Many in the design industry have been inspired by design leaders who created environments that enabled their teams to succeed, grow, and make a positive impact in the world. However, many of our peers, clients, and colleagues have been frustrated, burned out, and held back by leadership, which can have more negative effects.

In this post, authored by in close collaboration with and his shaping tools, we decode some negative archetypes, or ‘anti-patterns,’ of design leadership and explore how you can start to improve and manage them better, as the leader yourself, or someone affected by such a leader. We are grateful to for her editorial feedback.

Before diving in, we have a confession to make: when we first brainstormed ideas for this article, we were pointing fingers at others, rather than taking a close look in the mirror at our behaviors. We realized that throughout our careers, we have fallen into some of these archetypes. This article helped us reflect and think about our evolution and growth as leaders. We encourage you to reflect.

In our work — whether in-house, as external management consultants, coaching, or engaging the design community — we have observed different patterns (or ‘archetypes’) of design leaders.

Some of these archetypes have a more positive impact: creating an engaging culture, building high-performing teams, and delivering strong business outcomes.

However, some archetypes often have more negative impacts. Design teams are burning out, feeling stuck, and frustrated. (Hey designers, they’re gaslighting you)

Executives in these archetypal roles vary across industries, experience, and exposure to a wide range of situations.

We share some negative archetypes, or ‘anti-patterns,’ of design leadership and offer some perspectives on what you might do about them.

The characters and situations portrayed in these archetypes are illustrative, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

Here are six negative design leader archetypes, along with suggestions on how to address them.

1. Directive Disruptor
2. Protective Parent
3. Solo Solver
4. Academic Purist
5. Omnipresent Impressor
6. Masked Manipulator

NB: These archetypes aren’t exhaustive, but their impact can be draining, and their behaviors exhausting. Some are probably familiar to you. We have amplified some of their traits for dramatic effect, but from your own experience, you may feel we are being too kind.

A visual summary of where these profiles might direct their time and attention across key leadership areas is illustrated with & ’s Leadership Functions Shaping Tool.

A visual summary illustrating the style of leadership these archetypes sometimes portray. The dot indicates their dominant position on the false dichotomies of design leadership styles. A healthy design leader would have some comfort ranges across these dichotomies.

The design executive in this role looks to shake things up and show the beacon of design value to the team and the organization.

Their approach is straightforward: They will plow through the existing design team and implement a new organizational design and working model. Their style is often overt, with glossy surface-level design pizazz at its core, and it is evident from the start of every single presentation.

This driver-driver¹ executive only accepts their way or the highway. This type of leader may be insensitive, unsympathetic, and harsh.

[1] NB: A driver-driver personality does not like chit-chat and wants information right away. Some leaders with a dominant Driver profile rarely admit when they are wrong. They can also rush to a decision without thoroughly thinking through or understanding the results or consequences of their impact. For more: Forbes — How Understanding The Four Workplace Personalities Can Change Your Office For The Better

You might often find them referencing the power of Apple design, their previous achievements at a big FANG (Investopedia) company, or a poster-child startup. You might also hear stories of collateral damage told in hallways of conferences and private Slack channel communities from past teammates.

They have already made up their mind, even before taking the time to understand the context in which the team operates. They’ll often advocate for centralized design control, hyping up those who are more overt in their tangible execution quality, rather than the deeper, complex thinkers.

“Design can change the world. We’re going to use the power of Design to design a new organization, and re-Design the Insurance industry. We’ll be the Apple of Insurance.”

They will bring in people from their past that they trust to show ‘what good looks like’, while pushing out those who challenge them with more complex questions and thinking.

“I will reshape the structure of this leadership team, and I will bring in people I trust. We are going to show this organization what great looks like.”

As new, incoming leaders to an organization, we must consider the enterprise and the design team’s context and maturity level.

We must assess our leadership capabilities and understand the gaps (HBR- Leadership Self-Assessment: How Effective Are You?). If we accelerate change without understanding the organization’s needs, we risk alienating our sponsors, our partners, and our team. We inflict severe damage to the team’s culture, causing unintended exodus, a lack of psychological safety, and low morale.

If you suspect you might be this kind of executive, you could ask yourself to reflect on these questions:

• What outcomes am I afraid of if I don’t control this?
• What are people saying about me behind my back?
• Am I acting from a place of confidence or anxiety? Is my fear masked as certainty?
• What story am I telling myself about what an effective leader would do in this situation?

