#01: Welcome to The Inspirational Leaders Series, a collection of short interviews with sharp, impactful leaders I know and respect—because the business world needs more refreshing people like them.
Meet Nick Myers, VP of Design at Patreon, and a colleague from my days at the design agency, Cooper. If Nick leads, quality will follow. He has a discerning eye and mind for good design, cultivates design excellence in his teams, and great designers have followed him from company to company (a signal he’s a leader they respect and enjoy). He also has a great sense of humor. Below is a snapshot into his leadership evolution and what has helped him to have such impact.
If your leadership was a product, what would it be?
A lava lamp – I’ve paid particular attention to feedback from my teams and people I support in recent years and one overriding them has been my calmness and light heartedness. Lava lamps have that ability to calm you with their presence but they’re also still pretty fun and a bit whimsical. I like to think that the best thing I can do for people on my teams is reduce their anxiety and make them feel more optimistic about the future.
What would you advise your younger self about leadership?
I’ve been practicing design for 26 years as a professional, and I’ve managed teams in different capacities for 14 of those years. When I was younger in my career and experienced decisions I wasn’t in favor of, they might have frustrated me deeply. Some of the hardest decisions were ones where maybe I didn’t get a promotion or I didn’t agree with decisions made by leaders and my opinion wasn’t valued. Now I see the complexity of these decisions and realize that I lacked maturity and gave them too much gravity.
At Facebook, a peer of mine was always calm despite so much constant change. When I was struggling with one particular change his words really stuck with me. He said something to the effect of “This decision isn’t a one-way door and it’s likely to shift back again in 6 months or a year.” Sure enough it did, and it helped me realize that most things weren’t worth getting worked up about. Some decisions will go the way I want them to and some won’t, and the stuff that really matters is easy to work out if I put my mind to it and lay out a clear strategy to influence the decision makers.
If I could advise my younger self about leadership it would be to consider what decisions are one-way doors and which aren’t, to be intentional about what I believe in, put the time into driving the right outcomes that matter to me, and to not take the headwinds too hard. I thought I always knew best but I’ve realized how little I knew at the time. My maturity and calmness during critical moments have enabled me to participate more and influence the decisions that I cared most about.
What’s a design leadership tip that has served you well?
When I was at Fitbit and my team had grown to about 40 I reached a point where I felt overwhelmed and I lacked the ability to influence others in the company. Additionally, I felt like people were asking for me to share more of my vision. I was often drowning in meetings and the feedback weighed heavily on me.
I was fortunate to get paired up with a leadership coach at that time and her advice has always stuck with me. Her advice? “Book strategic thinking time on your calendar for yourself”. This was a real lightbulb moment for me because I’d been a slave to others with my calendar up to that point and was missing the opportunity to step back and think about the future. This shift was critical for me to start pointing a path forward for my team, and it’s something I still do today. I jokingly call it “Nick time” but it’s really important to how I work.
What’s been a tough leadership lesson to learn?
I’ve had a few low points in my career, and it’s always been when I’ve seen people reporting to me being deeply unhappy or hurt. Even though these events haven’t been caused by me I’ve often shouldered some burden of responsibility and accountability and that’s naturally made me feel like a failure. The lesson there is simply that you can’t carry those burdens around with you and make everything right for people. Others must shoulder responsibility for their happiness or choose another path and that’s okay. Leaders can make the conditions optimal, but it takes a team to own that success together.
