First Impression

This book reads more like a workbook than a memoir. Avore and Unger split the work of leading design people into two roles: the design manager, who runs process and people, and the design leader, who builds influence with or without direct reports. The chapters follow the real arc of running a team, from hiring through onboarding, one on ones, critique, and finally executive influence. What stood out most is how concrete the advice stays throughout, each chapter ends with a short set of things to actually do, not just ideas to think about.

Who Should Read It

This book is useful for anyone stepping into a design leadership role for the first time, or anyone already managing a team who wants a clearer structure for the parts that usually get handled on instinct.

Read this if you are preparing to lead a team and want a practical playbook instead of guesswork.

It is also useful for people building or fixing a hiring process, running one on ones and critique sessions, or trying to earn more trust from executives.

Book's Impact on Me

The idea that stuck with me most is the team charter. A charter is a short, written statement of how the team works and what it stands for, built by the team rather than handed down. The authors point out that the process of writing it matters as much as the finished document.

Reading this while preparing for a leadership role, it gave me something concrete to plan for early rather than something to figure out later. Instead of assuming culture will form on its own once I start leading a team, I now see it as something to design on purpose from the first weeks, and to revisit every few months as the team changes.

Quotes and Highlights

Design leadership is the practical skill of influencing others without a mandate. It means creating an environment where curiosity, growth, and iteration can thrive, inside the team and beyond it. Why it matters: this reframes leadership as something you can practice before you have the title. Useful to keep in mind while preparing for a leadership role rather than waiting for one to start.

A design manager focuses on the people side of the team, their development, their work, and how it gets delivered. Why it matters: a clear, short definition of what the job actually covers, useful as a checklist before stepping into the role.

The team charter is a reflection of the team's desired culture, not the culture itself. If you do not define a culture, one will form by default. Why it matters: this is the core reason to write a charter early rather than after problems show up. It also explains why the document needs to be revisited, not filed away.

On hiring, the book argues that a strong design culture matters more to candidates than a well known company name. Why it matters: worth remembering when building a team from scratch, since it points to where the real effort should go.

Summary and Notes

Becoming a design leader

• A design manager runs people. A design leader builds influence, with or without direct reports.

• You can act as a design leader before you hold the title, by pushing for better hiring, clearer principles, or better research practices.

Building diverse and inclusive teams

• Homogeneous teams create blind spots in the products they build.

• Widen where you look for candidates instead of relying on the same networks every time.

• This is ongoing work. Teams can slide back into homogeneity as people leave.

Designing a fair hiring process

• Replace generic job descriptions with performance profiles, built by defining what success and failure look like in the role.

• Use a structured interview guide so every candidate is judged against the same criteria.

• Treat the offer and onboarding as part of the same designed experience as the interview.

Team charters

• Write a short charter describing how the team works and what it stands for.

• The exercise of writing it matters as much as the finished document.

• Revisit it every three to six months, or whenever the team's size or scope changes.

• A charter is what the team aspires to, not a description of what already exists.

Running the team day to day

• Hold regular one on ones. They catch small problems early but should not replace feedback given in the moment.

• Run frequent, inclusive critique sessions to surface risk before too much work goes into one direction.

• Set clear expectations for how the team's work gets presented and reviewed.

• When you need to say no to a request, be transparent about the reasons and give people real options.

Growing designers and scaling the practice

• Map each person's skills against their interests to guide growth, instead of waiting for the annual review.

• When scaling design across a larger organisation, keep a systems view of how the team connects to company goals, and build around skills rather than narrow specialist roles.

Gaining influence with executives

• Influence comes from trust, not from asking for it directly.

• Bring executives into the process early, for example by involving them in research before a project starts.

• Show measurable results, such as faster delivery with steadier quality, rather than arguing for a seat at the table after the fact.

Small experiments to try

• Draft a short team charter before or soon after starting a leadership role, and set a date to revisit it.

• Write one performance profile for a future hire instead of reusing an old job description.

• Pick one recurring meeting and set an explicit norm for how feedback should be given in it.