Regular check-ins & continous supports

Mentoring UX designers is an important part as everyone wants to get support on things that blocks them from working. As every designer is also a human being, it is important to challenge them as well as support them. For example, my expactation is that senior designers are more able to push topics as well as working on bigger topics compared to junior designers. When I have a regular 1:1 with a senior, I want to solve their issue first themselve before interropting them compared to a junior who gets a more clear guidance as well. Besides the 1:1's it is important to have a weekly feedback session with the whole team to improve everyones presentation skills and also to foster collaboration between the different designers even if they are in different cross-functional teams.

Regular Retro Sessions

Regular retros supporting the team spirit to solve problems within a team and also to identify gaps within the overall collaboration. It can also support to identify new initiatives within the team. Here I especially recommend to do only onsite retros where everyone is in the same room. This can improve communication and trust to each other by solving the teams issues.

Foster Domain expertise

To support the growth of each designer and also to support the business and team as a whole, it is important to strengthen the designers skills by letting the designers choose where to get deep domain/competency. That means that I give designers ownership about specific topics like owning a specific part of the research process or owning a design system. Besides their daily business can they grow in these fiels and get experience in it to further improve their skills. This not only brings hoepfully joy, but also because they really do what they love and like at the end. That is very important for me.

Be hands-on and focus on the good

As a leader, it's always better to never stop doing your craft. Managing designers is much more efficient when you stay hands-on. You are able to work with tools used in the design department to show and tell what you want to archive and to start meaningful discussions.
Also focus on the good, I learned that it's always better to give a direction and let the designers choose how to get there or how to solve the problem. It can spark innovation. For me, I more into motivating and supporting the designers, then giving bad feedback more anything. Motivation is such an important part, but it can be achived via different ways, from giving ownership, or a lot of freedom to focusing on the details by highlighting them. Every person is different, and this is a good thing.