EP13. UX Community Building. An interview with Jeffrey Paul Coleman
Welcome back to the UserFlows Podcast, my name is Thomas Morrell and this is a show where we talk about UX design and careers. I interview designers about their journey into the field and break down how they've been successful in their roles so we all can learn together.
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Today I'm joined by Jeffrey Paul Coleman, a UX Community Builder. Jeffrey is working to make tech more inclusive by supporting the growth of the UX Research community in Europe (via UXinsight) and advocating for recent grads, immigrants, and career changers via the online boot camp CareerFoundry. He is also working on a small Training Program in NYC called DesignWorks. Whew! that sounds like a lot, but Jeffrey breaks down how he handles all this in roughly a 30-hour workweek.
Jeffrey is predominately focusing on empowering others (mostly in UX) to navigate tricky moments in their career because he believes if we each receive the support we need (even when we are further along professionally), then we can focus on what counts. Growing as people within existing and new communities can lead to a more equitable work environment for all.
Show Highlights
Talking to more people [13:30]
UX Career Possibilities [22:00]
What does a UX community builder do? [26:30]
Bootcamps [31:20]
Soft Skills [34:30]
Navigating Tricky Career Situations [38:10]
Show Links
Attend UXinsight Unfolds: making research more inclusive, happening on Thurs, Nov 11th
Subscribe to The Bridge, a newsletter Jeffrey has been writing for a year every two weeks
Jeffrey Paul Coleman on LinkedIn
. . .
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Transcript
Thomas Morrell 0:24 Welcome back to the UserFlows Podcast everyone, my name is Thomas Morrell, and this is the show where we talk about UX design and careers. I get to interview designers about their journey into the field and break down how they've been successful in their role so we can all learn together.
Today I'm joined by Jeffrey Paul Coleman, Jeffrey is working to make tech more inclusive, by supporting the growth of the UX research community in Europe via UXinsight which is really cool. Definitely want to get into that, and advocate for recent grads, immigrants, and career changers, via the online boot camp CareerFoundry, which is super cool. Definitely want to get into that, and also running a small training program in NYC called design work so lots of really pretty amazing stuff. Where do you find the time?
Jeffrey Paul Coleman 1:07 Well, thanks so much for having me on the show with us, and well it does sound like a lot when put that way of like these three different things that I'm supporting, I'm not part of the leadership of any of these organizations design works as part of the Kingsborough workforce division, there's a, there's a team of others that I'm supporting I just get to be the industry leader, I think that industry professionals with students and with the university program and then are you accidents a great team that I joined just recently and I work part-time for them. The director Karen has been working in the field for over a decade, and we love to give back to others and not simply supporting her in strengthening that community. So, the sum of these three jobs, I'm a freelancer with Career Foundry is never more than 30 hours a week so that helps in terms of other things in life and being able to not feel overwhelmed by it just try to be very strategic in how I am helping out so that I'm not getting lost in the weeds, so to speak.
Thomas Morrell 2:21 Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah, it can be very tough to keep things to a specific amount of hours every month, I'm glad to see you're trying to make time for everything else in life.
Jeffrey Paul Coleman 2:31 It has to be intentional. Sometimes, if we aren't intentional we can blame other people like saying a manager is overworking us, or saying that the company is asking too, too much of us it's not fair. But if we set strong boundaries which is something that I'm actively practicing doing then, we, we don't blame other people because we realized,
Thomas Morrell 2:57 Oh, that's fantastic, I have another podcast coming out I think this week with a woman named Ellie Millan, and one of the things she brought up a lot was boundaries as well she's taking a career break so she can kind of set some of her own boundaries and kind of rediscover what she wants to really do with her design career so I think that's a good place for people to be setting those boundaries, realizing those boundaries are needed, though.
Jeffrey Paul Coleman 3:23 That's, I think it's an important topic and this time with the many stresses related to the pandemic and not related to the pandemic we're kind of brought up by that, we have to take care of ourselves and say boundaries are such an important part of that.
Thomas Morrell 3:38 Right, right. And so you were remote before the pandemic started as well, or did you go, remote after.
