Are you an exhausted design leader looking for a way to re-energise and refocus?

Do you want to show up as your best self, but struggle to find the time to focus on anything other than the inbox?

Have you spent all of your energy supporting your teams and organisations and have nothing left to focus on what's needed for your own success?

Led by globally recognised executive and leadership coach (and longtime Leading Design collaborator) Julia Whitney, this workshop provides a vital space for design leaders to pause, reset and plan how to be the best leader they can.

Design leadership is hard. You spend most of your time giving to others (your teams, your products, your organisations) and there is often very little time or energy to focus on yourself.

Yet, being able to operate at your best is the only way to support all those who rely on you. If you aren’t operating at your optimum, then those around you can’t succeed. It's a lot of pressure and responsibility.

This workshop draws on the frameworks used at Leading Design’s sellout global retreats and design leadership summits. It carves out vital time for designers to reflect on their leadership practice and provides practical frameworks for moving forward with ownership and momentum in your leadership journey.

Crucial to this workshop is the access to peers with whom you will have a protected space to share your leadership challenges, get input and feedback, and find community with peers that can continue afterwards.

This will be a safe space for honest conversations, so we will ask attendees to respect a confidentiality agreement to ensure that attendees can speak openly.

Key takeaways

Reconnection with your best professional self
A practical Design Leadership Canvas to reflect on where you are now, and chart your course to future success
An action plan of next steps to take ownership of your leadership journey beyond the session
Meaningful connection with other design leaders

Julia Whitney

Executive and Leadership Coach at Whitney and Asscociates

Julia Whitney is a design leader turned executive coach. She works with leaders and leadership teams to help them make the most of what they’ve got. Her client list includes The Guardian, Mind The Product, GDS, Superhuman, Vinted and Columbia University's Sustainable Healthcare Leadership Institute. She speaks at leadership conferences, designs and facilitates workshops, and has partnered with Clearleft on many of their Leading Design Retreats and Group Coaching Programmes.

Julia brings her own experience as a board level leader to her coaching practice: She led design teams for more than 20 years, in both the US and the UK, including eleven years at the BBC. She led User Experience and Design for the original BBC iPlayer, then for BBC News, Sport and Weather, before ultimately serving as GM and Executive Creative Director for the BBC’s 150-person User Experience and Design department across the BBC's entire portfolio of digital products and services.

Julia’s passionate about climate change and aims to coach 1,000 climate leaders by 2035.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/julia-whitney-leadership/