Andy Polaine
Design Leadership Coaching
You don't have to fly solo.
Leadership can be lonely. One-to-one coaching for design leaders navigating career inflection points, crises of confidence, work politics, and the bigger questions of what you want from work and life. From someone who has been there and made the mistakes.
Andy is quite simply one of the smartest people I know, and an extremely experienced design leader and teacher. He is also ego free and thus a joy to work with.
Having access to Andy’s expertise was a game-changer. His advice was actionable, and the resources he provided were always relevant to the specific challenges I faced. The coaching experience was transformative.
Working with Andy has been an incredibly rewarding experience—I cannot recommend it enough.
Andy's design leadership coaching was invaluable at a time when I was seeking the right counsel and advice in navigating transitions in my career.
It has been such an honour to work with Andy and learn from his incredible experience, wisdom and thought-provoking questions. The coaching experience transformed how I work.
Andy is inspirational — always there with solid advice. A brilliant mind with a sharp wit and great sense of humour and the best mentor one could have.
Andy's coaching has been one of the best investments I have made in my career.
It's been a truly rewarding experience. What stood out most was Andy's ability to blend practical frameworks with a human touch, as his tools gave me clarity I hadn't been able to achieve on my own.
I've worked with several coaches in the past, but Andy stands in a league of his own. His unique blend of design expertise and intuitive guidance transforms not just careers, but entire perspectives on creative leadership.
Andy is an outstanding design leadership coach. He helped me navigate specific challenges in the context of my current role and take a broader perspective on my career path and aspirations.
Andy created a structured yet a non-judgement space and gave me lots of useful tools to think through my career paths.
My coaching philosophy
Since 2020, I’ve coached over 160 designers in leadership and management roles through crises of confidence, career transitions, and the bigger questions of what they want from work and life.
Moving into a design leadership role can be challenging. On the one hand, you become more senior and take on more business and people responsibilities. On the other hand, this often means letting go of “on the tools” craft skills. The result can be a confidence-jarring dip, where you’re no longer confident in either one.
It can feel very lonely when your peers are no longer your design team, but other people from the business. I have been in that place.
I believe leadership has become fetishised. There’s no shortage of leadership books, HBR articles, models, formulas and ten-step programs out there. But I’ve found people achieve more personal growth through candid conversation, empathetic coaching and someone who can help them find their own way.
I draw upon decades of my own experience as a design leader, teacher, coach, and from making plenty of mistakes I’d like to help you avoid.
Of course, this isn’t just about leadership, but life. I frequently coach people through mid-career and mid-life inflection points that are often triggered by work situations, but have deeper underpinnings.
What we’ll work on
- Mid career/mid-life inflection point: A large portion of my coaching is helping coachees through the nexus of mid-career and mid-life crises of confidence and purpose.
- Mapping your personal ecosystem: Reflecting on your leadership style, strengths and Kryptonite.
- Making space and boundaries: Change can’t happen if you have no time to think and reflect. I’ll help you with strategies to manage time and work-life boundaries.
- Personal development: You can’t lead others if you can’t lead yourself. Your own personal development, mindfulness and awareness of triggers and complexes is a critical part of growth in leadership.
- Leading conversations: How to lead conversations in the organisation, managing upwards, bridging silos, agitating and inspiring for change. Planning and having difficult conversations.
- Proposal writing: Developing points of view, structuring proposals and projects for clients and internal stakeholders.
- Storytelling and pitching: Storytelling for design in business. Simple, memorable frameworks for pitches and communicating project stories.
- Building design & innovation capabilities: Planning and structural internal design and innovation programs, innovation funnels and processes. Developing shared ways of working and process.
- Setting teams up for success: Hiring and basic management hygiene, structuring project teams. Kick-off, in-progress, and project closure practices.
- Design directing: Giving guidance, feedback and design direction. Moving teams out of analysis paralysis, when to provide structure and when to stimulate lateral thinking.
- Teaching & evangelising design to non-designers: The art of teaching design, structure and sequencing, metaphor and analogy, presence and authority. Dealing with difficult situations and people, and managing your well-being.
- Design leadership in the age of AI: What does it mean for you and your role as the gaps between disciplines start to close? And what is your role and responsibility for your team as they explore new tools and ways of working?
Who it’s for
- People feeling stuck with their next career move and related life decisions
- People feeling blocked in their work and wanting personal development
- Designers of all flavours who are in or moving into leadership positions
- Designers wanting to prepare for their next promotional step
- Design leaders managing design and cross-functional teams
- Designers having an existential crisis, burnout or loss of mojo
- Executive leaders tasked with setting up or consolidating design teams in-house or at agencies and consultancies in local, regional or global roles
- I can also coach small groups of team leaders by arrangement
What this is not
- My focus is on your personal development as design leaders and human beings, not on teaching a one-size-fits-all framework.