For leaders of people and individual contributors under this leadership archetype, there are limited options:

• Run for the exit: Let’s face it, while this may not be an easy choice, considering the economic conditions in the market, it might be your best option. You may need to keep your eyes open for opportunities with other organizations.
• Hide: Avoid the leader and continue working, keeping your head down, protecting your team, and focusing on the objectives and outcomes. Unfortunately, if your work and your impact are not visible, you and your team may become expendable in this leader’s view.
• Fight in private: You might choose to confront the new leader, stand your ground, and argue with facts. You may try to understand the underlying motivations of the change pushed by this leader. But be careful not to do this in a public forum, as you could risk being torn to pieces, and you can’t expect your fellow peers to back you up. The leader may even enjoy the friction of a heated discussion.
• Connect on different levels: Find a way to better connect with them on a human level and to the positive aspects of their narratives. Understand their motives, their remit, and the expectations set by whoever brought them in. Find ways to connect any lofty, shallow aspirational examples and rhetoric with real, deep work from the past or already planned for the future.
• Challenge softly over time: Through better understanding, if you choose to connect, you can establish more rapport to up the ante on your challenges and dull some of the incessant shallow sparkle, arming them with more reasoned ways to make their arguments to the business.

The design executive in this role invests a disproportionate amount of time looking inward and downward within the design team. They nurture the design team and their needs, at the expense of the organization’s overall needs at a system level. They are also looking to please everyone, often causing churn and burnout through indecision and a perception of being two-faced.

“My focus is on taking care of the team. When the team is engaged, the work takes care of itself.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve got this. I’m holding the umbrella, so you don’t have to deal with the shit”

Creating the right cultural conditions for the team to engage and thrive in the organization is important. However, we must balance our time investment to ensure we are building strong partnerships and creating the conditions for the team to meet the organizational needs (Forbes: 18 Overlooked Areas Leaders Should Invest More Time In). We also must invest in promoting the business impact and results of the Design team. And that doesn’t mean we have to do it all. Protecting, or even molly-coddling (at the extreme), may not do the team any favors in the long run. It can disempower them, limit their growth, and put too much on the leader’s plate.

As an executive who may fall into this archetype, we need to pause and reflect on key questions:

• What do I fear if I focus my time outward and upward in the organization?
• Is it easier to be with my tribe than with people who have different values and value systems? How do I develop more empathy for those in the wider system?
• Who do I seek approval from?
• How much does my (over) protection disempower my team to learn and grow?
• What are the new behaviors that I need to adopt, and what behaviors do I need to drop?
• What are the key relationships and cross-functional partnerships that I need to develop?
• How do I invest in leadership coaching to continue my professional growth to meet the demands of the organization and the team?

For leaders of people and individual contributors under this leadership archetype, you could consider:

• Express disempowerment: Explain how indecision and pleasing the many hurt and limit your ability to be effective in your role.
• Offer time: Talk to your leader and offer to take things off their plate. Reassure them that you will keep them updated with progress and will inform them promptly if issues arise.
• Seek advice and support: Look for allies or mentors in the organization to help you gain an understanding of the broader stakeholders, their pressures and motivations, and what is important to them.
• Share Feedback and Ask Questions: In specific situations and decisions, discuss the impact that the leader has on the team. Be open and recognize that your perspective is incomplete, and you want to understand your leader’s perspective. Ask them questions that focus on what matters, invite thoughtful reflection, and give them room to respond.

This design executive collaborates with their peers and facilitates connections, but doesn’t advocate for the team. They manage up and across, with an eye towards “what’s in it for them,” while leaving the team behind.

They avoid taking a strong stance to support the team and promote their wins. They are more concerned about their position and political network within the organization, rather than their own design team’s well-being and growth. The person with this profile delegates and outsources the team’s culture and growth to their direct reports while they get on with the ‘real work’.

“Keep your head down, do great work, and results will speak for themselves.”

As Design Executives, we are accountable for shaping the culture and vision for our teams. We must engage our leadership team in the process, defining it in a participatory manner. We also need to balance our promotion with expanding the team’s platform to gain visibility and recognition for their achievements and business impact.

