News

Design Leadership is our last but not least main event of the year. It enables those in leadership positions to work on the most prevalent and knottiest challenges in their organisations, and come up with solutions sourced from a range of angles.

This year’s format included a morning workshop about diversity and inclusion facilitated by Winitha Bonney OAM. Followed by an afternoon of discussion and activity centred on the high priority challenges of design leadership.

Here’s some of the insights from the day’s activity.

Diversity and inclusion workshop with Winitha Bonney

Winitha’s morning workshop showed that there are still many nuances and angles to explore in regard to the topic of diversity and inclusion. We might think we’re doing okay in this area because we’ve long standing awareness of it - but are we really? 

Here’s some of the deeper insights from the workshop, and questions to ask about your workplace?

Undertake a D&I audit

Make a list of the communities who experience discrimination/marginalisation based on their identity. Participants listed the following: People with disabilities, people of colour, new immigrants, part-time returning mothers, women (especially women of colour), older people (50+). You might think of more. 

QUESTIONS TO ASK:

• Why do you think each of these groups is marginalised in terms of work?
• What might make recruiting managers hesitate in terms of hiring them?
• Think about your own biases. How many people do you know are from these groups?
• What policies and processes do you have (or could you have) to help actively work to include them?
• In what ways could you be a better ally to these communities?

Shake up your recruitment mindset

According to Winitha, “equality is getting to the starting line, equity is getting to the finish line.” In other words, equality can minimise recruitment bias and get a person through the door, but it takes equitable systems to support inclusivity in a workplace.

QUESTIONS TO ASK:

• When recruiting, do you think about filling a role or creating an opportunity?
• What have you done to earn your applicant’s time? Or are you just trying to attract people any way you can?
• How are you trying to recruit or appeal to marginalised groups? Are you advertising beyond the mainstream and inviting applications through targeted channels or other connections?
• What are your internal processes and policies like? Are they flexible? Do they have room to welcome people with various needs?
• How have you minimised opportunities for bias in recruiters and interviewers? Do you anonymise applications? Do you have a diverse hiring team? 
• How do you earn the trust of candidates? How can you better support them? Why should they work for you?

In this section of the workshop, participants talked about how to change their thinking and not just their actions for recruitment. They questioned the inherent problem of ‘merit’ and how it assumes a ‘starting line equality’ that does not exist for many communities. 

Tune up your management style

Once you’ve hired well, it’s time to look after your team and ensure they are safe, comfortable and looked after in the workplace. Beyond being ‘politically correct’, participants were asked to reflect on how they can use kindness to build belonging, connection and psychological safety in their teams.

QUESTIONS TO ASK:

• Are you being a servant or a saviour? People don’t need saving from being who they are, they need to have their needs understood and met - the same as every employee.
• How do you behave in meetings? Do you respect and cater for varied communication styles? Do you give people a chance to think and then respond?
• Have you identified the interrupters and overtalkers, and do you make space for those who are quieter or require more time to think?
• Have you provided psychological safety for everyone in your team? How?
• How do you deal when you make a mistake? Do you own it? How ‘fragile’ are you when it comes to admitting you can do better?
• How could you add more kindness to processes, rituals, meetings, policies, etc.?

Design Leadership forum

After a well-earned and reflective lunch break, the group reconvened for the afternoon forum. Facilitated by Steve Baty, the group talked about how different workplace structures and cultures influence how problems arise and are dealt with. 

Attendees then got into groups and identified their challenges. Top issues included:

• how to retain top talent, especially at scale
• how to quantify and express design value to the organisation
• engaging remote teams
• how to improve design ops and if a design system is needed
• balancing strategic direction with the everyday meaningful work
• dealing with COVID fatigue
• maturing the team and mentoring for change and growth. 

Top three challenges and ideas to solve them

After some discussion, three top challenges were identified for further scrutiny and for ideas to solve them. 

Challenge	Solutions and tools
Balancing competing demands	Clear prioritisation Blocking time to juggle meetings and focus time Four-day bookable week (one-day focus time) Saying no to things Banking time in lieu - not working for free
Mental & emotional fatigue	Encourage longer breaks  Split days with decent rest gaps Options for different types of meetings Company re-charge days Supporting flexible arrangements Better access to counselling - extended to family members Deliberate engagement in non-work activity
Staff retention	Rotating people across projects to increase variety in topic/pace Personalised benefits related to wellbeing Better change communication Improved career support and skill development Communicate meaningful benefits beyond salary

There were many more side discussions and ideas than were captured. We grouped and regrouped to dig into why people feel the way they do at work and what motivates them to stay and perform well. 

Design Leadership 2021 gave participants the space to discuss these issues frankly, in a safe space with peers. This openness and kinship is essential to learning how to build better teams and ensure the workplace we build is safe and inclusive to all needs.

A big thanks to all who contributed, and also to our sponsors Amplitude, Aquent and Askable.