- This isn’t Agile Coaching, Scrum Master, Design Ops or Project Management training, though I am familiar with those methodologies and ways of working. I have a strong network of experts I can draw upon if you have that need.
- While I draw upon many aspects of therapy to explore who you are and what pushes your buttons, I am not a therapist and this isn’t therapy. That said, tears are allowed and are not uncommon.
How it works
- We’ll have a free 30-minute conversation to see if we’re the right fit for each other.
- If you want to go ahead, the first session is a two-hour exploration session to understand where you are at and find a focus for our work together.
- After that, we will have a series of one-hour coaching sessions via video chat. You’ll have the option to work on some experiments, activities and readings in between sessions. I am guided by your needs, but can also provide structure.
- For coaching to result in change and growth you will need time. I offer packages of 6 or 12 sessions, running over 3, 6 or 12 months, usually fortnightly (that’s bi-weekly to my American friends).
- Single sessions are also available for just-in-time input or with a clear focus point, like a presentation, interview or proposal.
- Get in touch for more information on pricing or to book a session.
Being a design leader can be isolating, but having access to Andy’s expertise was a game-changer. Our communication was refreshingly candid, his advice was actionable, and the resources he provided were always relevant to the specific challenges I faced. The coaching experience was transformative.
Andy is a magnificent thinker, storyteller and design coach. He basks in big, messy problems. Above all else, Andy is a teacher, his knowledge and passion for design is unrivalled.
It's been a truly rewarding experience. From our very first conversation, he made it incredibly easy to open up and honestly share my experiences. His ability to weave in personal anecdotes and draw from deep industry experience made our sessions both engaging and insightful. What stood out most was Andy's ability to blend practical frameworks with a human touch, as his tools gave me clarity I hadn't been able to achieve on my own.
Andy is an outstanding design leadership coach. He helped me to not only navigate specific challenges in the context of my current role and organisation, but most importantly, take a broader perspective on my career path and aspirations.
Andy's design leadership coaching was invaluable at a time when I was seeking the right counsel and advice in navigating transitions in one's career. His words of wisdom and ability to reference both literature and personal experiences made our conversations enjoyable and very uplifting.
Andy Polaine knows how to get to the heart of matters that matter. Sharp and insightful, he is able to pick up on subtle cues in words, feelings (even pauses) and begins his job of unravelling what's lying beneath the surface. Andy uses his boundless curiosity, empathy and logic to gently uncover the less obvious things that stand in our path towards our goals and, ultimately, our self-actualisation.
Andy is the kind of creative and executive coach that every creative leader should have as a sounding board, mentor, and guide. When we first started working together, I was at a crossroads in my career, hungry for change but unclear about the path forward. Within sessions, Andy cut through the fog, illuminating not just a career path but a leadership journey that resonated deeply with my creative ambitions. I continued working with Andy once I started a new leadership role and found his support invaluable as I navigated team and organizational transformations. I've worked with several coaches in the past, but Andy stands in a league of his own.
Solid, insightful, useful & fun — that's how I describe the coaching program I enjoyed with Andy as my leadership coach. As part of a one-year program, I worked with Andy through a series of different topics: people and team management, content leadership, design leadership and driving change agendas amongst others.
Andy's coaching has been a source of clarity and grounding over the past year. Andy was an amazing listener and did not hesitate to go beyond design talk to really understand the root of my struggles.
My coaching sessions with Andy have been great, he is a very open, empathic person and it was easy for me to build trust from the very beginning. His background and experience in design, creative and leadership made the difference to me compared to other coachings.
Andy very much practices what he preaches. His approach to coaching is very designerly; curious, open, and democratic. If you are in any doubt about working with Andy, think of it like having a chat down the pub with a good friend, or close colleague, but they're actually a world class expert in your field who has been there and done it, and written the book(s).
Andy's coaching has been one of the best investments I have made in my career. I have hugely benefited from his extensive experience within design & innovation, as well the transferable knowledge from other fields he has been exposed to. He really shines a light on the "work behind the work", cross functional collaboration, and how personal traits affect leadership styles.
Working with Andy has been an incredibly rewarding experience—I cannot recommend it enough.
I reached out to Andy for coaching because I felt like I wasn't growing as a design leader and I needed help. His coaching worked for me. Each coaching session helped me reflect, gain a new perspective and Andy equipped me with ideas that I could use right away. I would highly recommend Andy as a coach.
Andy's approach to coaching is thoughtful and direct, and he has a wealth of experience and anecdotes to bring to life and clarify the concepts. He strikes a nice balance between structured and unstructured; he'll map out our sessions and take excellent notes, but be willing to guide us down an unexpected rabbit hole if there's a revelation to be made. I'll continue to view Andy as a trusted advisor as I navigate this next phase of my career.