Developing leadership qualities for designers

Abstract

This research and design project provides design leaders with a toolkit that aims to help them develop their leadership qualities. With the modern definition of a designer being in a transitional period where designers are transitioning on the spectrum of traditional designers and business executives (Muratovski, 2015), creativity is becoming a more desirable attribute with the increasing discourse around innovation (Rylander, 2009), it seemed like the right time to look at designers in leadership positions. This project was done through firstly developing strategies for managing the research-practice gap (Norman, 2010) in the project, after which these were combined with a grounded research approach (Martin & Turner, 1986). 22 interviews were done with practitioners. Temporarily shifting the perspective of design leaders on leadership styles was chosen as the design goal. A toolkit in the form of a card deck was developed and evaluated with the user-group. Recommendations to improve on the developed strategies are presented. The conducted research and developed strategies, regarding the research-practice gap, contributed to existing knowledge by showing how designers can manage the research-practice gap in their projects on a single project level. The conducted research, regarding design leadership, contributed to existing knowledge by assessing how designers experience, and fare in, leadership positions and providing a novel way for them to self-reflect and self-assess their leadership competencies. The project contributed to both in the way of bridging the gap by brokering leadership knowledge towards the design leadership practitioners through the designed toolkit. Further research should be conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the strategies in practice, and to further explore what designers could learn from the field of leadership.