#99 Being too easy vs too hard to work with as a designer
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When you're voicing concerns, when you're being vertical, when you're being opinionated, most of the times, even if you don't hold the whole truth, you're pushing the conversation closer to that truth. You're pushing the conversation closer to exploring the different angles and having a more informed perspective for whatever we decide we're going to do. So push for your point of view, even if it's different, because that's the point of collaboration, exploring different perspectives. ♪

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the new episode of Honest UX Talks. My name is Anfisa, and today we don't have a guest. Yay! We are talking with Ioana, and we are going to talk about the topic being nice versus being too hard. The idea here is that generally talking, we as designers, we always have to be easy and collaborative for our partners, but

At the same time, we all know that sometimes design maturity in the company is not there yet. You have to still educate partners. And a lot of the times you also have to, in a way, not to say fight, I don't like the word fight, but we need to protect design decisions. We need to always get a strong buy-in for those design decisions. And there are two strategies to do this. Either being too nice with the people and always be adaptive to what other people are saying, or being too hard. And sometimes it could also go wrong because nobody wants to collaborate with you and

And nobody wants to hear to you and always push back and stuff like that. So let's talk about this topic. But before we also doing that, I would also like to ask, how are you doing, Iona? How was your last two weeks? Hi, everyone. I'm doing okay, I guess. I'm a bit low on energy. Maybe it's the spring thing. I'm starting to get my seasonal allergies and it's kind of blurring up.

my sight and thinking. But yeah, I'm doing okay. The past couple of weeks were intense. I'm still very excited to be working at Miro. I'm very immersed in the AI problems and articulating an AI vision and the strategy for how we're going to get to this, let's say. I don't think that AI experiences will be ideal anytime soon because there's also the technical limitation aspect and it's

I think this is what's very interesting. As opposed to conventional or traditional digital experiences, but they are experiences even more than in conventional interactions. The technical aspect also needs a lot of research and it's very hard to get right. So we're working hand in hand to make sure that we're delivering an experience that is, I would say, good enough, but hopefully it's going to be delightful at some point.

And this is very exciting. And then also I took one day off on Friday and went to London, where I was essentially in this intense art immersive weekend. I went to, I think, four museums, State Modern. I went to Yayoi Kusama's Infinity Mirrors exhibition. I went to Saatchi Gallery. I went to South Bank Center, where I saw this exhibition about immersive installations that draw inspiration from nature, which was very fascinating. And

And yeah, so I did a lot of things in two days. Very intense, very artsy. I feel more inspired, but I'm also tired. So that's my week in a nutshell. How about you? How's it going? Oh my God, you're inspiring me because I am dreaming of this kind of life right now. You know, with looking newborn, it's a bit harder because you cannot really travel so much. You're going to just jump somewhere and travel or be anywhere else. You're like you have. I'm actually learning to enjoy my routine. I almost have this perfect schedule.

scheduled routine because for the first maybe eight months, we didn't have normal routine. Every day was different. Now we slowly started building the routine and I have things I usually do every day. I have a specific time when I'm drinking coffee, a specific time when I'm making up the bed, a specific time when I sit and play with the baby and then he goes to sleep and I have one hour to answer emails. And then now I started work. As you guys know, if you listened to the previous episode, so last week I started my full-time or in this case kind of part-time job.

back again in the same office at the company called NOOVS, which is a scale-up, so a little bit busy. And now specifically about the routine, I have this specific time when we get Nani, she comes in five minutes before the start of my workday, I give it to her and everything is super timely. Right now, I can't imagine any more freedom, at least as of right now. Maybe in the future, when the baby goes to the kindergarten or whatever, it will be easier. But right now, it's just like what you're saying to me sounds very dreamy. But I'm

still happy I'm definitely grateful because having a routine or having schedule is something we didn't have before and I'm definitely starting to enjoy it back to the work is obviously it's interesting for sure because you have two sides for one being nostalgic everything is kind of old and the same and you know everything you know the project you know where you left off because I haven't been there only one year so it's not that so much time has passed but at the same time it feels like a completely new place with all the new people all the new faces a

