Arch/Design Directors or similar leadership roles who manage teams…

I’m a Design Director at an ID and Arch firm. I was promoted to the position just over two years ago. I have tremendous support from the Principals who join one weekly meeting, and generally I have autonomy to run the team as I see fit and there is little micro management, which sounds like a dream, but I also have very little responses from the Principals when I do seek counsel from them, leaving me sometimes feeling like I’m on an island.

Managing a team of young designers, some right out of arch/design school and others with experience, has been challenging for me! I think that I’m quite fair and thoughtful but at the same time I maintain high standards and provide constructive feedback when I see a lacking quality of work. I’m not a yeller and seek to treat my team with respect, which I certainly have not always received when I was starting out, and because I think that’s how to extract the best performance out of an employee. But with this team, I can feel the internal eye roll when I’m delivering such feedback even though I believe it’s in a much more humane manner than I certainly ever received rising through the ranks in NYC and SF at other firms. Meanwhile the junior team revers the Principals as if those are the people they learn their lessons from - PM, Creative, and Technical - which is absolutely not true, and even they know it because they only see the Principals once a week for an hour in a team meeting. But of course the Principals fly in to the meeting all non-stressed and good humored, while I’m sitting in the open office layout M-F, 9am-6pm every day with the the team, so I’m basically old news lol. Honestly I miss being a Senior Designer. Doing my best creative work and leaving. Now I work an additional four hours per day and have to deal with the attitude of a young team who really doesn’t understand that I’m actually investing in them when I take hours to review their work and annotate it and kindly explain the areas of I’ve identified as needing development. Funny enough, if they go to another firm - and a few have - I’ve literally paid them to have a master class that they can now contribute to another firm but without any thanks or gratitude (not that I need that ego wise, but you hear what I’m saying), nor good work invested in the present firm that hired them and gave them this opportunity that literally thousand of others have applied for.

And ugh, for two of my team members the work is constantly communicated to me as being ready to be client facing and it’s ALWAYS riddled with errors, is sloppy, and unpolished, and so it’s me who spends hours at night to fix it, despite having already provided hours worth of feedback about how to increase the comprehension and sophistication of assets. And when I do provide the feedback it’s like the junior team nods their heads to get through the conversation, rather than absorbing my messaging. (WOW I would’ve loved to have had that kind of personal attention when I started out!) Whenever (on the rare occasions) that I express some concerns to the Principals about employees, with the objective of gaining their thoughts and guidance, I have the feeling that they instead think that I’m being too hard on young professionals, when they have no idea about the check and balance system that I endure and apply to all team produced work (including my own) which is exactly why they hired me for this position. What gets me going are the clients and some of the unicorn projects that we have (kind clients, limitless budgets, magazine features - nice for my ego lol, even though I’m never credited personally for projects that I led. - in fact sidebar that I’m still learning to swallow my gripe about this and how the industry handles the ethics of design credit even if one works somewhere with another name on the door but led the physical design concept, development, and execution).

I would love to hear how other members who are part of this community in leadership positions at arch/design firms manage working with their junior staff in a way that gains their respect and inspires their best work output and contribution. I feel exhausted and disrespected by a bunch of 23-26 year olds and I’m so over it (I’m late 30s, cusp of 40 btw). I accepted the position in an effort to concentrate on the production of good work, which is an ethos that I still adhere to, and not because I was power hungry, but it’s hard to ignore petty snarkiness from a younger team. I’m someone, who in my personal life has a ton of friends and loves to have fun and spend time with my husband, family, and friends, and so it’s been challenging reconciling the death stares that I receive from these young designers just for asking them to do the hard thing - produce their work efficiently, at a high quality, with a smile on their face. Oh and not to bounce out the door at 6pm on the dot wearing their Lululemon when they arrived at 9:06am and their work is incorrect. Where is the work ethic??! At a firm in SF, during Covid when our industry was crazy busy, I’d literally take disco naps under my desk and go till 2-3am (no I don’t expect that form my team but I do see a mis-calibration amongst work ethics).

Props to my more mature senior designers tho who make my life easssssy.✌️ But who somehow also receive more love from the junior team lol.

Open to success stories, meaningful anecdotal contributions, and friendly advice from other Design Directors or those in a similar management position. Running a team of five btw. Three juniors, two seniors.