How to Break into Senior Design Roles (5 patterns holding you back)

I've mentored over 500 designers at this point, and I keep seeing the same pattern show up again and again. Patterns that stop really talented designers from reaching leading roles. If you've been stuck at the same level for years, if you're feeling like you're doing everything right, but you're just not getting recognized or promoted, this is probably why. The first pattern I see constantly, waiting for permission. And here's what this actually looks like in practice. You have ideas in meetings, good ideas, but you don't bring them up because you've been shot down before or ignored. So, you've learned it's safer to just kind of stay quiet. You see problems in your product, real problems, but you think, "Well, that's not really my job to fix or I'm not senior enough to say something about that. " So, you don't or here's a big one. You're already doing the work of a leading designer. You're mentoring juniors. You're running design critiques. You're taking initiative on projects, but you haven't actually asked for the title or the pay that goes with it. You're just doing it and hoping that someone will notice. And maybe the most common version, you assume that pushing for design improvements is your PM's job, not yours. So, you wait for them to bring it up. So, why do we do this? Well, after you've been told no enough times or had your ideas completely ignored in a meeting, you start to internalize something that your voice doesn't really matter, it starts to feel way safer to just focus on what you've been assigned rather than risk another rejection. Plus, when you were earlier in your career, staying in your lane was actually the smart move. You were rewarded for that. But now, that same behavior is actually holding you back. Here's the mindset shift I want you to make. The problem isn't that you don't see what needs to change. You absolutely do. The real issue is that you don't have the strategies to advocate effectively. Leading designers don't just have better ideas than you. They know how to get buy in. And that's a skill you can learn, not a personality trait that you're born with or not. So, here's what you can do this week. Pick one small improvement you've been sitting on. Just one. And before your next meeting, spend 10 minutes prepping. What's the business case for this? What's the smallest, lowest effort version of this idea? Who actually needs to care about this for it to happen? Practice saying it in one sentence out loud. And then in the meeting, bring it up, not as a fully baked proposal with a deck and three alternatives, just as a question like, "Hey, I've been thinking about whatever it is. Could we spend five minutes exploring whether this is worth prioritizing? " That's it. You're not demanding anything. You're just opening the door. Before we continue with the video, let's say thanks to our sponsor, Mobin. Ever wonder how top app designers stay ahead of the curve? Let's uncover their secret together. It's called Mobin, and it's the world's largest and most comprehensive reference library full of mobile and web UI and UX screenshots updated every single week. With Mobin, you can get an all access pass to thousands of mobile app screens from today's leading apps. It's like having a front row seat to the design process of the best in business. Take a look at this. Here we're navigating through the checkout flow of several popular ecommerce apps. Each layout shows unique approaches to user engagement and conversion strategies. Let's say I'm designing a checkout flow. I can search or filter on checkout screens and look at hundreds of screens for inspiration. Maybe I have an app that I'm designing that has a little bit of a learning curve, but I want to make it as easy as possible for users to engage with. I'll hop right on over to Mobin and I'll look for inspiration on things like tool tips, card modules, or even success screens. Mobin isn't just an inspiration library. It's a learning hub. Have an idea of your next feature to ship, but need some stakeholder buyin? Mobin can help you break down complex design patterns, speed up competitive benchmarking and research. Whether you're refining a current project, or working on your next big thing, Mobin is the key resource for keeping you inspired and informed. Check it out and see how easy it is to elevate your design work. Okay, pattern number two, and this one's subtle, but huge. You're focusing on outputs instead of outcomes. What do I mean by that? Well, let's say you spend months, literally months, completing a full product redesign only to realize it's not going to ship for another year, and you'll never actually know if it worked. Or perhaps you're polishing the UI, refreshing the visual design system, making everything look more modern, when the real problem is actually a fundamental UX flow issue. New colors aren't going to fix that. Or here's another version. You have questions about a project, like, why are we even doing this? but you end up building it anyway. You ship it and then you kind of