a lot of new initiatives. We actually started also working on some AI projects. So I'm very excited about it and definitely want to jump right into that because it's just the beginning of it. I came on time. And so, yeah, a lot of new things. It's exciting, but at the same time, it's still a classic scale up. So there's a lot of rush and a lot of need to

deliver and perform. And so I can see a lot of challenge in still being effective. I definitely have my worries up because I don't know if I will be able to be as effective, but I'm trying to do my best. And people are so nice. People are very collaborative. I really enjoy this, being back on the workshops and have discussions and talk about design. It's just amazing.

I love it. I missed it. And I feel like, as you know, I was also doing the community project and we have around 12 events, if I'm not mistaken, every month. Those events are recurring. So I started feeling that I actually want something new. I want a new perspective, new challenge, new variability aspect.

in my work. And so having this new, fresh, I guess, amount of information, amount of projects definitely helped me to be more excited and more engaged. But yes, not going to lie, I think by the end of the day, I'm very tired right now because morning we have a baby, then I have a part time and then evening I have a community. And then I also want to have some rest, eat something. At the end of the day, I'm pretty, pretty tired also with the baby playing and everything. So I wouldn't complain, but it's still an adjustment period to me. It takes a lot of time and energy for me.

Well, with that being said, I think we can actually start talking about the topic of today's episode, which is, let's frame it, being too nice versus being too hard to work with. And long story short, on my opinion, this topic actually comes down to being an effective communicator. And there are a couple of aspects when we're talking about being nice and hard, right? There is your character, so your natural traits, how you naturally talk to people outside of work even.

And then your ability to be professional, to be strategic, to grow within the workplace, to adjust to different teams, to be agile in a way also. And so there is you and there is the way you grow and also be strategic in your workplace.

And I think the challenge that especially younger designers are experiencing is trying to understand when to be what. Is there any way for us to figure out when we should be too hard or too soft? What is your current approach generally? And maybe if you look back, what are some mistakes you did that you learned today? Let's talk about our current experience in our lessons. Well, I think I'm still learning.

I don't think I got it right. I think it's a perpetual balancing act that you will be doing throughout your career. I feel I'm not yet in a place where I'm in absolute control of how I position myself in every conversation, in every contact. So I think I still make a lot of mistakes. And this question and this problem space, it's very close to home because I'm a non-conflictual person. Well, I am conflictual, but I'm also very conflict avoidant. And

And I'm very keen on keeping a positive atmosphere in the team, in my personal life. So I make a lot of efforts to not cause tensions and not cause a conflict, which is detrimental sometimes to the success of a project.

or to something that I have to achieve or just be opinionated about. So because I tend to do that naturally, that's my personality, very peacemaking, I tend to overcompensate sometimes. So I am aware that I am a very peacemaking and non-conflictual person and that can hurt the best interest of design decisions, sometimes or the best interest of the product. And so then I overcompensate and I become randomly firm.

randomly overly opinionated on some topic. I feel like it's just like that metaphor of a pendulum. So when it goes too much in the peacemaking space, then I tend to go back in a more, not aggressive, but maybe aggressive is kind of a

Good word. In a more aggressive stance. And then I realized that that's not the middle ground either. And I have to be in the middle ground to get my point across. And so I don't know. My current approach is just to be very self-aware of where I am on that, let's say, graph.

at any point in time and just question where that's coming from. Is this my peacemaking thing making me decide not to pursue a particular debate? Is this why I'm not going deeper into winning this argument or proving my point? Am I going too deep in winning this argument because I'm afraid I'm a peacemaker and want to do what's in the best interest of the product?

It's constantly questioning myself. But I feel that the main mistake maybe I've made is thinking that if I am not conflict averse and not conflict avoidant, then I'm going to be problematic for the team and people will not like me and they're not going to like working with me.