Jeffrey Paul Coleman 3:47 Remote after I, I feel like the pandemic has kind of moved us all into a new world. But I actually moved just a few months before the pandemic was well known, I mean it already started in December in China and that's when we moved in December 2019 actually moved on New Year's Eve to France from New York City, and we moved here because my partner grew up in France and so we'd always talk about balancing out our multicultural family by living here. And so we make this move, and we're getting settled in. I had a roll set up for me, as we were making the move, that didn't work out, ended up doing a job search unexpectedly in the first few months was stressful, which then got also cut short by the pandemic so then I was in a situation of. Alright. Well, I know how to connect with other people. And I know that I want to transition away from recruitment towards serving others in the tech community specifically in UX. I'll just keep doing what I was doing, and I found that it wasn't all that different from when I was in New York, I'd be working in an office and I'd be connecting with people and like them and with people, by phone. Occasionally setting up meetings to meet for lunch or coffee but there was still like a lot of remote, in that sense of the community building that I was doing so, this was simply now making that more explicit is all the time and I'm working from our home office, it helped the whole world was going through it, because then when you're, when you're filming from your child's bedroom. Other people don't think that's weird, it's now a normal thing.
Thomas Morrell 5:42 Yeah, that must have been a bit of a stressful time for you, not only are you making a big move, but you were kind of switching careers, and then throw on top of that this whole new kind of worldwide pandemic that's, that's quite shocking. And you got to manage the stress of that one.
Jeffrey Paul Coleman 6:00 It was shocking. Yeah, there was a lot of culture shock and I, my, my partner is a very outgoing, transparent person, and that's something that attracted me when we first met nine years ago, I grew up being rather well. I grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia. And their people are in a more monoculture environment. And so I, I felt like, there's like a script to behave, and then there is off-script but there are only those two choices, then you're in New York you realize you can do anything, but so when I'm coming to New York I was a pretty shy person because I felt the way that I would want to show up wasn't the way that most people accept, and then I meet my partner who's so outgoing and, like, not self-conscious about how she is. She is a very colorful person and is constantly thinking out loud, which. My first thought was, like, why are you doing that you just told them that you're feeling depressed after having a baby, for example, why would you bother you tell that to other people, but I realized at that moment, this spring when I was going through all that cultural shock that that's such a useful thing to be vulnerable with other people and to trust them. You don't just do it with anyone with strangers, for example, but I reached out to people in my network from New York, for example, that I build friendships with, and I would talk through what the experience was and just explain it, and then I would reach out to other people that were family or friends and talk through other aspects, and that way I wasn't leaning on any one person, but I was able to receive people's input and feedback. And the last thing I did was take a lot of naps, because you're dealing with stress and anxiety you have to be kind to yourself and napping has also been helpful in recent weeks as a new father.
Thomas Morrell 8:20 Yeah, congrats on being a new father that's amazing. It's a big challenge, a lot of work but probably one of the most rewarding things you can do.
Jeffrey Paul Coleman 8:34 Yes, I, I love being a dad. I learned so much from your kids like during the first lockdown we were watching TVs through. That's called Shira and watching this TV show as I've never given myself permission to watch that if I weren't a dad, but being a dad, I could watch it, and then I was like, wow, I'm learning so much about the tech industry from watching how these different princesses interact with the technology and with each other and I was wanting to recommend it as like, Hey, if you work in tech, you should watch this TV show it teaches you a lot about inclusion, and also about how you can get easily manipulated by people who want power and, yeah, I love being a dad.
Thomas Morrell 9:26 That's fantastic. I feel like one of the lessons I've learned from my kids is creativity without fear, where, when they're being creative, when they're trying something new, there's like zero fear to it, you know, messing up or doing something silly or, you know, not getting something exactly right the first time, there's just it doesn't even enter their minds because like I'm going to be creative, just to be creative. There's no kind of thought to the end goal.
Jeffrey Paul Coleman 9:52 Absolutely, absolutely they don't, they get kind of trained in the fear to fail because they have permission I think a little bit as children to make mistakes, but that that must have been so strong, then, like I say they just keep, keep trying, they fall down, they get back up, they look foolish. They don't care. And that's such a valuable thing and learning theory that I have, I've never researched intensely as if we adults have that similar attitude. We can learn to similar at a similar pace, people say like, Oh, you're lucky that your kids are becoming bilingual. It's so much harder to learn our language when you're an adult, I think it's more we just feel shame around stumbling with our words and the new language and that keeps us from learning, and that's what I think can be so useful for a UX professional is that constant curiosity and being an expert is one thing but be willing to not be the expert like children due to good inspiration. I love that.
