The Design Leadership Community

Our community is an international non-profit community for Design Leaders

We created the Design Leadership Community to bring you together with equally passionate people around the globe. The purpose of the community is to share experience & knowledge about leadership in the context of design.

Our purpose

• Support design leaders in their well-being

• Help organizations and design leader grow and mature their design capability

• Create awareness and clarity of how to succeed as a design leader

• Support new and experienced design leaders to grow professionally 

• Support and communicate about a modern leadership culture.

Our background

• The community started 2018 when Chris and Jens had a course in design and many of the professional students where they raised the question, how can we work in this way at our workplace? 

• In 2018 we started the Design Leadership Training at Berghs School of Communication

• In 2019 the State of Design — The Swedish Edition which was started in 2017 was included in the community

• In 2019 Jennie started the Buddy Program, a mentorship program for design leaders.

• In 2020 Anders, Jennie and Lisa became members of the working team

• In 2021 we transformed the community into a formal non-profit organization with Jennie, Lisa, Chris, Jens and Anders in the board. At the same time we moved from Slack to Mighty Network and started a premium paid membership.

Our values

We believe in modern leadership principles

• People positive and empathy

• Complexity awareness

• Trust and openness

• True collaboration

• The balance of business, customer, society, and our world

Our principles

We try to act based on our principles

• Use design as a way to work and think to lead people, team, and organization

• We support design leaders to find their unique leadership style

• We act to achieve our goals based on our values

Pillars of value

We aim to create value for our members through six pillars

• Learning & Inspiration

• Transparent Industry Insight

• Connection & Networking

• Guidance and coaching

• Contribution

• Fun

Our offering

Right now, we provide our members with a community of practice consisting of four basic offerings

• State of Design

• Buddy Programme

• Mighty Network (this place)

• Recurring Meetups (online or remote and digital)

Our members

We believe that our members are

• A new, or experienced design leader or have plans to become one

• Leading people 

• Leading a product or service

Expectations 

We expect from our members

• Support our purpose and values

• Act by our principles and code of conduct

• Collaborate and contribute to our pillars of value

• Contribution

• Openness

What You Should Expect From Design Leadership Community

We’re aiming to make your experience here awesome. We want you to get five key things from Design Leadership Community:

• Get exclusive content and conversations you can’t find anywhere else. 

• Meet people who share your interests who live near you, who do the same things, or who care about the same topics.

• Make better, more well-informed decisions about the things that are most important to you. 

• Swap stories, experiences, and ideas around our shared mission.

• Find a little inspiration, thought-provoking conversations, and expert perspective each and every day. 

To make this a reality, we’re going to need your help. Every time you contribute a story, experience, or idea, you’re building a knowledge base every member of this community can tap to make better decisions. And when you invite in as few as two new members, you’re adding rocket fuel to what this community can accomplish together. It doesn’t get any better than that.