And I realized that almost every time when I took strong stance, when I tried to, in a way, win and get my point across and influence strongly the decisions we're making, not just that was part of my job. That's what designers are supposed to do, right? Advocate for the user, advocate in the best interest of the product and the design decisions that are being made. But people tend to respect you more.

So I feel that how I'm viewing this for the past couple of years is less about let's keep happy vibes in the team and let's make sure that everybody's happy to come at work into how can I be the most professional I can be.

how can I be the person who everybody not necessarily listens to, but whose point of view is always respected because it's firm, it's well expressed, it's not aggressive. It's, I think, assertive is the word I'm looking for. And that will also kind of enable you to grow in your career and to get promoted. People want

But not just challengers for the sake of challenging or not just aggressive, brilliant jerks, right? That's not what will get you there. But just being very firm and vertical and voicing concerns and calling out things that are not working and calling out what's not working.

wrong decisions and wrong behaviors. And just, yeah, being articulate and brave will make you more respected. And I think it's also just when you're pleasing people, when you're peacemaking, you're just postponing conflict. You're not avoiding it. It's going to happen, but just later. Bringing everything at the surface, putting all the problems on the table will essentially ensure that you're all looking at the same truth.

And you're solving the same problem because you're building alignment. So yeah, I've gone around a couple of topics. How about you? How are you going about this right now in your career? Yes, definitely. Honestly, when you were talking, I was nodding most of the time because I feel like I'm a very similar person in this approach. I have this tendency. I don't know. Maybe it's a people pleasuring. But at the same time, I remember that

It was my mechanism of survival that I have developed over time. So I was an international student living in Estonia abroad, and then I was traveling a lot. I was doing a lot of backpacking, couch surfing, as well as hitchhiking.

As you can imagine, I developed a strong pattern of catching the car and going towards my direction. And I couldn't be a jerk when I'm meeting new people. So I was always very nice. I was always very communicable. I was very smiley. And I have developed this very strong pattern of communicating with people. And when I started working professionally within the product teams, I have adopted the same pattern of work.

Yet, I remember I did have those moments when I was very, in a way, protective of the design work I'm doing. Maybe in the beginning it was not from the right perspective, I would say, because that's my kind of mistake, that I was a little bit even too bold with decisions. So from a very nice person, smiley, happy, blah, blah.

I suddenly was turning into this, in a way, grumpy person who needs to protect this decision. Even my husband was telling me, oh my God, your face is changing. From the positive, nice person, your face becomes more tense and you almost feel like you're fighting. And then I realized this pattern, luckily because I was a freelancer, so the risks were low. My projects were changing pretty frequently every like three, four months. And so I

I was able to every time rewrite this pattern and slowly, slowly, slowly, I think I moved back to more of the being nice, trying to understand the perspective of the developers or the stakeholders. And definitely it's a journey, like you're saying. It's not like you came and you know what to do, right? It's not that you are immediately super strategic, you understand the situation, but it's definitely a growth journey when you realize, oh, here I maybe was too strong or here I was too soft.

I think my recent pattern, so maybe up to the beginning of the new job recently, two years ago, actually, when I came in, my strategy generally was to partner up with the partners. I wanted to build a relationship with the partner. For me, it was like a blank slate. I wanted to do everything right. So I spent a lot of time, I don't know, drinking beer with them, talking to them, really trying to understand their stories, trying to be friendly and honestly having a good time with people.

And it was really working. I think in general, it helped me to build strong fundament for collaboration. But then my team changed and suddenly I had to start from scratch, which is happening often in star scale ups. So I realized I'm going to have to invest so much time in building the right relationships with the partners again. When we don't spend time building those relationships, we often end up in a position where it

It's them against you. So you have to fight for design. They have to fight for development. It's also not so great to be in this position. And if your company is changing organizations, you end up in being in those positions time to time. So it's also not sustainable to just rely on good relationships. And we have to always find those low-hanging fruits, even when you're being in a new team and you still need to find a moment to build relationships before you jump right into projects.