Thomas Morrell 11:07 And this may go back to your comments before about your wife being very outgoing and I wonder if that's just a non-US thing my wife is from the Dominican Republic. And after having children as well she went around and told everybody about what they call postpartum depression or I think that's the wrong word. Yeah, and I think her mother, like most people, was like you can't tell people that that's terrible like you don't tell them that she's like well I have to warn other women that like this thing can happen and you should know about it so I think that is a good thing. And as you say kind of talking through what you were going through as well. You're just being open to talking to more people and totally transparent. I love that advice.
Jeffrey Paul Coleman 11:48 It's strengthened a lot of connections that I had in ways that didn't expect. I don't know I guess I thought they would go and reject me if I talked about stress failure, negative things, because they were like, bring them down or make them feel uncomfortable. And they wouldn't want to be associated with it but it ended up, strengthening connections because then other people shared points in time was like, They had wanted to get into UX research for example, and they were failing to do that so they were working at a restaurant, and I didn't know that that's what they were doing, I just knew that they were job searching, I didn't realize they had kind of given up for a time and done work in a restaurant or another, telling me about how when they move to a new country, and that is us, it was so stressful at first months, and I guess I knew that in theory but then you hear it when it's relevant, and feel understood this person understands and they also feel like, Oh, now you've gone through that experience, but you have to tell them about the positive and the negative. Otherwise, you live a charmed life, which is sometimes what I think social media projects are living in a perfect life.
Thomas Morrell 13:09 It absolutely does. An important thing for junior UX designers to hear is that, you know, the transition from something else to a career in UX design isn't always a smooth road like you will hit some setbacks, you will hit rejection, you will get to a told no, you will feel that kind of imposter syndrome. But there is you know, the more you share, the more you open up to people connect with people, the more relationships you'll form, and eventually, you'll hear that yes and you'll feel a little bit more at ease, and in your new career so I like that.
Jeffrey Paul Coleman 13:47 Yeah, yeah, it's a false image we have of networking, that it's like the person who is smiling real bright checking everyone, and, and always knowing what to say and all that that is the good networker, I think that that is someone who can be networking because they're confident in themselves, and so they're really out there but that's, that's, like, the first thing that someone might do a smile and a handshake, but then if they're good at networking, then they're good at being vulnerable about themselves and not thinking twice about it, good at asking questions and listening. And then, great at caring about the relationship more than just the transaction, what can you do for me. Otherwise, they're not truly going to be successful with having a real network across the board.
Thomas Morrell 14:42 Right. So, in the email exchange we had, you mentioned, you know, helping those who are less often helped as kind of your mission. I guess how do you go from you know a career in recruitment to doing something like that. And still, you know, providing enough for yourself to have a life, and all that and without kind of totally selling out, I guess that's the wrong word, but like doing something like where recruitment where it's kind of much more focused on, you know, driving revenue, things like that but you're basically how do you make a career out of that for somebody who might be interested.
Jeffrey Paul Coleman 15:21 Alright yeah, I'll get a little back context on how I got into recruitment to art. I had moved to, I was a book nerd growing up and I moved to New York because I was selling a master's degree in historical theology, which, you know, leads to a lot of different career paths, including being a professor. And I thought, I Will Teach this to people, but they will not know why it's relevant, and I won't know how to make it relevant unless I step away from academia, so I stepped away. To learn more about different paths to New York and in the process of doing that I was a test prep instructor and also a staff member, within a non-profit test prep company. I realize that there were a lot of people not knowing their path but also companies sometimes don't know their path. Like they don't know the technology as they don't know other ways to think of the solution and they're afraid to lean into that. Well, realizing it, being the ones to point that out, it doesn't really make me feel so comfortable also it's not the actual solution that's just criticizing so I decided that I need to learn more about technology and about careers. I thought was really going to be helpful to people so that's how I got into recruitment because I wanted to learn more about technology and careers and I thought well if I'm talking to them every day.
