From Designer to Design Leader: A framework that actually works
A practical guide to growing as a designer, balancing craft and leadership, and building design teams that thrive. Personal experiences rooted in real work, not just theory.
While I was in Cleartrip (2016), I walked up to my manager and asked, “I want to become a Design Lead?”
He simply forwarded me an Excel sheet. ZenDesk’s internal design career ladder. (Later, I found a few more at the staff.design) But that moment changed everything.
I thought I was ready. I could design beautiful, usable products, simplify messy flows, and ship with quality. But as I read through that ladder, I realized something painful. I was a solid senior IC, but nowhere near ready to lead design in the true sense. That single moment altered the way I saw my career.
Every organization I’ve been part of, be it Cleartrip, BookMyShow, Jupiter, and now PropertyGuru; I’ve built a simplified, self-aware framework for what good looks like at different levels of design. This post is a reflection of that framework and everything I’ve learned climbing the ladder, and building it for others.
Before I being, a story (as usual)
I often think of a designer’s career as a 100-storey building without an elevator
Lets assume, legends like people like Steve Jobs or Paula Scher operate somewhere around the 90th or 95th floor. You might be on the 50th or 60th, having spent a decade sharpening your skills and understanding the broader system. A junior designer fresh out of school or someone aspiring to grow from Senior to Design lead; maybe they're just stepping onto the 10th or 12th.
Now, if you're serious about elevating others, your most important responsibility as a design leader isn't to stay on your floor and wave from above. It's to climb down, meet your team where they are, and help them climb step by step, floor by floor.
A few motivated designers will find their way up on their own, but many will burn out, get lost, or plateau without guidance. Your job is part coach, part mentor, part sherpa setting the route, and walking alongside them until they see the view you now take for granted.
Most leaders don’t make that return journey. But that’s what separates a manager from a multiplier.
So the question is: are you willing to walk up and down in various organisations you work? If yes, the following is for you.
The more senior you are, the more abstract your problems become
A junior designer might be asked to fix a screen. A mid-level designer might redesign the flow. A senior designs to increase adoption. A lead questions the entire value prop. And a head of design? They’re designing the very org that decides what problems to solve.
I had my own taste of this during a project at BookMyShow. When we began reimagining the platform beyond ticketing. I found myself zooming into granular data like user reviews, rating formats, the logic behind feedback systems. But I also had to zoom way out in understanding the economics of event discovery, our category dominance, and the future of experience design in India’s entertainment space. It was no longer just about UI. It was about shaping the market.
Design leadership is about doing this AND that. Navigating both detail and direction, pixels and politics, product and people. Once your have figured out the path, it’s your job to explain it to your team. (Climbing down)
Design isn’t a title. It’s a behavior.
Over the years, I’ve seen too many people confuse role with responsibility. Some engineers make excellent product decisions. Some researchers spot the biggest business risks. Some designers have fun in Figma.
The difference isn’t the title. It’s initiative, insight, and your intent.
Through my podcast in over 300 conversations with design, art, and business leaders, I’ve come to deeply believe that design isn’t just about making things pretty. It’s about creating outcomes.
Sujata Keshavan once told me: “Design is about building a shared vocabulary in the boardroom.” That shifted how I define value in our field.
A Framework That’s Worked for Me
Here’s how I now define expectations at each level. Simple, clear, and something my teams have found helpful:
Ownership
You don’t wait for clarity. You seek or create it. You find broken parts and fix them. You go beyond your Jira ticket and annotated Figma handover page
Accountability
You don’t just finish the work, you care how it performs. You track the outcome. You make sure everyone knows what’s going on.
Collaboration
You don’t design in a vacuum. You bring people in early. You seek diverse inputs and make people feel heard.
Communication
You write and speak clearly. You give visibility before it’s asked for. You explain both the ‘what’ and the ‘why’. (I am trusting you know the “how” of it)
Design Standards
You define what “good” looks like. And then you defend it through critique, craft, and coaching.
Multiplier Mindset
You don’t just do great work, you raise the bar around you. You share how you think. You help others level up.
I’ve seen this framework turn vague appraisals into honest, actionable yearly reviews. At PropertyGuru, where cultural expectations vary across Southeast Asia, annual calibrations used to feel like shadow-boxing. Now, with OKRs aligned to this ladder and examples of what qualifies as a “4 out of 5,” designers can self-assess with clarity and confidence. Here are few great examples of Design Career ladder - Basecamp, Figma, GitLab, Intercom
On the hustle: From micro-manager to multiplier
When I first aimed for leadership, I had a bad habit of designing myself. (I still do sometimes)
I obsessed over micro-details. Pixel nudges. Fonts. Transitions. I’d spend late nights simplifying one interaction, only to realize I hadn’t taught anyone else how to think that way.
Then I started working on low-stakes projects along with designers in public. I’d explain why something felt elegant, or why a simpler path led to more trust. Sometimes I asked juniors to shadow me while I designed. That experience transferred standards far more effectively than any critique ever did. Leadership isn’t about control. It’s about multiplication. (Climbing down)
Designing with real data, real people, real constraints
Despite holding senior titles, I still mock things up. I still prototype. Not because I have to, but because nothing aligns stakeholders like seeing an idea come to life. It feels tangible to them. Even a scrappy prototype has the power to move decisions forward.
And now, with AI in our toolkit, the game has changed again.
Tools like Lovable, Cursor, and Claude (with whose help I’m writing this very post) are letting designers plug directly into APIs. Instead of imagining flows in Figma, we can now experience them with real data and behavior. This shift allows for tighter feedback loops and more intuitive polish, because you're not just designing what looks good, you're shaping what actually works.
It reminds me of our days at Cleartrip, long before design systems were the norm. Every designer knew basic HTML and CSS. Photoshop was used for icons. Everything else happened in Sublime. We tweaked CSS directly in the product to get just the right paddings, alignments, and transitions. You knew exactly how your decisions translated in code. That discipline led to simplicity by design, not just in wireframes, but in production.
This ability to zoom in and zoom out is what defines true design leadership.
Today, many VPs of Design (myself included) operate in presentations, spreadsheets, and strategy meetings. But I’ve learned that the best way to inspire your team is still to show and not tell, because often great work is invisible. Especially when it’s done in the same tools they use.
It’s a reminder: you don’t lose your craft as you rise. You build a bridge between inspiration and execution.
The philosophy behind it all: This AND That
Too often, we reduce design to binaries:
Craft or business. Vision or execution. Art or analytics.
But the best designers don’t choose. They blend.
Perhaps people like Jonathan Ive or Dieter Rams still tinkers with materials, because they understand that to shape the future, you must stay rooted in the medium. Design leaders know business. They shape strategy. But they also obsess over kerning. They lead through both clarity and care.
Design leadership is not just about the future. It’s about systems that let us deliver, now and later. Are you ready to climb up and down for your team? Let me know in the comments.