Design executives who see themselves with some of the characteristics of this archetype would benefit from reflecting on:

• Do I feel that I am not recognized and valued by my boss and my peers?
• Do I fear getting excluded from strategic discussions and executive forums?
• Do I bring people up, share the stage, and support them in building influential relationships across and up with the management team?
• Does my team have the platform in the organization to promote their business impact?
• Do I need to have more direct power in solving to be content? If so, is typical leadership right for me, or should I pursue a more Principal/Distinguished/Super Individual Contributor (IC) path?

If you and your team fall under this leader archetype, you could consider:

• Understand Recognition: ask your leader about the last time they felt recognized and listen to the elements they share with you. You may reciprocate and share a story of your own, with different elements. Is recognition about Encouraging Words, Time Investment, Autonomy & Empowerment, Tangible Rewards, or Visibility?
• Articulate Business Impact: Take the initiative to showcase and promote the business impact that you and your team are generating. Share the impact with your leader, and most importantly, share it with your cross-functional partners and stakeholders.
• Co-create Culture: Invite your leader to proactively co-create the design team culture. Engage your leader in forums with the team, skip-level conversations, and encourage them to create meaningful moments.

This design executive brings a “true & tested” way of working. They follow a formula that worked before. Often from books or posts, they wrote or are popular in design leadership. It is, in many ways, perceived as the theoretical textbook approach. It’s logical. It’s convincing. However, it lacks flexibility, pragmatism, and appreciation of human and wider system dynamics. (Forbes: Leadership Flaws: How To Combat Inflexibility)

This archetype’s blind spots preclude leaders from understanding the complexity of the whole system. They move pieces around in the same manner they have done in other contexts, with a grand design, and expect to achieve similar results. The leader with this archetype is often uncomfortable with experimentation and failure.

“We need to teach the business the ideal Design Process. We know the right way to do research and design; they don’t. We just have to keep telling them until they understand.”

They value rigor, consistency, and proven systems, which can bring structure and discipline to a design organization. However, their resistance to change and an appreciation of relational dynamics signal a lack of adaptability, often defaulting to a “one-size-fits-all” approach. This creates potential friction with cross-functional partners and stifles innovation.

A design executive who exhibits this behavior may have a fear of the unknown, a fear of failure. Here are some questions that may help us reflect and adjust our behavior:

• What is the underlying feeling or fear that precludes me from trying a different process or approach?
• What are some potential blind spots I’ve identified in the past that could creep in unexpectedly in this new environment?
• What does the situation require? How is this different from the common patterns in core texts? What are the different paths that we may take?
• How could I probe the author on the literature to understand the context of the models and frameworks, and how confident they really are in their published assertions, especially when applied to my contexts?
• Working with my leadership team, how can we create a culture of experimentation with small bets, calculated risk, and reward learning?
• What new models can I bring from complex, ambiguous environments?

For leaders of people and individual contributors under this leadership archetype, you could consider:

• Take Calculated Risks: Identify opportunities to experiment. Take small, calculated risks to demonstrate that a different approach may open the possibilities of learning in flexible ways.
• Use Evidence: Share examples from other organizations, case studies, and research in a way that aligns with your leader’s mindset. You want them to be open to iteration.
• Expand their View: Position your ideas as an extension of what the leader values. Show respect for process and structure, while inviting adaptation and openness to evolve.

The design executives in this archetype try to excel at everything, missing the things that matter most. We observe them doing things because they think they can do them faster or better than their team. They lack trust and patience in their team (or even themselves) and in delegating to them. They try to do everything, everywhere, all at once. But they often run out of time and energy to effectively cover all the ground they would like to tackle. They stress themselves out in the process. They express to their teams and peers that they are “very busy,” making it hard to get decent time with them as they are always in meetings and workshops.

The team culture suffers, and the work is also impacted. They get so close to the work in short bursts that come out of nowhere that they are perceived as micro-managers,

“There is no one else who can do that. I have to get involved to ensure things are done right.”

As leaders, we need to achieve a balance in how we invest our time. We need to trust our leadership team in their ability to execute with high quality and efficiently achieve the expected outcomes.

If we are feeling overwhelmed and experiencing burnout, we may need to reflect on these questions:

• Is anxiety or fear what moves me towards this behavior?
• Where are my true strengths and interests? Which parts do I get bored with?
• How do I leverage my Design leadership team to rebalance the way I invest my time?
• What are the critical areas I should own, versus which I should delegate?
• How do I invest in my emotional intelligence, self-awareness development, and leadership growth?

