2 Effective Methods for Managing People Who Are Smarter than You

^{Cover Image: Close Up Photo of Grape Fruit by Henri Guérin}

Part of my responsibilities as Lead UX Engineer at the company I work for is to manage a small UI/UX team made up of 3 brilliant people and myself. I've learned a lot so far and I have two solid tips that may help if you're ever in a similar situation.

1) Ask questions

Asking questions is a great way to learn together as a team and encourage collaboration. This comes to mind when there is a particular piece of a design or software that doesn't quite function the way it should or isn't the pattern you would have implemented.

Asking how the user would feel when interacting with the problem area vs expressing dislike or suggesting a change is going to produce a more collaborative and ultimately better result.

At the same time, they more than likely have spent more time in that area trying to figure out a solution so often they have perfectly good reasoning that you may not have found out about if you didn't ask first. Acting on assumptions will underutilize your team, ask questions instead.

2) Encourage pushback

When members of a team are encouraged to express their opinions and give pushback when they see fit the whole team benefits.

Using one person's opinion isn't usually the right way to build things, especially in the UI/UX world. Want to implement something but the team thinks it's a bad idea? Guess what, it's probably a bad idea and enabling your team to pushback on it just saved tons of time and money.

Take your team members seriously and thank them when they do pushback. Creating a safe environment is critical if you want to get the most out of your team.

One thing that seems to always ring true: Collaboration to produce a better solution is essential when working with smart people.