Growing Designers into Leaders
You have strong senior designers. The problem is they're not yet ready to lead people. This cohort programme gives them practical leadership skills — and the peer support to keep using them.
Format: 1 day cohort · plus 4 follow-up coaching sessions. Audience: Heads of design, design managers, HR/L&D leads developing senior design talent.
Duration: 1 day + 4 monthly coaching sessions. Group size: 6–14 participants. Delivery: In-person (day 1) + remote (coaching sessions). Languages: English.
What you will learn
- A personal leadership plan grounded in your team's reality
- Frameworks for feedback, 1:1s and career conversations
- A peer cohort to lean on after the workshop ends
- 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.
- Four monthly touchpoints with a peer group working through the same challenges in real time.
- A peer cohort relationship that extends beyond the programme — 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 programme gives your rising design leaders the frameworks for the hardest parts of the job, and a peer group to apply them with over four months. 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 programme gives them practical leadership skills — and.