For leaders of people and individual contributors under this leadership archetype, you could consider:

• Make progress visible: Take a proactive approach and create consistent signals of progress. Build trust through rhythm, making progress visible.
• Invite feedback: Give your leader structured space to contribute, and then ask for space to execute.
• Remove ambiguity: Demonstrate competence and alignment through clarity. Show them the plan, including the priorities, and check in periodically to alleviate their fear of getting caught by surprise issues that may impact the schedule.

This design executive understands humanity on a conscious, deep level, and can connect on a personable and apparent caring level. This leader appeals to the good nature of the people in their team and across the organization. However, they often gaslight and put pressure on their team. They withhold and hoard information, focusing on gain and personal power. This archetype is dangerous because it is covert. It uses guilt and emotional pressure to maintain control. It frames coercion as care. This leader may have some insecurities and could feel that they are in a position way over their heads.

“I care about you and your success, but I expect you to be ready to turn things around quickly, even if that requires some nights and weekend work.”

As executives and leaders, we must create the conditions for psychological safety (Harvard Business School — How to build psychological safety in the workplace) and trust our teams and our partners. We should invite candid conversations, healthy challenges, or disagreements. We must empower and give autonomy to our teams.

Executives who pick up signals or get feedback on these behaviors may reflect in some of these areas:

• Is fear, doubt, or something else making me feel insecure or vulnerable?
• How can I develop resiliency to help me feel more grounded and secure?
• Am I creating trust with my team and cross-functional partners?
• Are my behaviors creating toxic or safe team dynamics?
• Am I modeling healthy conflict?

For leaders of people and individual contributors under this leadership archetype, you could consider:

• Anchor to shared goals: Recognize and acknowledge the emotions, then pivot to clarity and intent. Shift the conversation to grounded priorities.
• Focus on shared purpose: Frame your stance aligned with the mission, the team, and the goals. Acknowledge their influence while modeling maturity and principled leadership.
• Set boundaries: They will test your limits. Calmly hold your ground without becoming defensive. Draw a boundary that is logical, not emotional.
• Keep records and share with care: Keep track of what has been said to you and share back regularly. Limiting any wiggle room and gaslighting. Find ways to share this with others without exposing the manipulator publicly. Be gentle, but make it known that you will try to keep on top of any shifting sands.

The current economic and political conditions are putting pressure on organizations. There is uncertainty and fear in the air. As leaders, we can feel the pressure and stress on our shoulders. And so, without malicious intent, we may fall into behaviors that are not positive for our teams or ourselves.

These archetype profiles highlight behaviors and traits that negatively impact teams and organizations. A lack of flexibility, low emotional intelligence, or exposure to different environments and situations could explain these behaviors.

Certainly, the authors can relate to drifting towards some of these archetypes in our design leadership, and so writing this has been quite therapeutic to us. It forced us to reflect on our leadership styles and ways to improve them.

Periodically, we should create the space to reflect and ask:

1. Time: What tasks or projects am I doing that should be delegated?
2. Feedback: How could I support you / my team better?
3. Culture: Am I creating the right conditions for my team to do their best work?
4. Power: Am I holding power responsibly?
5. KISS methodology: what behaviors should I Keep, Improve, Start, Stop?
6. Development & Growth: What coaching, mentoring, or training can support my leadership growth?

Below, we illustrate two of the ‘Leadership Shaping Tools’ that created with .

Since its development, Jason has been extending the dichotomies and using the tool in different ways. Above, we have tried to use the tools to express some of the biases and profiles of the negative archetypes, but using the tools with yourself and your team can help to identify a range of opportunities to develop, re-focus attention, and distribute power and responsibility across the team in healthier ways.

We are shaping culture, vision, and strategy. We must create the conditions for psychological safety, experimentation, learning, empowerment, and autonomy. Our biggest failure is not about making a bad decision; it is about building a team that does not trust us or fear us. A team that would think of us as a horrible boss. With Leadership comes power and responsibility. Power is never neutral, and we must use it with care.

We invite you to reflect

As executives and leaders, what strategies of self-reflection help us understand our fears and adjust our leadership behaviors?

As a team member, how do you navigate negative leadership styles and influence behavior change?