The Fountain Institute is an independent online school that teaches advanced UX & product skills.
Stop Being the ‘Nice’ Designer. Start Running the Room.
Stop Being the ‘Nice’ Designer.
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Facilitative Leadership: Your Escape from Chaos
Facilitative leadership isn’t about keeping the peace. It’s about owning the process, cutting through the noise, and making real progress.
That means:
- Calling out ambiguity and forcing clarity—before things spiral into endless debate.
- Holding people accountable—even when you’re not “in charge.”
- Building alignment without wasting time—meetings shouldn’t feel like therapy sessions.
- Setting up decisions to be made—so you don’t leave the room with “Let’s circle back.”
Why Designers Need This More Than Ever
Designers are expected to be collaborative, adaptable, and open-minded—which often means they’re stuck being the ones keeping the process together while others call the shots.
This is why so many designers struggle to get buy-in.
They present strong ideas, but decisions happen behind closed doors.
They facilitate workshops, but nothing actually changes. They push for user needs, but business priorities always win.
The best designers don’t just show up and hope for influence.
They take control of how work happens. They know how to turn debates into decisions. They shape the product by shaping the conversation.
That’s what facilitative leadership is about.
Most designers think facilitation is a soft skill. A “nice to have.”
That’s why they get steamrolled.
The best designers don’t just present work. They run the room.
They know how to turn competing agendas into momentum.
And that’s exactly what facilitative leadership does.
Case Study: How Facilitative Leadership Rescued a Dysfunctional Team
A 700-person economics consulting firm was struggling with alignment.
Their marketing team had undergone leadership transitions and was facing communication breakdowns.
People were talking past each other, and work was getting siloed.
Enter Hailey Group.
Instead of introducing rigid processes, they helped the team develop facilitative leadership skills using Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS)—a method designed to foster deeper listening, collective interpretation, and shared understanding.
By engaging with VTS, the team learned to:
• Listen more deeply and acknowledge diverse perspectives.
• Engage in structured reflection before jumping to conclusions.
• Build alignment by co-creating meaning vs. debating opinions.
The result? Conversations became more productive. People felt heard. Collaboration improved, and team members became more engaged in shaping their work together.
No one needed a title to lead because leadership was baked into how they worked, not what they were called.
How to Apply This Today
If you’re sick of: ✖︎ Sitting through meetings that should’ve been emails. ✖︎ Watching great ideas die because no one could make a call. ✖︎ Feeling like a glorified note-taker instead of a strategic leader.
Here’s how to flip the script:
- Don’t just participate—design the conversation. If the meeting sucks, restructure it.
- Stop waiting for permission. No one’s going to hand you authority. Take it by structuring how decisions get made.
- Own the process. The best designers aren’t just great at design. They’re great at facilitation.
In an upcoming article, I’m diving deeper into how designers can use facilitative leadership to stop playing support roles and start driving real impact.
I’ve also considered running a live workshop on facilitative leadership for product designers.
• How to structure conversations.
• How to drive decisions.
• How to make meetings actually work for you.
If that’s something you’d be interested in, click here to join the waitlist and be the first to know when it launches.
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COURSE: Defining UX Strategy COURSE: Facilitating Workshops |
Until next time!
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Hannah Baker |
The Fountain Institute
The Fountain Institute is an independent online school that teaches advanced UX & product skills.
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