And especially in scale-ups, sometimes you're running constantly. It's this thin line, thin border where you have to be on the edge always between being really nice, really friendly, but at the same time, always stand for design, stand for a good product and try to push as much as possible.

And a lot of the time, what also happens is that it's not only your personality that comes into play, but also the company organization, the way it's organized. Because at the end of the day, people in the corporate environments always report to their bosses and they want to, as brutal as it sounds, but that's true. We have our priorities. We have our success criteria. And somebody comes and say, like, we need to do something else. While you, let's say, as a developer have a deadline, it conflicts with their needs and you want to protect your needs.

And then obviously conflicts constantly happen while you're trying to be nice. I mean, this is like a huge proof of my story, I guess. But at the same time, my point is I don't think it's easy and I don't think there is a recipe of doing it easily, but you will have to adapt your personal character traits to the situation. And whatever is a stronger side, either you're being too hard or too bold versus too soft, too nice, you would always have to find this balance between building relationships.

being strong and assertive at the same time, being nice and being friendly with people. So when it comes to hard moments and conflicts, you are able to stand your ground and actually get a buy-in also, like I said, with the support of leadership. Because oftentimes the structure of company and the leadership comes into play and really becomes a final decider. And it's very hard for ICs in the moment. And I think that's a huge part of our job essentially is the communication and even sometimes politics if we want to eventually have a good design in place.

And I actually read right now this book, Articulating Design Decisions. In that book, one of the chapters that author is talking about is understanding the people characters. And this is what I would say is the strategy skill we can build as we work in any teams. And it's really more about trying to understand what people care about, really. Like I said, some people would care about quick deadlines. Some people care about good communication. Some people care about building strong branding and being out there and everything.

So you really have to understand what the people care about, what their values and working culture. Try to take it into account every time you're talking to those people, present to those people and tune in your message. So I guess my key takeaway right now is just wearing different hats, being strategic in the way you communicate it. But it definitely comes with a lot of learning and a lot of adjustment on the way.

I would love to maybe think about some specific examples when you remember you had to stood your ground, but still try to be a very kind of collaborative person and easy to talk to. Can you maybe give us something from the recent experiences that could help our listeners to understand how to do this right?

Yeah, so I can share a very recent story. I want to add to what complicates things even more is when you're a junior designer, so you really don't want to upset people. In a way, you're grateful that you're there, right? You had a job and you want to be nice to work with and you want to get good reviews and you want people to like you. You want to be a strong collaborator. And juniorship comes with a lot of self-doubt and skepticism.

self-esteem problems and you're not sure you're delivering value. Maybe sometimes you're not even delivering value and you don't want to be a problematic personality while you're not delivering a lot of value. So it gets easier to risk being not liked when you're more senior because you're doing your job right. Right. So it's more comfortable to say, I oppose this.

I don't agree. I think we should do it differently when you know that you're delivering value and you're well respected in your role. So it's very hard in the beginning. But another situation in which I think it's also very hard to be bold and articulate and a strong voice is when you're in the beginning of a new job.

So when you're adjusting to a new environment where everybody seems to know what's going on, where everybody has been in their roles for a long time, they have a deeper understanding. Well, when you build your own understanding of that particular role and company and product, you realize that nobody has the full picture. You realize that everybody has some parts that most people are confused about the same things as you are. But until you get there, you're going to feel that the person who knows less. And so how can I have strong opinions when I don't have the picture?

I don't understand everything that's going on. I don't understand yet the company, the structure, the processes. And I think it's even wise to not be very strongly opinionated in the first three months when joining a job because you're going to be sometimes awkward if you do that.