watch it sit there unused, gathering dust. Or maybe you're 3 weeks deep into explorations before anyone's even validated whether you're solving the right problem in the first place. So why does this happen? In a lot of organizations, especially ones with low design maturity, you get handed projects with really vague direction like refresh the dashboard or make it more modern. no clear goals and no success metrics and you assume someone else has thought through the strategy, someone more senior than you, someone in a leadership role. So you just focus on what you can control, which is the output, the thing you're designing. Plus, you are trained to deliver great work. So you deliver even when the work itself might not actually be necessary. Here's what you need to understand. Your job isn't to make things look good. Your job is to drive outcomes that matter to the business. The problem you are trying to solve that matters way more than how polished your solution looks. Your contribution to the work, the rationale behind your decisions, your influence on the direction of the project, that's what makes you valuable at a leadership level. So next time you get handed a project, before doing anything else, write down three things. One, what business problem are we solving? Two, what user Three, how will we measure success? If you don't have answers to those questions, don't open Figma yet. Schedule 15 minutes with your PM and align on these first because without that clarity, you're just creating outputs and outputs don't get you promoted. Number three is about relationships or actually the lack of them. Here's what I see. You only talk to your PM when there's a project deadline or you need a specific deliverable reviewed. That's it. You work heads down for weeks without sharing any work in progress. You're not getting informal feedback. You're not building that collaborative energy. You have no idea what other teams are working on, even when their work directly impacts yours. And then you're surprised when you get push back from a stakeholder because you didn't build that relationship before you needed something from them. Here's the big one. You treat your PM like they're your boss. like they assign you work and you execute it instead of seeing them as a peer or a partner. Now, why did designers avoid this? Because relationship building can feel kind of political or inauthentic, like you're networking to get ahead. Plus, when you're heads down trying to deliver great work, it feels like building relationships is a distraction from the real work. And maybe you think the work should just speak for itself. But look, your PM isn't your boss. They're your partner. You should be working together equally to identify problems and define solutions. And at senior levels and above, your impact can't just be about your immediate team anymore. Building relationships with designers and PMs on other teams, understanding their goals, identifying opportunities for collaboration, that's how you start thinking in systems instead of just features. And that horizontal influence, that's what differentiates senior designers from mid-level designers. So, here's what to try this week. Schedule two recurring one-on- ones. One with your PM if you don't already have one, and one with a designer or a PM from another team, someone whose work may influence yours or vice versa. Use those conversations to ask about their team goals, what they're working on, and where you might be able to collaborate. Not because you need something right now, but because you're building the relationship before you need it. All right, number four. And this one makes people uncomfortable just hearing the word avoiding conflict. Here's what this looks like. You say yes to every single stakeholder request, even when it completely compromises the design. You let work ship that you know isn't good enough because you don't want to have that awkward conversation with an engineer. Or here's a really common one. You choose the education route. You run workshops. You do lunch and learns. You create documentation when what's really needed is just a direct conversation about standards or accountability. You don't push back when your PM deprioritizes something you know is critical. And you withhold feedback and design critiques because you don't want to make someone uncomfortable. So why do we avoid conflict? Well, you probably don't want to be labeled as difficult. You don't want to damage relationships. Or maybe you've seen conflict go really badly before. or honestly you just don't know how to disagree productively. So you stay quiet. You hope the work will speak for itself or that someone else will raise the issue. But here's the cost of that. Poor work ends up shipping and you resent it. Team members withhold feedback to avoid discomfort. So ideas never evolve from first drafts. Critical user problems get overlooked because no one questioned the assumptions. And you lose credibility because you don't stand for anything. Let me give you a real

