Design teams are not a hive mind or Borg collective. Like any team, each person in a design team is there for their own reasons, some of which have nothing to do with the success of the organisation that pays them. In return, an organisation hires people because it has its own needs, not because it wants to support the career and life of that individual.

A good employee wants their organisation to succeed, and a good organisation wants its employees to succeed, but that’s not often the reason either of them have entered into the relationship. As long as we recognise that, I think that’s fine — that’s the basis for an honest relationship. But in my experience, this relationship only works if we intentionally acknowledge this transactional nature in an authentic and structured way. This concept is particularly important at the team level, because this is where those frustrations are most keenly felt.

It’s easy, when you are running a team, to hyper-focus on the goals you are under pressure to deliver: a good delivery, happy stakeholders, high chargeable hours — whatever goals you are charged with achieving. When we think of our design team as just resources to achieve those goals and forget that our team members have their own individual goals, it leads to frustration and hurt feelings all round. When we forget the transactional nature of our relationship, we tend to fall into assuming shared goals. And because of this, both parties become surprised and frustrated when one party doesn’t seem to support the other.