I don’t manage a Senior Designer the same way I manage a Lead Designer, and I definitely don’t manage a Principal the same way I manage either.

That sounds incredibly obvious written down, but I’m not sure it always is.

I’ve managed designers at all three levels, and one thing I’ve learned is that as someone’s seniority increases, my expectations change, but my responsibility to them doesn’t disappear.

Senior Designers

With a Senior Designer, I’m probably checking in more often. Sometimes that’s a proper catch-up, sometimes it’s just a message. I’ve managed people long enough to often sense anxious energy in a Slack message before they’ve actually told me something is wrong.

I expect a Senior to deliver solid design work, understand the problem in front of them and be able to hold a room, including those excited (or anxious) stakeholders when talking about their work. But this is also when I start nudging them to broaden their view. Stand on the balcony, look at the wider playing field and see what other teams are doing. Are we duplicating something? What’s happening outside your immediate piece of work? Are you giving the room what it actually wants and needs, or are you presenting a design crit because that’s what designers tend to present?

Often, designers forget the simple reminder, “this is costing money; time is someone’s money - so give effort AND value”, something often forgotten during those long workshops and free lunches.

Basically, I want them to start thinking beyond being a designer on a team and more about being a genuinely useful member of that wider team. T-shaped? Maybe. But certainly more than someone who only thinks about what ends up on the screen.

Lead Designers

With a Lead, the conversation changes. At this point, I expect you to sell me the pen, the pad, the refillable ink, and the delivery ETA. You should be comfortable presenting, defending decisions and bringing people with you, but I’m far more interested in whether you can spot problems that aren’t sitting neatly in front of you and know what to do with them. I don’t necessarily mean finding solutions, I mean bringing knowledge and understanding into the room.

We can make one stakeholder happy, brilliant. But what about the others? What about another department? What about the users? What about the things nobody is looking after, accessibility included, because everyone assumes somebody else is? Be the leader in the room.

And something that’s incredibly personal to me, but just as important, what are you giving back? A Lead who becomes brilliant at their own job but does absolutely nothing to make the designers around them better isn’t really doing the whole job for me. That’s a Senior Designer in a shirt and tie. I want someone willing to help, provide guidance and just be a damn good egg.

Principal Designers

Then there’s Principal, where I expect a lot more independence.

At this point, I expect you to be a blinking good designer already. We shouldn’t need much time to establish that. In fact, I want you to have enough ownership of your design work that it doesn’t need to keep landing on my desk for approval. I’m much more interested in our conversations about stakeholder management, bids for new work and everything happening around the design work.

Can I throw you into a difficult stakeholder meeting and trust you to work out WTF is actually happening? Can you challenge somebody senior without making the whole room want to hide behind the door and close the blinds from the awkwardness? Can you spot an opportunity internally and lead it without it eating into workloads and deliverables? Can you make sure it delivers genuine value rather than simply being something you fancy doing? And can you do all of that without waiting to be asked?

I’m talking about things like community days, recruitment, mentoring, improving ways of working, taking ownership of a part of the business and actually giving a shit about the place that’s paying your wage.

All that said, when something goes wrong, absolutely come to me. But I don’t want every problem landing on my desk waiting for an answer. Sometimes I want to hear, “This happened, I think we should do this. Any objections?” And sometimes I don’t even need that conversation. Just do it. It’s not that I don’t care, it’s just that I’ve got 105,932 other problems and this doesn’t need to become another one. I trust you enough to get on with it.

So what does all this mean for me as a manager or leader?

All levels need different management. It’s not even really about design, it’s just common sense.

I’ve seen Principals become so focused on their own progression that the people they’re supposed to be looking after are left to rot while they chase the shiny stuff. That’s not leadership. It’s a huge retention problem, but more importantly, it’s shit for the people involved and another problem somebody else has to sort out.

Equally, I’ve seen managers who can dish out feedback all day long but can’t take an ounce of it themselves. Feedback matters hugely to me, including the difficult stuff. It’s something I’ve come to appreciate much more over the last five or ten years. But there’s a person on the other end of that feedback who has to go home that evening, sleep and come back to work the next morning.

Let them sit with it. Let them enjoy the good bits and understand the difficult bits. Coach them through what happens next. Don’t just pile it on and congratulate yourself for being “direct”.

I was lucky enough to have people like Gavin Elliott and James McPherson manage me incredibly well during my career, and I’ve probably nicked a lot of how I manage other people from them over the years.

And if there’s one thing I’ve taken from all of that (pain? Nah, let’s call it a learning curve), it’s this:

As someone’s career grows, don’t stop managing them. Change how you manage them.