Fallon with her team after a workshop and dinner in Boston.
My Commitments
The commitments I make to any team I work with embody my leadership approach and beliefs.
We’ll have a weekly 1:1 meeting. If there is an urgent need that I can help with, please do not hesitate to reach out. Your well-being as a human and success as a teammate are my top priorities.
Topics for 1:1s will be in the meeting invite (and all meetings will include topics). The time is yours to use as you wish. If nothing more urgent comes up, we’ll spend our time together:
making a personal connection
talking career growth & life goals (and progress towards them)
giving and receiving feedback (two-way)
connecting work to the larger mission and strategy of the company
I value openness, transparency, and candor. I will both provide and seek feedback on a regular basis, when it is fresh. There will be no feedback in performance reviews that you’re hearing about for the first time.
I trust you to manage your own time. You don’t need to clear breaks or OOO time with me or provide justification. We all are humans first and employees second. Taking care of yourself, your family, and those close to you takes first priority.
You are the decision-maker when it comes to your designs. I will give feedback, coach, & guide when appropriate, but I trust you and your partners to make decisions that are in the best interest of both the company and our associates. You are the ones that have the best information.
I will attribute credit appropriately to you and your team. I will never exaggerate my own role or minimize your contribution, especially when senior executives are hearing of our accomplishments.
I will invest in you and focus on helping you achieve your career goals. Work assignments will be mutually beneficial, and we will follow up on progress on a regular cadence.
My Asks
In exchange, I ask that each team member commit to creating an enabling & autonomous team culture.
Be honest. I want to hear your feedback, to know when you think I’m wrong, and to understand your ideas for how we (and I) can do better.
Be human. Seek to understand, learn, and value one another on the team as well as our cross-functional partners. Please look around you to see who you can help, who you can understand better, and speak up when you need help. We’re all in this together.
Collaborate. Participate in design workshops & collaboration sessions with partners to present in-progress work for feedback early & often.
Explore ideas. The best experiences are delivered—and the best partner relationships are forged—when we explore multiple directions rather than running with the first idea we have.
Never stop learning. Crave opportunities to experiment with new methods, try a new way of working, challenge assumptions, and speak up when you have a question.
Recognize your bias. Include people, workflows, & circumstances in your research, iterations, & solutions that are different from how you experience the world. Accessibility, Equity, & Inclusion should be a mentality not a step in the process.
Do your job. I am completely supportive of blocking off time each week for heads-down work. Uninterrupted time to think is vital to delivering great experiences.
Mentoring Strategy
Coaching the TEAM is vital to my Role as their leader. I mentor designers by learning, listening, collaborating, and teaching.
Learn together. Experiencing great design together helps team members recognize the standard we're striving for and get inspiration for their work and learn from each other. I establish a culture of learning by regularly scheduling opportunities outside of our day-to-day roles to build team unity and keep our creativity fresh. Examples include:
Creative concept exercises to address industry-wide issues or ‘minor’ points of friction in our experiences
Learning a new skill and sharing it with the team like architectural photography or handmade greeting cards
Find an app that is well-designed and critique it together. Find another app that is a less-than-stellar experience and do the same.
Attend webinars or conferences together
Listen often. Giving team members a chance to speak their mind and have open and honest conversations with each person individually as well as the team together is critical to our collective success. I meet regularly with both the team and individuals. I've found a lot of value in doing theme-based 1:1s where during a given week I ask every team member questions around a particular topic in their 1:1s. Some topics include:
Career development - are you destined to be a top individual contributor or do you wish to venture into people leadership?
Skillset & personal growth - is there something you’ve always wanted to try, but never had the chance to? Are there any skills you wish to teach others?
Process - is there something that’s working well for you in the workflow? Is there something that could use an update?
Product Vision - have you noticed opportunities to improve the products you design? Is the overall vision clear to you?
Relationships with cross-functional team members
Strengths/Weaknesses of the team
Always collaborate. In addition to 1:1s, I encourage weekly team collaboration sessions via regularly scheduled design workshops and open chat channels. These sessions are where I take off my boss hat, and put on my senior designer hat. Using this method, I’ve observed:
budding leaders emerge as they give perspective or share knowledge with peers
team-wide issues with tools or process resolved in minutes or hours instead of never at all
junior designers paired with seniors to up-skill themselves and grow into leaders themselves
camaraderie & boosted team morale
SMEs defined on the team for accessibility, visual presentations, logo or creative illustration, copywriting, and more
Teaching moments. The last way I mentor team members is through formal teaching opportunities. This doesn't necessarily mean I'm always the one doing the teaching, but it is an opportunity for us to learn in a more formal setting. One of my favorite activities when starting with a new team is to conduct a very loosely-guided skills matrix workshop. I ask folks to rate certain skills of their role on a scale of 1 (learner) to 8 (expert). This gives me an opportunity not only to see how they think and visualize information, but gives them an opportunity to boast about a skillset or topic they are most passionate about and willing to teach others, such as:
accessibility - what tools are especially useful during audits and what is the experience like for a disabled user.
adobe XD, figma, and other design tools - what tips and tricks make for the most efficient workflows
user research or brainstorming facilitation techniques - team members were then encouraged to use that technique in their work during the next month (as appropriate).
business strategy - more senior members of the team shared their knowledge of the business and stakeholders to encourage stronger partnerships and more effective designs
technology - why understanding platform limitations and minor coding makes for better designs
Leadership Pillars
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Leadership is about enabling team members to do their best work. I care personally about my direct reports and colleagues by viewing them as people, not as objects. Areas that I focus on understanding about those I work with:
whole self
career goals
creative process
inputs needed
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I assign team members problems to solve rather than pre-defined solutions to implement. There is nothing that destroys a culture of innovation like constantly telling people how to do the job they were hired to do. I hold teams accountable for the success metrics & milestones they set, but give them the autonomy to research, learn, and experiment. I do this in 3 specific ways:
agree on expectations
air cover leadership
trust is given then lost, rather than withheld until earned
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standards for work
team attitude
how we commit to work together
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challenge and praise directly
I invite others to challenge and praise me directly
people are people, not objects