Our first guests — Matt Hexemer, Global Design Director, and JD Slaughter, VC Org. Development and Learning, from HUGE INC. They've shared insights on the main challenges of any Design Leader — hiring, motivating and leading a team to growth and success while keeping work-life balance. See the highlights from the session bellow and watch the full webinar on our Youtube Channel.
First things first — any successful team starts with finding the right people. A crucial thing to remember is that you want people to bring their whole self to the workspace, not just work self. Which means they need to have both - the right skills and the personality that fits the team. Here are several tips on what to pay attention to when you hire to make that happen:
🟡 Articulate the agency's purpose & values. If candidates don’t align with those there is no sense in hiring them.
🟡 Talent needs to be there. They should have not only soft skills but hard skills to execute themselves and not lose the respect within the team.
🟡 Are they Flexible & Adaptable to change? In the business world where team/client/office/workload can change in an instant, these are crucial traits.
🟡 What is their potential? Could they become an expert or even a leader? What path could you take them person on?
Now you have the team of very talented individuals. But it's not the time to relax. High-level professionals believe they should constantly be developing and learning something new and it's you job as a leader to help them grow.
🟡 Accelerate growth through career-defining experiences, focused skill development and candid feedback
🟡 View growth as a whole person development, not just a work-self
🟡 Leverage who they are (personal traits, motivators, values, aspirations) and help them develop what they do (behaviours, skills, experiences, goals)
🟡 Use 3:1 scheme: for each learning opportunity there should be 3x opportunities to apply the learning in the flow of work
🟡 Link growth and development to observable, measurable behavioural anchors that are both grounded in research
🟡 Catalogue the hard skills that are aligned with the crafts that you do in order to help employees focus on developing the ones that are important to them and the company
🟡 Catalogue the working experiences to see the path that the person has taken
Another challenge every Design Leader faces — is how to keep the team inspired. One of the way to do it is to nurture thought leadership within your team. Create channels for team members to learn; capture and expose their ideas; share achievements; express creativity and bring ideas to live.
Some activities HUGE are using to nurture thought leadership:
🟡 Inc Mag: Quartile printed magazine to share projects/skills even if it’s a side hustle
🟡 Sunrise Sessions: Innovational session to discuss trends, insights through a lens of product design
🟡 Garage: Maker platform that gives tools to express creativity & bring your own ideas to life
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it is crucial to help your employees (and yourself) to keep work-life balance. Think of the ways to support your team and give them the space and time they need. It should be something that is true to you and is aligned with your and your company values. Here are a few examples of how HUGE creates work-life balance in the VUCA times:
🟡 Care time: mental health day to take care of yourself and your emotional state that is on top of vacation days
🟡 HUGE Holidays: 3 weeks in the year when the whole shuts down
🟡 HUGE Summer: 1 month during which each employer can go work remotely anywhere in the world
Unfortunately, the browser you use is outdated and does not allow you to display the site correctly. Please install any of the modern browsers, for example:
Google Chrome Firefox Safari