That should help with the learning, I'm ended up being very good at recruitment so that became my kind of career, and it does pay very well because companies are really desperate to hire the best talent, but I didn't get into recruitment for the money, as I said I got into learning and so when I had gotten to a certain point where I really was learning a lot, I wanted to move away from it and share that with other people. It's the case that a lot of times in the economy. There are certain roles that get paid a lot of money. Sometimes those roles really do offer a lot of value and sometimes they offer value to companies, but they don't necessarily offer long term solutions, even for companies, and I find agency recruiting, sometimes is a short term banded or a longer-term solution which would be like better corporate culture. Similarly, then I didn't want my own career to be built on short term thinking where a lot of people that do career coaching, end up doing it with people that can pay for a career coaching, and particularly like leadership, who can pay quite a lot for career coaching, then you can make that your, your main thing is quite lucrative. But, I have found that there's more than one way to think about a budget making more and more money is one way to think about it, and lowering your expenses being happy with like a simpler way of life is another.
So my partner and I have been pretty good at keeping our expenses low, and we were making enough money that we're saving a lot. At that point, I realized, well, if we're saving so much, and that's like a trajectory that's going to keep going, but that might not be the best way to use the time which is another resource to think about. And so when I realized that I realized I could work 30 hours a week, be paying bills, and still serving, where I wanted to. The last time it was just coaching other people on this networking relationship building. I talked to a lot of different people every week, I talked to three to five people since last summer, and that's how I found these different contracts, letting them know what I was interested in doing. And so when I found those contracts, these are people that really understood what I wanted to do and valued it, and I felt really good about it, but I was able to tell them that I had successfully been a recruiter bringing in revenue, so they knew that that's not like a risky bet to bring in someone on this function that's less revenue-generating, they knew I can generate revenue, but I want this therapist oriented role. So I think that's how I've been able to balance, doing what is sometimes hard to do, but I've seen people that, that have a similar service mindset. It's just I think they, move away because they like me wanted to learn new skills, not necessarily because it doesn't pay the bills I think it's a misnomer about service-oriented roles like in, in a nonprofit, for example, you can make enough. If you're also thinking about minimizing expenses and being happy with, your day-to-day.
Thomas Morrell 20:16 Oh, that's fantastic. I'm glad you got to do that, that's really interesting that you get to kind of follow you know your true passions and stuff, and you kind of, you went into something with the mission to learn, you can learn what you need to learn and now you can use that to help in other areas and other passions, so that's, that's wonderful. My wife and I. She wasn't super happy in her career, so we just relocated recently to Savannah, Georgia, which is a much less expensive region of the country compared to New York, New Jersey, and that kind of helped her go from a full-time career and now she's working part-time, and to build up her own design business and get back into a design career which she had left for a number of years so I can definitely understand and one of the big things we had to do as well let's get our expenses under control and really kind of think about what we need what we don't need that we can live a little simpler life so we don't both have to be, you know, pulling in full-time incomes, like the crazy people.
Jeffrey Paul Coleman 21:14 So, yeah, I think that's so useful to have. Whether you choose it or it kind of falls on you like forced into thinking about that, but that kind of organic holistic thinking about your path is, is a really useful thing I talked to people who are later in their careers as UX professionals, and they would be needing to make a certain salary, but then that made it challenging for them to be able to choose opportunities that fit their values. And if you only think that one way of, I need to make more salary. Then you have to be okay taking those other options that might be more stressful, but if you think more holistically as a whole. Some, we could produce expenses, or we could shift where we live, or we could adjust the dynamic in our family unit if you're in a family, it allows you for more or less building.
Thomas Morrell 22:15 Right, and kind of trying to stick to that one specific salary requirement can kind of lead to what they call golden handcuffs, where you're kind of you're stuck possibly doing something you don't want to be doing for forever just because you need to kind of maintain that one lifestyle to essentially say interesting I'm glad you got to do this. That's wonderful. And so one of the things you mentioned as well as you know you work in the UX space, in kind of like a UX career, in a way but you don't consider yourself a designer, you know, I want to try to introduce people to all the other types of possibilities within the kind of realm of UX that they could possibly get into if in fact you know, they don't necessarily think they're, they want to be a designer, but they are very interested in technology and design. Do you have any kind of advice for those types of people?
