They lead. I follow.

A few years ago, I started trying something with my design team that felt a little backwards. I began periodically assigning myself as a junior product designer to one of my senior product designers for a full week.

I call them Junior-to-Senior Weeks.

For that week, they lead and I follow. They decide what we work on, what needs to move forward, and where I can be useful. I take their direction and execute what they need at their pace, on their priorities.

My role isn't to come in and review everything they're doing. I'm there to help them move the work forward.

They lead. I follow.

There's an important part of this practice that took me some time to understand.

About a year into my role as a design lead, I asked our COO to run a 360 survey on me. Nobody asked me to do it. It wasn't part of a review process. I wanted to hear directly from the designers I lead, engineers I work with, peers, and leaders above me.

One piece of feedback stuck with me:

"Your words have weight."

That sentence changed the way I think about how I show up with my team.

I might look at a design and ask, "Have you thought about trying this?" In my head, I'm another designer exploring an idea with them. The person on the other side of that conversation might hear something completely different. They might hear their lead telling them what to do.

I didn't want my designers guessing which version of me was talking.

I started being more intentional about something I now call Designer Hat / Leader Hat. When I'm giving an opinion as another designer, I try to make that clear. When I'm setting direction as the lead, I make that clear too.

Junior-to-Senior Weeks push that restraint even further.

For one week, I deliberately hand over control. I still bring my experience into the work. I'm still thinking about the user, the product, the design system, the details, and the business goals. But I don't get to turn every thought I have into direction.

I only raise a concern when I think it truly needs to be raised. The rest of the time, I work inside their plan.

That part is harder than it sounds. I mess it up all the time.

There's always an opportunity to jump in. There's always another opinion I could offer or another direction I could suggest. But if I'm constantly steering the work, I'm not really following.

That's not following. That's leading with extra steps.

The designer gets real space to lead me. They decide what we work on. They set the priorities. They tell me where they need help. They get a leadership opportunity inside a pretty low-stakes environment with someone who already knows the work and can help move it forward.

I get something valuable from the week too.

Working beside someone gives me a very different perspective than reviewing their work later. I see how they organize a problem. I see what they prioritize first. I see where processes or tools slow them down. I get a much clearer picture of what their day-to-day work actually feels like.

That matters to me because leadership can create distance from the work if I let it. I don't want to forget what I'm asking people to do every day.

My designers have told me Junior-to-Senior Weeks are some of the most useful time I spend with them. I'm proud of that practice, but not because I came up with some new leadership framework.

I'm proud of the space it gives them. I get to practice true servant leadership.

One of the things I care about most is making the designers around me more capable than they were before. I want them taking risks, making decisions, pushing beyond their first idea, and thinking like product people, not order takers.

Sometimes they need me to coach.

Sometimes they need me to make the final call.

Sometimes they need a harder conversation.

And sometimes the most useful thing I can do is sit beside them and ask:

"How can I help?"

That question changes my role for the week.

I'm not there to tell them how I would do it. I'm there to help them accomplish what they're trying to do.

Junior-to-Senior Weeks have also kept me honest about something I believe strongly as a leader: the work I'm proudest of is rarely the work that has my name on it.

Seeing someone else lead, make the decisions, and grow into more ownership is the work.

They lead. I follow.

See it in the work

• Leadership story

  Communication is king

  Junior-to-Senior Weeks inside the team's operating model, and the survey that told me my words have weight.

• Leadership storyPassword protected

  Pay It Forward

  My Senior Engineer led the in-theater QR code. I filled the design needs as he called them out.