I  started my career almost fifteen years ago (gasp!) and for almost a  decade now I've been collecting lessons on leadership — from managing  teams myself as well as from observing clients, bosses and managers that  I worked with. Over the years, in the spirit of learning, I kept  writing down down examples of good and bad leadership, looking for  patterns and things that I need to watch out for when working with  people. Thought it would be a fun to turn that into a blog post, since  design leadership is a hot topic now and I have something to add to the  discourse.

Without further ado, here are my observations, as an easily digestible list.

Things I learned about being a leader

• Explain the why, let your team figure out the how.
• Never use the job seniority argument. This undermines your credibility and makes you look like an ass.
• Your experience isn’t other people’s experience. Learn to listen.
• “Because I say so” is never a valid argument.
• “Manager” is a title. “Leader” is a mindset.
• Don’t get bogged down in details: collaborate with your direct reports and let them take care of their part.
• Trust your team. You’re working with adults.
• Failing is learning. Failure is an outcome, not an identity.
• Opinions hold no value in serious discussions, speak about the facts.
• Never assume ill intent.
• Identify questions and misunderstandings early — the further down the road it comes up, the more expensive it will be to fix.
• “A business that makes nothing but money is a poor kind of business” — Henry Ford
• Relentlessly focus on things that work.
• If your team is 100% booked, when do they learn?
• It’s easier to make things people want than to make people want things.
• When  you make it easy to do the right thing, people are much more likely to  do it, and then do it effortlessly and without conflict.
• No matter how beautiful your theory is, if it doesn’t work as experiment, it’s wrong.
• The hardest part of your job is to figure out what excites and motivates every single person that reports to you and adjust the leadership style accordingly.
• Turnover and burnout within the team are the mark of bad leadership.
• Ideas are worth zero. Execution matters.
• Bosses  are responsible for results. They achieve these results not by doing  all the work themselves but by guiding the people on their teams. Bosses  guide a team to achieve results.
• Relax. Look around. Make a call.
• Own your mistakes.
• Leader who tries to take on too many problems simultaneously will likely fail at them all.
• Don’t be a bottleneck, learn to trust and delegate.
• “Winging it” is not a valid strategy. Plan ahead and learn from past mistakes.
• Leaders who lose their temper also lose respect.
• Praise in public, criticize in private.
• If people need constant oversight, it means you didn’t explain your goals and intent right.
• Putting some structure around way things work lets your team focus on things that actually matter. Boundaries are freedom.
• Processes are great, but only when they’re tailored to serve around the team, the goals, and the expected results.