Jeffrey Paul Coleman 23:08 Absolutely, is one thing that I often advise to people is talk to others to learn their stories, and not just one or two people but are in a number of people's stories and then you get to see a wider range of options when I was recruiting, That's what ended up happening as I was talking to so many different people and realized there was no set way certainly there were people that say graphic design, then they learned UX design, and then they become a senior product designer in us, in a majorly successful company and, and then you only look at that and you think, see that's the path to go you got to like study at a good university and, but there were plenty of other people that were working in completely unrelated fields and transitioned over and there were many other kinds of roles besides just senior UX designer product designer. And so that helped me in insane the wide range because I didn't see myself as like someone who likes to draw growing up I was much more of a writer. And I also didn't see myself as someone who really takes like pleasure in being the one who built things I like to connect ideas and connect people. So when I've learned about design ops and research ops, for example, I've been really excited by those communities, whereas as design teams mature they have someone who is helping with the coordinating helping with the standardizing of processes, helping with the advocating for tool adoption or doing that long term evangelization or better understanding of UX for example, I thought that that's really great. That's where I feel I identify with. I saw that is something that is growing in different teams, but also as an industry, there's a lot of growth of being a rather new field, there's a lot of maturity across all UX and sometimes people don't. They're kind of siloed into their different companies, they don't have the opportunity to talk through the bigger problems, because there's only like a conference here or there, and different people show up at different conferences so there's not always an ongoing conversation I thought well I like facilitating good conversation I like acting, people I don't have a need to be in a certain company like have that brand beyond my CV. I would much rather know that I was offering value to the greater ecosystem. And that's how I found myself as a UX community builder is just noticing where there was a need and also recognizing and myself, what I like to be doing. After talking to lots of people I knew what the options were better. Yeah.
Thomas Morrell 26:12 But, that's wonderful. To UX community builder I like the sound of that, the role that you kind of describe almost sounds to me like a design operations, type of thing, which is fantastic and it's definitely a growing field and aspect of UX. But what I guess specifically as a UX community builder, what are some of the things that you do on a daily basis?
Jeffrey Paul Coleman 26:37 Yeah, I think I myself a little bit like a design operations person across, across teams or organizations and industries so in specific teams so for example with UX insights. They are a community that runs an event annually. It's usually held in the Netherlands but now with a remote situation it's been remote in 2020 and 2021, and we'll see what next year brings. I am helping them organize. Second, events, usually are in the springtime and we're doing is now a second event because of that increased capacity. And part of that means like helping find speakers, but also a part of that means thinking about the strategy of the event itself how it's going to be organized. What theme, what, what kinds of ways we want people to experience it our sin will be November 11 It'll be about inclusive research, we decided that we do want it to be about practical things. And so, and not just about the importance, and so it was like being part of the strategic conversations, and then helping find the people that could talk about that is also introducing people to one another, so whether that's within UX insights for example or what I'll do is I'll be coaching someone via the online boot camp career foundry, and I'll be, I'll be telling them like it's really useful to be networking and not just applying to jobs, it can be so hard to face rejection after rejection of rejection and finding the right fit, when you've just finished schooling, whether that's through university or through a boot camp. That first, the first job is artists to find easy that alone, it's going to be so much harder. So when I say networking not just messaging a hiring manager and asking if they have a job opening or like asking a senior level person who would refer you, but having conversations to exchange stories so I've coached them on that. But then sometimes they're like, feeling a bit shy or I just think of someone like you know you're coming from a background as an art therapist and I remember there was this other person who had previously been doing things in the mental health space, and they're working now is this new level person, I think, I think you would get along and so I introduced the two of them, and it helps people feel like the world smaller, and they feel seen, and they know that like if you're the only one on a team, you don't feel you belong but if you know that in the industry, there are many others that come from fashion or come from architecture. It's reassuring and so that, that increases your sense of belonging in the industry, and gives them the strength to keep persevering. And the last thing that I do as a greedy person is advocating senior-level professionals and hiring managers, sometimes they are only talking to other their peer’s others at a similar level, and so their opinions can form about boot camp education for example or they can be worried because they've been burned before about hiring someone that they're going to have to educate and then that person might leave disloyalty and so they're worried about taking that chance again. And if they only talk with peers who are also really busy because they're in that, like the height of their career, they might not work through that. So I talked through that give us some other ways to think about it, and then advocate for people I know so that it acts as an increase in trust, it's not just some random person applying, but hey, we know each other. We've established some trust. I'm not just saying this hypothetically. Here is someone I think could be a great fit for your team or could be worth meeting. And so that kind of community work, introducing each other.
