What Design Leaders Need to Work On
As part of my masterclasses of the 2025 Leadership Ateliers in Lisbon and Berlin, we ran a live, interactive session with 73 design leaders to surface the most pressing leadership challenges they face. We wanted to explore a key question: What are the fundamental areas design leaders want to focus on to strengthen their teams?
Rather than discussing trending topics like AI or journey management, we grounded the exercise in the Design Leadership Framework. This allowed us to focus on the core responsibilities and leadership tasks that define effective design management as shown in the image below.
The Design Leadership Framework (DLF) offers a concise overview of the key dimensions and aspects critical to leading and managing a design team effectively. It serves as a practical compass for design leaders navigating a digital era where design must simultaneously drive innovation and support efficient product development.
Participants worked through the framework following these steps:
Self-Assessment – Identify Gaps and Prioritize
Each participant reviewed all 30 aspects of the DLF and marked those where they saw gaps in their current leadership practice — areas where they or their teams were struggling or lacked clarity.
From their identified gaps, participants selected the three aspects they most need to work on or improve. This step sharpened individual focus and created the basis for shared reflection.
Image: Example of a checked DLF table indicating identified gaps
Step 3: Group Synthesis – Share & Compare
We then gathered everyone’s top three challenges via a live poll using tools like Mentimeter or Slido. This allowed us to visualize the collective priorities of the group and spot common themes.
Image: Screenshot of the group poll using Slido
What Design Leaders Are Struggling With
The final results reflect a broad spectrum of leadership challenges, but clear patterns emerged. Below is a visual summary of the Top 10 challenges selected by the group.
Chart: Top 10 Design Leadership Challenges
A Surprising Finding: Vision & Goals
It came as a surprise to me to see “Define Vision & Goals” ranked so high across all classes. But as we discussed it in the sessions, it became apparent that there’s still a lot of uncertainty around how to actually formulate a design vision:
- What exactly does a design vision entail?
- How do you make it concrete by attaching tangible, long-term goals?
- How do you involve the team?
- And how can the vision speak to both design outcomes and the design team and practice itself?
If this challenge resonates with you, I always recommend starting with an old interview with Alex Schleifer, former CDO at Airbnb. It’s a great example of how to communicate a design team’s vision and high-level plans. I also like Peter Merholz’s short piece on setting a leadership agenda — simple, practical, and grounded in the realities of design orgs.
Final Reflection
This simple but powerful exercise sparked meaningful conversations in each masterclass — revealing how much shared ground design leaders have, regardless of their company size, industry, or experience level. Whether you’re leading a small team or a global design org, taking time to reflect on your top development areas can be a transformative step. Learn more about the Design Leadership Framework in my resources section.
Hi, I’m Katharina Koberdamm, Design Consultant and Coach. I created the Design Leadership Framework to empower design leaders to become more strategic, build a strong design function, and drive impactful change. In this blog I share my thoughts and insights from my research and coaching practice. You can find me on LinkedIn.
The Design Leadership Framework is my book on how design leaders shape direction and create lasting impact.