example. I mentored a lead designer at an engineering forward startup. He was really struggling to get the engineers to care about craft and quality. So he ran lunch and learns. He created Slack channels. He even built this craft committee. All the education tactics. But the real problem, his CTO saw design engineering as an opportunity cost versus feature development. What he actually needed wasn't more workshops. It was a direct conversation about business impact and ROI. Here's how to think about this differently. Conflict isn't personal. It's about the goal. When you disagree with someone, you're not attacking them. You're protecting the outcome. The key is to move the conversation away from solutions like do it this way and toward outcomes like here's what we're trying to achieve. Frame it around shared success. So instead of saying that won't work, try I want to make sure we hit our retention goal. I'm worried this approach might create friction at checkout because of whatever the data or the research shows. So, could we test a version that addresses that concern? And here's what most people miss. Productive conflict actually builds trust and influence. Yeah. When you push back thoughtfully, you're showing that you care about outcomes. People respect colleagues who stand for something and have an opinion. So, this week, practice one small push back. Pick something low stakes where you disagree. Before the conversation, write down three things. The shared goal, your specific concern, and an alternative solution. And then practice saying it out loud. I want us to succeed at the goal. I'm concerned about X because reason. What if we tried Y? It's going to feel uncomfortable at first, but do it anyway. And the fifth pattern, this one kills me because I see it all the time. Underelling your impact. You're doing leadership work. You're mentoring junior designers. You're running design critiques. You're improving team processes, but you haven't tied any of those contributions to business impact or outcomes. You downplay your role. You say things like, "Well, I just helped with that. " Instead of, "I led that. " You don't know how to talk about your work without perfect metrics. And you assume that great work will automatically lead to recognition and reward. your portfolio. It just lists what you made like B2B dashboard or mobile app, not the actual impact you drove. Now, why do designers do this? Because it feels like bragging. You maybe don't want to come across as arrogant or you don't want to take credit away from the team. Plus, you might genuinely not know how to translate your design work into business language. And deep down, you think it's not your job to advocate for yourself. That's what your manager is for, right? But here's the cost. You get passed over for promotions because leadership doesn't see the connection between what you do and business outcomes. You don't get staffed on high impact projects because you're just not top of mind when opportunities come up. Your contributions, the mentoring, the process improvements, they just go completely unnoticed or devalued. And sometimes someone else gets credit for the work that you did. Let me tell you about a designer I mentored. He was doing everything a staff designer does. Mentoring, running critiques, pushing for process improvements, taking initiative on new projects, but he hadn't connected any of it to impact. He was doing all of this work, but wasn't articulating how it helped the organization or what the outcomes of those efforts were. Was his mentoring reducing ramp up time for new hires? Were his critiques improving design quality and reducing rework? He was spending tons of time on this stuff, but nobody understood the value. So, when we talked, he had this realization. Well, no one's going to care about my career as much as I do. And it's true. Not even your manager. So, here's what you need to understand. Great work doesn't automatically guarantee reward or recognition. In big organizations, you often need to cut through the noise. Visibility matters. Now, this isn't about being arrogant. It's about making sure the right people know about the impact you're driving. You either need to kind of road show your work, like sharing it broadly, or focus on high impact projects that scale horizontally across the organization so the impact is wide, not just deep. Here's what to do this week. Two things. One, start a wins dock. Track one thing per week that you're proud of. The problem it solved, impact, even if it's just qualitative. Two, share a win with your manager in your next one-on-one. Practice connecting your work to outcomes like I led X which resulted in Y impact. Instead of just describing what you made, it's going to feel uncomfortable at first. Do it anyway. So, those are the five patterns. Waiting for permission, focusing on outputs over outcomes, not building relationships proactively, avoiding conflict, and underelling your impact. If you're

recognizing yourself in two or more of these areas and you're tired of trying to figure this out alone, I have something for you. I'm working on a group coaching program specifically designed to help designers break through into leading roles. It's hands-on, it's personalized, and it's focused on implementation and accountability, not just theory. We'll work through exactly how to advocate for your ideas, how to build strategic relationships, how to have productive conflicts, and how to communicate your impact in ways that actually get you recognized and promoted. There's a link in the description. You can join the wait list, and I can't wait to work with you. If you enjoyed this video, give it a like, subscribe, and I'll see you in a future video. Bye.