5 Mistakes I’ve Made As An In-House Designer
Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash
From minor oversights to forehead-smacking memory lapses, we’ve all been there: typos in our presentations, underestimating a task’s difficulty, wearing a chambray shirt three days in a row …
Generally, our coworkers and managers are forgiving. I mean, everyone makes mistakes, right? While I’ve never been fired for any one particular error, there have been some serious goofs that I’ve had to own up to and resolve to never do again. My hope here is to save you some grief.
1. Bad Body Language
I actually did this twice in two separate meetings, at the same company, in front of a large number of people. The first was a design review for some collateral my fellow designer and I had worked on for the marketing department. We had this comfy lounge-like conference room near our desks and I, naturally, took a seat on the couch. As the marketers provided feedback I gradually slumped deeper and deeper into the couch because I didn’t like or agree with what was being said. I didn’t even realize I had done it until after the meeting when my coworker told me that I had almost disappeared into the couch.
The second time was during a department-wide meeting to meet a new executive. I wasn’t getting the warm-fuzzies from this person so, once again, I slowly sank deeper and lower into my chair with a big ol’ frown on my face. This time, though, the VP of the department pulled me into her office after and observed, “So, Charlotte, you didn’t look to happy in that meeting. What’s up?” I was mortified. I made a hasty apology, said something nice about the new executive, and made a commitment to be much more mindful of my body language.
Bottom Line: We communicate A LOT through our body language. Some studies suggest that our non-verbal cues are more telling than the words we actually speak. So, be mindful of how your physical self shows up to work: dress appropriately, sit up straight, and maintain a neutral facial expression when someone suggests making the logo bigger.
2. Eye-Rolling
As Mike Monteiro said, “Eye-rolling is not a design skill. You need to assert yourself.” Designers love to roll their eyes: at clients, at stakeholders, at each other … I’ve done it a handful of times so automatically that I didn’t even realize it until the conversation started to turn somewhat hostile. I’m very careful not to do this in-person, and even avoid it during phone calls. By rolling your eyes, you’re communicating that the other person’s point of view is ignorant, meaningless, or worthless. Obviously you would never want to receive this message from someone else, so just don’t do it to others!
Bottom Line: Again, our non-verbal expressions are incredibly important, so don’t let those eyeballs ruin a conversation. You can complain later all you want to your diary. In the moment, you might try literally biting your tongue, clenching your leg muscles, or even screaming internally.
3. Sending Passive Aggressive Emails
Similar to eye-rolling, firing off a snarky email might feel pretty satisfying in the moment, but it inevitably leads to bad vibes. At my first corporate job I got into a bit of an “email war” with a coworker who, I thought, was being willfully obtuse about something and wasting my precious time. The reality was that we were just on different pages, so to speak, and I should have hopped off my computer and gone over to their desk to hash it out in a polite, professional manner. While it was doubly embarrassing for me to have made this mistake on a group email, it did give my manager a chance to let me know I best check myself before wrecking myself (and reputation).
Passive aggressiveness (and sarcasm) are never helpful in any relationship–personal or professional–so just try and avoid it all together. If you’re feeling frustrated by something, take a deep breath, go for a walk, and come back to the email later. If you’re really riled, it can take 30 minutes for your system to clear out that rush of adrenaline, so take your time! You’ll be able to compose a better response and build better relationships with your colleagues.
Bottom Line: When in doubt, don’t send that email. Take a walk instead. Even if you feel the slightest bit of angst, it’s better to wait 10 minutes, read what you wrote, and revise. You can also ask a coworker to read your message for a second opinion on the tone of your message.
4. Talking Sh*t on Slack
When I started my first job in tech, the company’s onboarding documents made it clear that we should treat all internal communications as if they could end up on the front page of the New York Times. At first I thought that was a bit dramatic, but then not too long ago, luxury luggage brand Away had its internal Slack messages show up in the news. Venting to your coworkers over drinks is pretty commonplace, but never put it in writing.
At that same job, a coworker and I started Slacking each other about some new designs that had come out and all the various mistakes we had spotted in the work. About 5 minutes into that cathartic bashing session, I realized we were not privately messaging each other, but rather the entire team channel. Yikes! We were unable to delete the messages, so I edited them to be blank but the damage was done (and I’m sure our Slack admins would be able to dig them up if they had to, anyway). Instead, I should have collected my thoughts and shared them with that team in a more constructive, helpful manner. I had many humbling apologies to make after that one.
Bottom Line: Keep your gossip to in-person conversations (and to a minimum). As we go more online and more remote, companies are looking to various Big Brother-like technologies to keep tabs on their employees, so it’s extra important to watch out for what you put in writing.
5. Costing the Company Money
Of all the mistakes I’ve made (and there have certainly been more than the 4 listed above!) this is the only one that threatened to give me a panic attack. During a huge, expensive project, I managed to commit to an extra $15k to one of our vendors without realizing it. So when the vendor asked me where they should send that invoice a couple days later, I was dumbstruck. Fortunately, at this point in my career I (sort of) knew what to do: I asked for help. Knowing I would have to break the news to my boss, I sought advice from trusted coworkers about how to best handle the situation. I made a plan, carried it out, and had a calm-ish conversation with my manager. Ultimately, he was pretty cool with it, but I lost several nights’ sleep over it. Did I also cry in the bathroom? Yep.
Bottom Line: If you find yourself in charge of anything financial, be obsessively detail-oriented with things like contracts, SOWs (statement of work), budgets, and expense accounts. And don’t be afraid to ask for help!