Member-only story

Five power phrases for UX Leaders

Jared M. Spool
6 min readJun 19, 2023

--

Models for Rockwell’s The Gossips — 1948 (Photo taken by author)

A shift happens when you move from working as an individual contributor to serving as a UX leader. It’s a radically different way of working; the change trips many people up.

Individual contributors are told what to work on next. The individual contributor’s manager or team lead assigns a new project, and the individual contributor works on it. Then the individual contributor gets another assignment, and they finish that.

UX leaders don’t work like individual contributors. They don’t wait for an assignment. Instead, they look for projects where they can add the most value. And they start working on them.

UX leaders make a shift from working tactically to working strategically. It’s a significant change. However, it’s where they can add the most value to their organization.

Don’t get me wrong. Tactical work is valuable, for sure. Without someone doing the tactical UX work, nothing would get done.

Without also doing strategic work, those things never get better. That’s a huge difference.

You don’t have to wait to become a UX leader.

UX managers are different from UX leaders. The organization makes someone a manager to ensure their team works effectively — an important function.

--

--

Jared M. Spool
Jared M. Spool

Written by Jared M. Spool

Maker of Awesomeness at Center Centre - UIE. Helping designers everywhere help their organizations deliver well-designed products and services.

Responses (6)