Thomas Morrell 30:53 That's wonderful. It also sounds pretty amazing, must be a lot of satisfaction and fulfillment. When you kind of connect to people and they form a successful relationship everybody's happy, everybody's got what they need out of the situation so that's perfect now. You brought up boot camps, which is something we talked about a lot on the show, I feel like most of the people I've spoken to on the show, and almost probably most of the designers I've worked with in my career went to some type of boot camp or another. I did a UX certificate, which is kind of like a boot camp for UC San Diego, through Coursera, what are the concerns that you hear from, I guess some design leaders around, you know the people coming out of the boot camps and, you know, maybe some reluctance to hiring them.
Jeffrey Paul Coleman 31:45 Well, for a while. One of the things is simply a kind of unknown factor where a lot of people in hiring positions had gone through degree programs. And so they, they are meeting people from General Assembly, but they don't know a lot about the curriculum. One thing that boot camps have done better since is rotating, and a lot of senior-level professionals to be either mentors or instructors. So whether that person only works there for six months or for four years. They get familiar with the curriculum and realize that it's a solid curriculum so then there's trust built, But the other is, it is so intense. And there's a wide variety of different students that come out of it, you're dealing with an unknown you can easily pick it on like well. Anecdotally, I met this one person, and I thought it would be. That'd be really great because about the boot camp says but they were not really understanding the skills, but not understand the skills that could be related to a number of different things for example some boot camps are focused more on UX design and the person's thinking about how they know about design from studying communication design or graphic design in a university, years ago, so that's like two different education's but they, they've forgotten what they learn from that previous thing and they think the boot camp should have taught that to them. So it's just kind of amnesia about how people learn. And then there are the soft skills as well that some people going through a boot camp will have those soft skills from their previous career experience, so it's not like someone who worked in a restaurant will necessarily have vacation skills or someone that worked as an architect, will not have certain soft skills, it really depends on who that person was and how they work to it's not on paper, you can't know it, but when they come out of boot camp, they didn't learn the soft skills, very much, because it was so focused on that, the skill set itself is like for a few months, so then it can feel like someone lacks certain quality, because they're not able to explain themselves well, or because they are having trouble, collaborating with development teams for example, and so that can give a bad reputation to boot camps, even though it's not to blame. But I, I have found that they do fill a really useful space and industry as academia, has moved slowly to move from the theoretical to the more practical and to create more of these programs, the hiring needs that exist. So, I'm really glad they exist, and a lot of impressive people out there.
Thomas Morrell 34:42 That's wonderful. And so, much like you, I mentor UX students at Springboard pretty similar to General Assembly, and I would say probably one of the more difficult aspects of that is kind of coaching them on the soft skills side of things. Do you have any, I guess, advice for coaching, young designers through that whether you're a UX mentor or somebody in the position of, you know, employing other designers managing other designers, through their first few years on the job.
