Good Design Work™️: Building mutual trust
Building trust with our team requires two parties. Let’s do the Good Design Work™️ we love and build mutual trust.
Life occasionally has its way of upending our schedules, which is why you haven’t heard from Detach Instance these past weeks. Thank you for reading my newsletter. I’m always humbled when I hear folks read my embellished 5-paragraph essays.
One of these schedule upending developments started a few months ago when I had the impulse to build a resource that would empower early product designers to level up and navigate their careers. I drew from my non-traditional background in architecture, 10 years of work experience across organizations large and small, and recent clarity on what makes tech such a special industry.
With the help of many designer friends, new and old, my project The Product Design Curriculum is launching with a 6-week program on how to become an irresistible product design candidate. This is a one-time, live program consisting of daily lessons, bi-weekly live sessions, assignments, mentorship, interview practice, and more.
To join this program, you can apply here.
Space is limited, so don’t wait to apply!
Feel free to ask me any questions you might have by replying to this newsletter, or emailing me at hello@kristinau.com.
Now to get to what you came here for.
You’ve joined a new team and are ready to do some Good Design Work™️. You plan to bring value the best way you know how, by giving physical form to invisible inputs such as emotions, motivations, and behaviors. After doing your research, you can’t wait to impress your team by sharing your fresh perspectives on how to address customer pain points to make business impact.
Except, your team doesn’t meet your new ideas with excitement. Instead, you’re asked where are the input fields they asked for and what are your next steps to make the “actual” designs. In our nebulous role as product designers, we often find ourselves trapped in a mismatch of values where we designers value the design process and our team values the final output.
In the spirit of building trust with our team, we put aside our Good Design Work™️ and build “actual” designs for that input. Our team loves it, but we’re left feeling unsatisfied. Moreover, our trust in our own team isn’t growing.
Building trust with our team requires two parties. Let’s do the Good Design Work™️ we love and build mutual trust.
Find trust where you can see it
Many of us have learned the hard way that building products and features that don’t address user needs or pain points leads to nothing. In a similar fashion, expecting to build trust on a team with values that don’t align to ours will let us down.
Good Design Work™️ happens on teams with values that aligns to yours. Every hiring team will tell you that they want design as a product partner, or that they value design-thinking. The question evolves from the yes or no “Does this team value X?” to the tactical “How does this team value X?”
Here are some other signs and examples of teams where you can see trust:
Both you and the team share similar goals → You and the hiring manager both agree that successful projects have maximum business impact. To reach that, you also both agree that you can do this by understanding the daily workflows of customers and shipping things that will lead to positive word of mouth.
The full team is excited about what you have to bring to the team → Their competitive offer reflects how much they value you, and your potential teammates reach out to see what they can offer you during your decision making process.
You communicate on the same wavelength as your teammates → You find it easy to mirror each others’ speech patterns and leave conversations feeling excited for the next conversation.
Build a people-centric strategy for trust
Building trust is a scary, vulnerable process. Knowing what you want will grant you more control in this high stakes emotional foray over a take-what-you-can-get approach.
The scary part about building trust is that it’s a people-centric process that starts with knowing yourself and then putting yourself in front of the relevant people. Once you can identify that, for example, you want build trust in your collaborative Figjam style over trust in your candidacy to be the designer on that new project, then you can identify who to build that trust with.
You can’t build a mutual trust through solo effort. Your process must involve others. Here are some strategic goals and ways to involve others in your trust-building process:
Understand what motivates your teammates → Over lunches or coffee breaks, ask and share with your teammates what excited and/or frustrated each of you that day.
Co-develop what trust looks like by setting clear expectations → You’re running research for your first project on a new team by telling your team a timeline of when and how you’ll share milestones like the research plan and design assets. Give your team the opportunity to give feedback on how the work is delivered.
Be your own spokesperson and build allies for your trust building plan → During 1:1s with your teammates, tell them that you want to build a relationship where you can trust each other. Review what you’re each working on for the next week and let each other know what you’d like to see that would build trust and why.
Trust is cultivated during times of peace
Think of the times when design critique has been frustrating. You feel inadequate for presenting work that seems to be a miss, and the feedback isn’t helping you see a path to move forward.
Now think of the times when design critique has been satisfying. You’re still receiving feedback on what can be better, but the session feels productive and generative. It feels like your team is on your side, genuinely rooting for you and your project.
Good Design Work™️ happens more frequently after satisfying crits than frustrating ones. Humans thrive in positive environments. We’re better at learning and adapting when fueled by positive emotions.
Trust building is the same way. We can’t build trust when either party feels like they’re standing on a battlefield. Instead trust needs to be cultivated in a peaceful, positive environment where there can be open communication and mutual respect. Here are some strategies and examples of how to maintain a peaceful environment where trust can be built:
Beyond picking your battles, choose to not participate in every battle → Your product partner has requested a specific design direction multiple times despite you sharing your design reasoning and progress. Even if you disagree, build that design direction in the best way that satisfies your design principles and voice your specific concerns after showing the work.
Connect on values outside of work to jumpstart the work → You and your customer relations partner discover you have a shared love over trying new restaurants and use your lunches to visit new restaurants in the area. Use this as a two-way door for you to request meetings with specific customers, and help them with their presentation slides.
Ask for help when trust is lacking on your end → You don’t trust your engineering partner because they have yet to build any of your designs even close to spec. When addressing this, share how this affects you, and ask them to help you find a sustainable way to allow your designs come to fruition.
Trust is a mushy topic. There’s no one and no team that will reject the need for trust. But in product design, when the success of our work isn’t based on what we do, but how people perceive what we’re doing, we cannot do Good Design Work™️ without trust. The less trust we feel, the more we retract into our shells, leading to a weakened emotional capacity that prevents us from taking on more.
Let’s turn trust building from a mushy topic to a tactical topic. I’d love to hear stories of how you’ve built trust on your own teams. Share your story with me by replying to this email or leaving it in the comments.