01
Development for Design Leaders
Strengthening leadership through community, reflection, and co-created growth.
Role:
Program Creator and Facilitator
Industry:
Professional Development
Duration:
6 mo
Challenges
At a fast-scaling company like Zalando, managers often rise quickly but lack structured peer support or safe spaces for candid leadership reflection. To address this, I initiated and led a six-month Manager Support Group: an internal program designed to help design managers develop together—through conversation, vulnerability, and intentional community.
The goal was to provide professional development through peer-to-peer learning
Create safe, non-hierarchical spaces to explore challenges and give/receive support
Strengthen cross-functional leadership connections that don’t emerge organically in day-to-day work
Encourage long-term leadership capability by building networks, confidence, and clarity
My Approach
I kicked off the program with a half-day offsite to codesign the curriculum together. Afterwards, myself and 3 other program chairs planned and created curriculum content. We developed as a group shared principles to guide the sessions tone, and shared our learnings goals and career objectives.
The Manager Support Group was intentionally structured around a dual focus: building practical leadership skill and fostering emotional resilience. Each session was grounded in real challenges managers face—but approached with reflection, shared wisdom, and vulnerability.
Results
The topics followed a progressive arc—from the internal (managing oneself), to the relational (managing direct reports and peers), to the strategic (influencing upwards and scaling leadership impact).
Motivation & Energy: Reigniting engagement for both ourselves and our teams. Motivation is the emotional engine of a team—this session helped leaders recognize when it’s low and how to revive it without performative “positivity.”
Difficult Conversations : Practicing courage and clarity when stakes are high. These moments define a leader’s maturity. We helped each other navigate tension with confidence and care.
Managing Up : Influencing senior stakeholders with authenticity. No manager leads in a vacuum. This session gave us permission—and tactical tools—to push upwards with clarity and strategy.
Leading When Nobody Is Normal : Navigating mental health, neurodivergence, and burnout. Many leadership programs avoid these “soft” topics. But here, we centered them—because our humanity shapes how we lead.
Bar-Raising Teams : Holding high standards with empathy is an art. We practiced how to do both, without micromanaging or enabling underperformance.
Management Career Paths : Owning your own trajectory. Design managers often plateau without growth frameworks. This session empowered each of us to craft our own compass.
Overflow & Coaching Session : Brought in an external coach to reflect on the themes from across the program.
Future Plans
This program created a ripple effect: participants began mentoring others, taking more confident strategic actions, and bringing back practices into their own teams.
“Talking about career with peers—but not from the same team—was refreshing.”
“The safe space allowed me to be vulnerable and specific.”
“I brought up real problems and got advice that actually helped.”
“I felt less alone in my struggles as a new manager.”
“Lowered the barrier to reach out to other leads outside sessions.”
Conclusion
Manager development is rarely solved with content alone. It needs community, reflection, and real talk. This 6-month program proved that even without org-mandated frameworks, we can design human-centered leadership experiences that transform how managers support themselves—and each other.