Growing Designers into Leaders

You have strong senior designers. The problem is they're not yet ready to lead people. This cohort workshop gives them practical leadership skills - and the peer support to keep using them.

Format: 1-3 days, tailored to your team. Audience: Heads of design, design managers, HR/L&D leads developing senior design talent.

Duration: 1-3 days, tailored to your team. Group size: 6–14 participants. Delivery: In-person or remote. Languages: English.

What you will learn

• A personal leadership development plan, grounded in your team's specific context and your growth edges.
• A feedback framework you can use in your next 1:1 - not after practice, now.
• Confidence running career conversations with your direct reports, including the hard ones.
• A mental model for navigating the IC-to-manager identity shift without losing your craft perspective.
• Hands-on practice of the hardest leadership conversations with a peer group facing the same challenges.
• A peer cohort relationship that extends beyond the workshop - the network matters as much as the content.

Why this matters now

• The transition from senior designer to design lead is the most under-supported career move in the industry. Most organisations promote their strongest individual contributors and then leave them to figure out the people side of the job on their own.
• The skills that made someone a great designer - solving problems yourself, owning the quality, moving fast - often work against them in a leadership role. The impulse to fix things yourself. The discomfort of giving feedback that stings. The identity anchored in making rather than enabling.
• This workshop gives your rising design leaders the frameworks for the hardest parts of the job, and a peer group to practise them with. Not a training course. A supported transition.

25 designers grown to lead level across teams I've run

You have strong senior designers. The problem is they're not yet ready to lead people. This cohort workshop gives them practical leadership skills - and the.

Related expertise: Product Design Leadership Consulting

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