What I'm saying here is essentially a very long segue into my story. Now I know I have the luxury of being opinionated and opposing practices and decisions and points of view because I am well aware that I can deliver value and I have clarity and I have experience and I'm confident about my thinking most of the times. I am also very much doubting my thinking in a healthy way. So I know that I question everything that I think and everything that I say well enough to know that I can trust that.

particular thing I seem to be confident about because I've turned it around and all the possible angles and thought about all the possible implications. And now I can confidently say, I think it's a good idea. But it took me 10 years to get here. Yeah. And so I am in a new

role at Miro and I'm working in an amazing team of super talented people that I really want to build a trustful relationship with and I really want us to be strong collaborators and I want to at least in our triad product management engineering in my immediate team, I want us to come to work happy and just enjoy doing work and not have to deal with tensions and misalignments and conflict. It's a personal KPI for me, like also act

as a mediator, because as designers, we have that capacity. We have that opportunity as well. We can facilitate conversations, right? We are constantly facilitating processes, design decisions, research, discovery work. So we are facilitators for good decisions and we can also facilitate better conversations.

conversations within our team and even better one-on-one conversations. When what I've learned, another very important lesson is that sometimes when I feel like that things are getting tense or we're heading towards something that will become unproductive, I tend to assume the role of a facilitator. Look, let me just get very neutral about this, extract myself in a way from the conversation, at least extract my ego from the conversation and act as chippy-chippy.

Now I'm going to mediate this conversation. I'm just going to be here as a referee who tries to make sure that things are fair, that everybody gets to voice whatever they have to voice. And so I become a facilitator and I'm in a role now. And so that makes it much easier to not get emotional or defensive or stressed out or scared. I'm just...

facilitating, also facilitating the expression of my own ideas. So that's how I think about things when I see that the conversation is getting tense. And so the story I'm getting to is that initially I felt that everybody understands the product better. Everybody understands the company. I can't yet be very articulate. And then I slowly started to have increasingly more opinionated stances on things. And now recently I had one where I completely said, I disagree with this. I think

It's the wrong way of thinking about the problem. I think we're missing out on this, this and that. It was very dismissive of the status quo. It was very dismissive of how we were doing things, how we were tackling things in that conversation and problem. Very firm, almost non-negotiable. After I finished my sentence, I felt a lot of anxiety over the reaction I'm going to get from being so in a way dismissive, but not

trashing other people's thinking and work. Just saying I'm completely confident that this is the wrong way of doing things and we're missing out on important points of clarity and those need to be in there. And my assumption is that we're going to get in the same place where we don't want to go again. I gave a short speech and then after the speech, I felt very anxious that I'm going to produce aggressive, defensive, not good reactions. And then surprise, surprise, the first thing that

The person I was in a conversation with, in the debate with, said was, oh my God, thank you. I needed this so much. You gave me the clarity and the point I was missing and I realized you're completely right. Yes. And thank you. And then they also wrote back after the meeting to thank me for opposing what they were planning to do. And so...

It's not the first time that this happens, right? When you're voicing concerns, when you're being vertical, when you're being opinionated, most of the times, even if you don't hold the whole truth, you're pushing the conversation closer to that truth. You're pushing the conversation closer to exploring the different aspects

angles, and having a full perspective, a more informed perspective, a well thought out and a stronger rationale for whatever we decide we're going to do. So push for your point of view, even if it's different, because that's the point of collaboration, exploring different perspectives, exploring different angles. And it turns out that people with

thank you, right? So people want that most of the times. And again, it's not the first time that this happens. When I was super stressed out to oppose something or just be very loud about my opinion that went against the other person's opinion or the team's opinion, most of the times we ended up in a better place with that particular decision or I ended up being more respected, more listened to, more trusted.

And yeah, just overall people thanking me. I think that it's our own fear that says that opposing things is counterproductive or is a source of tension. Most of the times, it's just a source of progress. And I think that society has progressed on this base, right? So we're opposing the status quo, we're reinventing it, and so we make progress. I think it's the same on a smaller scale. Just oppose whatever is going on and then improve it.

It's also part of a conversation. A pose. I don't know, even a behavioral pattern that somebody has. Just surface it and discuss it and put it in the open. And you're going to help make it better by doing that. So I think my end thesis on this is just be brave because everyone will thank you. How about you, Anfi? Love the story. And I'm sorry if you will hear the baby a little bit. Today we are recording in three.

