence, whether we’re an individual contributor or manager, we still need to learn to lead other people well. Managers are not leaders. ICs are not leaders. Leaders are leaders. And the core of leadership is influence. That means that anyone, in any position can be a leader.

Management is what you do; leadership is the person you are and the influence and impact you have upon the people you come into contact with. Management is not synonymous with leadership. Leadership is synonymous with influence…

Everyone is a leader because everyone influences other people every day, for good or not so good, which is why you don’t have to be the boss to be a leader.

James C Hunter, The Servant

This world needs better leaders. It needs people who can change the culture around them, people who know how to make work better (in a whole lot of different ways). We are surrounded by poor leaders, and if we’re not thoughtful and intentional with how we engage with our teams, we’ll become the part of the problem.

The way that we grow in our careers as UX designers is by increasing our ability to solve complex problems, but our capacity to solve problems individually only gets us so far. It is our ability to lead and influence people around us that allows us to have a big impact.

Leadership is a skill, and we can start developing it now.

Let’s take a look at how leadership shows up (or doesn’t) in the two career paths that we have as UX designers.

The Job: Solve problems.

ICs make things. Their primary output is some kind of artifact. They have trained hands and minds to build things that assist in the software development process. And as more skills and experience are acquired, more leadership and influence can be exercised.

UX Collective has an amazing series of interviews with Individual Contributors, Leading with Craft (with some terrific illustrations by Shreya Damle). I’d like to focus on this one interview with Madhavi Jagdish. She’s asked about the difference between lead, staff, and principal designer.

The differences in my mind are mostly those of scope, responsibility and visibility.

As a lead designer, your focus is the project, and your responsibilities are to ensure that you work cross-functionally with PM and Engineering to deliver high-quality work that meets deadlines and expectations.

Staff designers have a broader scope, their work reaches beyond their immediate functional and cross-functional teams. They contribute to design strategy at the company, and have more visibility with leadership and executives than lead designers do.

Principal designers have even more responsibility outside their teams and functions. They are seen as design leaders at the company, contributing to strategic growth not just technically, but also along the lines of team culture and growth. They use systems thinking to ensure their work can have far-reaching impact, and set the vision for the team and company’s creative work. They are also expected to have a deeper understanding of the business impact of their work and to communicate the value of research and design to executives.

The level of a designer is directly related to the complexity of the problems that they’re solving. And their ability to solve complex problems is directly related to their influence over other people. A design lead influences the immediate people on their project. A staff designer influences people cross functionally. And a principal designer influences people across an entire organization.

The Job: Protect your team.

It’s the manager’s job to teach, equip, and block for the people on their team. They are responsible for their team’s output. They should be supporting and mentoring the career development of their team.

This means less design, less making, and more meetings. It means learning how to understand people (and a wide variety of different types of people), and putting them into places or giving them the resources they need to be successful. That could be education and training, it could be additional experience. It could also be strategic insight so that the team member can solve the problem accurately.

In my role as a manager, I view myself as a shield, protecting my team members so that they can do their best work. And while I still get the odd chance to build a component or perform user research, most managers don’t. That is their blessing and their curse. They are communicating with everyone around them so that the men and women on their teams don’t have to.

This can lead to a few pitfalls. Work for a manager is meetings. It’s communication. It’s coordination. If they get caught up in that work, they may start to believe that other people have similar responsibilities. They may forget that the bulk of the work that needs to be done requires human beings to bring forth something from nothing, spending a great deal of time and effort in the creation of something new.

Christopher Nguyen has some great, practical tips for being a UX manager.

Meetings are not work for a designer who is making things. They’re mostly distractions. At best, a meeting is an opportunity for quick relational connection, and information sharing. The real work happens when the designer is free to think, make, and build.

Similarly to an Individual Contributor, the level of a manager is directly related to the complexity of the problems they’re solving. The difference is that a manager leverages the people on their team, while an IC is able to make a much more direct contribution.

We need more leaders. Not enough people are doing the good work of leading. And I think that too many people are waiting around to be given a title. Don’t wait for someone to hand you the “mantle of leadership.” Start right now.

Care about the people you’re surrounded by. Influence the culture of the people and work around you. Cast vision for a way to make things better.

You do not need to be a manager to do that. Most managers don’t do that anyway. Lead now. Do it with humility. Be genuinely interested in the people around you. Identify ways to make the culture of your work better.

The Servant, James C. Hunter

You don’t need to be “the boss” to be a leader by Matt Mayberry, Harvard Business Review

Leading with Craft, UX Collective

Individual Contributor designers are cross-functional leaders by Caio Bruga, UX Collective

How to be a better UX manager by Christopher Nguyen

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