Navigating career:

Being a design leader

How does it feel to be a design leader? What personal qualities should one have? How do leaders find their style of pushing their teams forward? These and other questions were kindly covered by four robust designers in leadership roles. Read on to see what they have to say.

Only two of us are in leadership positions at the Heavyweight Type. However, our team was as large as six members at one point. With some members, our collaboration lasted more than two years.

As leaders, we strive to be on the same level as those who work with us. We increasingly feel it’s unnecessary to set an authoritarian attitude toward the team, but emphasize honesty and the ability to acknowledge a mistake and give due credit instead. We also always try to make sure that whoever collaborates with us has enough space for creative freedom. We don’t want to use people as tools that help us with what we want.

On the other hand, leadership is sometimes challenging, especially when we don’t share approaches to specific things or procedures. However, issues can all be resolved through a willingness to listen, communicate properly, and anticipate situations. We’re happy if our team feels the same way and doesn’t want to fight, but rather get along. After all, compromise doesn’t always have to be a concession.

Jan Horčik and Filip Matejiček:

Co-owners of Heavyweight Digital Type Foundry. They plead against the authoritarian leadership style and praise openness, honesty, and equality in their team.

I’m unsure whether I’ve crafted a job around my personality or grown into this role because of my job. I’ve always known what I like and don’t like from an early age. My mum always said I knew my mind. This understanding invariably helps when making decisions as a Creative Director and a business Founder. They’re two entirely different workstreams that require different ways of thinking. So it certainly helps to make decisions, perhaps if one is able to see more in black and white.

Often, I don’t know the answers, and I think a key component of leadership is accepting this. I lean heavily on my team, ask their opinions, and keep pace with projects by using more of a meritocratic approach where the best solution always wins, no matter if it comes from the intern or from me. Leadership is knowing when to seek answers from your team, and when you need to deliver answers to them if you see them struggling. This knowledge involves reading the room, digging deep, and coming up with solutions that will push people forward and give them a new lease on creative life in a difficult patch.

I come across challenges every day: some tiny, some big, some that seem tiny but then manifest as big, and vice versa, but I’ve started to see the challenges as part of running a business, a part of the game I chose to play. So, I’m trying not to see challenges as obstacles anymore, even though this is incredibly difficult.

Cat How:

Founder and Creative Director of How&How branding and design agency. She admits she doesn’t know all the answers and treats challenges as a part of her business game.