Let's say so. We're having fun here with equipment in my room. Anyways, my point is, I really like your story and I think it's amazing. You have this aha moment when you got this message and I love to hear this. I don't remember these stories happened recently. I mean, obviously, because

I wasn't maternity leave. But I can remember another story when I had this conversation with my manager. When we just met with my manager, our manager was basically hired without me being involved in the process. So we had to build the relationships early on and try to understand each other's values and how we work and what we appreciate at work. And when we were having those early stage conversations, in the beginning, we actually had some mapping on like our values and how we work and our strengths. And what came up

in that conversation was that for him, the design is the first and non-negotiable thing. It has to be good. Otherwise, what we're doing here. And for me, I said, like, I'm a people person. I love to build relationships. For me, it's also about being able to collaborate well. A good designer...

that is not a good collaborator is not a good designer essentially and we had this like not to say debate but we definitely had our different perspectives he was very strong on it doesn't matter design has to be good doesn't matter what it takes to build it it doesn't matter doesn't matter and I was like no but it's not going to be built if you don't have a good relationship so we were going on and on and on about that and then

One year after, we had all hands sort of planning in Prague and we met and we had like a dinner party. And we had this conversation once again, just like with you. I remember you said like somebody saying to you, my manager told me you were right. And I really loved it. I mean, honestly, it's just amazing to hear that people change perspective as we grow, as we learn, as we adapt. Every company is different. Every environment is different. In some companies, you can actually have the right to be just designing that and

And that's it. I said so. And that's all. And in some companies, especially the bigger company gets, the more it is important to actually start building their relationships. And so having this dinner party with my manager, he's telling me, you're right. I didn't realize how important it is to build the relationships. And now as we are finally starting to change things, because before what was the problem that we were constantly building design, but the design was not developed.

Because the developer team had some problem with tech stock. They needed to always refactor the code, all this stuff. And slowly as we started building relationships and talked about the design problems, developers came on board. The tech leadership came on board. We started building the partnerships. It took us one year. And that's exactly when I left for maternity leave, which is a bummer. But at the same time, it was a culmination of the story to me to hear that, no, relationships are super important as a part of our community.

collaboration. And now as I'm back, I can finally see that we do have partnership and it's so much easier to work. There is no us versus them. Everybody's protecting their own ground and trying to kind of be fighting and everything. The fact that we are all in the same team and we all want the same good things for the product, for the company, we all want to deliver great stuff and show great results. But the way we do this

is sometimes what really impacts the result and the outcome. And so building the trust to me is always this culmination of the story and the most important part. And I think for us as designers, while it is more beneficial to be assertive and really say, this is the design, it needs to be this.

And it's going to be better for you as a designer because obviously for your leadership, for your reporting, you will always say, I lead with the good projects. Like I did my work, I tested it, the design is good, blah, blah, blah, whatever. You do what needs to be done. But at the same time, if you cannot articulate your designs, it will not be built. And so your work will not be appreciated and nobody will even care, honestly. So building the trust becomes a very essential part of us being effective designers.

as designers. And that means coming back to the strategy that I always bring as a point. Building trust will have to be our strategy. And it's not only about being nice, but it's also about building empathy for people who you work with. And like I partly already mentioned, it's about understanding the values that the people have that you work with. It's about understanding how can you help them succeeding. So maybe what they care about at work. You can notice some people are

leaning towards more aesthetic design. Some people lean in towards more consistent work and stuff like that, right? So you would have to understand how people operate and always try to understand how can you help them succeed. Present your design from the angles that will help them succeed. The story from the book that I read was also about understanding what type of

person it is. Like you can always refer it back to the 16 personality test or something like this. But the idea here is that you can see if people are visionaries and then you're always presenting to them MVP work, they will not be excited about your work and you essentially will not be able to effectively communicate with them. And at the same time, it might become a frustrating experience. You see, somebody agrees.

So one thing what you can do is if you're seeing that you bring in MVPs to a visionary who wants to see a changed world, you can start bringing two prototypes. One saying, here's the perfect world. Second is the MVP and go from there, right? This conversation feels a little weird because I don't structure it in a questions way, but more in the where it goes, where was the flow. So from my story, I guess I'm bringing it already to the tips.

And some other tips besides building trust and developing the empathy, helping other people to succeed. Another very important part that I feel maybe you did in your story was asking good questions. And then based on the questions you're asking, you help people realizing that maybe some of their strong opinions are not true.

the best opinions or the best ideas. Preserving the positive persona, helping people to succeed, caring about the people, having good relationship, but at the same time, asking good question is always something that changes the perspective.

a lot of the time in the conversations. And after changing that perspective, you can start being assertive about why things don't work. Other ideas, or at least saying that you can take some time to think about the best solution. You will take into account their perspective and their idea. But at the same time, you'll have to take into account other factors and arrive to the best solution, right? So you are still a final decider at the end of the day, but you don't want to be just, no, and that's all I said. So...

You know, we are here all collaborating. Any other tips that you can think about, Joanna, so we can kind of finish this episode at least more practically? I think

I think it was very practical. Open topics tend to have less structure. And I think it's more of a self exploratory conversation. And that's why it goes all over the place. So I'm totally comfortable with, let's say, less structure that we've had in this episode. I'm going to give my top three practical tips. One of them is just repeating myself. Assume the role of the facilitator. Just

Put your neurofacilitator hat. Now you're this mediator person in the room who just tries to surface the best points of view, the best perspectives, put everything on the table so we can look at everything, use critical thinking, use systems thinking, make connections, just be the person who facilitates the conversation like you would a workshop.

Right. And even if that conversation involves you or sensitive parts from you, facilitate them away. This is my number one tip. My second tip is to whenever you want to challenge something or want to be hard and express a strong point of view, but are afraid to do that, think that people will appreciate it.

that opposition and they might thank you and it's essentially the story I just shared. And another very important thing that you can consider is to frame everything as questions. So if you're afraid that you're going to be aggressive or perceived as aggressive, reframe your statements. I think this is

crap, turn it into how we consider other ways of solving this problem. How we consider the implications of this particular design decisions. What do you think are the worst things that can happen if you make this design decision? And so things like that, just framing everything into questions will make you be perceived as more curious and constructive than critical of whatever is being discussed. So turn everything into questions. And then let me think if I have any other tips.

I loved your point. I'm going to consolidate it into a tip. Build strong relationships, non-worky. Make sure you're friendly with your teammates. Attend social things. Be there. Crack a joke here and then, right? So that you have that credit when you're vertical and firm that it doesn't come from a place, oh, this person is always so difficult.

This person, most of the times, is not difficult, but now they have a strong opinion on something and it has more chances of being heard. So work on building trust relationships, friendly relationships even. Of course, not too friendly. We don't want to make our co-workers our best friends, but try to be friendly, nice to talk to. And then when you have to say something that's going to be perceived as aggressive, you'll have that, let's say, credit. These are my tips. Anything you want to add? I just...

I just want to agree on the point with facilitation. I think at the end of the day, our magic secret is always being a good communicator, facilitator and helping our teams to succeed. So I think that it's beautiful that designers are at the same time supposed to be facilitators because somehow everything we do is visual and everybody has a stake on how things should look, how they should work. Everybody has experiences. Everybody wants to say how they need to be working.

And at the end of the day, everything comes down to your design. Everybody has opinion about design. Nobody's having an opinion about the code except for the developers. But in design, everybody's participating. And so it brings us to the fact that we do really need to become effective facilitators of conversations, of decision making, of understanding even the strategy. Like everything is a part of

of the design as well. And so I love the point. And I think we need to not forget about that and try to educate ourselves and try to practice facilitation as much as possible, because at the end of the day, it will help us being successful designers, not just design things in Figma, but also in real life, deliver things, seeing the impact of your things. And so, yeah, I love this point. I just wanted to say that as well. And I guess with that being said, we can wrap it up.

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