Jeffrey Paul Coleman 35:13 One thing that I have found to be helpful, is being aware of the journey myself. There's a lot of people that become successful at design there now like a senior UX designer or even a principal staff does that, like, I think I'll move to management and move to management, and they managed to do it because they maybe had a, had a friend who knows them and trusts them, or the need was there for someone to be the manager and they're the most senior person so they get put into it, that doesn't mean they have all the soft skills right there, and they know it but they want the high tech, they wan’t’t like his manager that is useful for internal politics, but not useful for coaching and mentoring. So, if one can separate that out and say, humbly, I am still learning and growing, and pay attention to what you learned growing whether that's learning how to do small talk, or learning how to do public speaking, or learning how to learn, like understanding how you motivate yourself to learn outside of just paying for it in a structured way but how can you, like, train yourself to learn these different things. If you, if you pay attention to where you lack and don't feel intimidated by it and are like, consciously, improving it, then you begin to like develop an internal curriculum that then you can be able to say to someone. Not only this is, but this is also ways to improve those actionable ways because you remember when you were shy and like just tried to, to meet a few people, talk to one or two people this week or. Have you met her for coffee with our met breath zoom call with that developer to try and get to know them, better that might help with collaborating? Later on, or have you come to your checking meeting with your manager, and add a prepared agenda, are you okay with them being stressed and therefore not being able to give you feedback at that moment, are you like can you be kind to them that way you're able to like talk about tangible things because you know about it yourself. And the other thing that's great about knowing yourself is, you can make it less about like, I am the mentor, the expert, the senior person who's like, but you can make it more like we're learning together, and you could just like say, Yeah, we just, you know, I don't know how to do that, too, let's learn, let's, let's make an accountability thing or. Ah, yeah, you know, I might seem like I have it all together now but when I graduated and you kind of reminisce and tell your own personal story and that makes it more achievable for the other person when it comes off.
Thomas Morrell 38:03 I really liked that advice of trying teach things by learning yourself, and kind of, you know, internalizing it so it becomes part of your consciousness. When somebody else has a question about it or you notice that in somebody else then that's fantastic advice. And so, what would you tell, I guess a designer going through, you know, pretty kind of tricky moment in their career, I know this is something that you deal with. Maybe it's a toxic work environment or just a demoralizing year like the past year that we all had, how do you go about kind of coaching somebody through that and kind of on to their next, their next journey?
Jeffrey Paul Coleman 38:44 Well, one thing I do is I ask questions and I ask them more detail, on the situation. And that's not just for me to like dig in, Or like, try and understand it because I might have talked to others who faced a similar situation but I look for the words that they use to describe it, I take real careful notes as I'm talking to them so like if, if you had said that you were feeling really burnt out and stressed with work I'm gonna be like, oh yeah that stuff. Tell me, tell me more. What, what's been the situation I guess you're like, looking to take a vacation soon it's summertime, you're like no I can't take a vacation because my manager won't let me, like, Huh, what's the, What's the relationship you have with your manager and so you describe that more and as you're telling me more of that then I get more context but also you feel listened to and sometimes that itself leads to the person finding a solution for themselves in that tricky moment. The other thing I try and do is if they're talking through it, and they, they feel kind of like desperate like what's wrong with me or my situation kind of thing, I, I tell them stories about others, anonymized, of course, but I let them know. You know it's been a hard year, a lot of people have gone through challenges with a pandemic, I've known people that their relationships, ended or they had to move suddenly or they haven't been able to be close to family or they've lost family members, it's been a really tough year and that's been so distracting for many people when people hear that even if they, they know it when they hear someone else saying it, it can allow them to feel. Yeah, that's right, that's right. I'm not the only one. And, and then, then some other things in their spirit kind of kick in, where they remember. Okay, I'm not as desperate as I, as it feels, I'm not the only one in this there are other people I can reach out to those are two ways that I go navigate tricky situations and the last thing that happens is, if, if we've had a good conversation on those two respects. They're feeling heard and they're beginning to realize it's not like the end of the world kind of tricky situation but one that could be actionable really gotten out of. Then we talk about action steps and I get just one or two tips on things they might, they might do as a kind of like experiment. Hey, why don't you try in the next manager meeting to bring up the fact that you would be more productive if you were able to get some rest that you are dedicated to the job and you love being there? And so, I give an actual step and then get them to say, Yeah, I'll then we set up a check-in time to see how that went. Or went well or they learned something from it doesn't need to be that solves the problem but it gets them started.
The other thing I try and do is if they're talking through it, and they, they feel kind of like desperate like what's wrong with me, or my situation kind of thing, I, I tell them stories about others, anonymized, of course, but I let them know. You know it's been a hard year, a lot of people have gone through challenges but endemic, I've known people that their relationships, ended or they had to move suddenly or they haven't been able to be close to family or they've lost family members, it's been a really tough year and that's been so distracting for many people. When people hear that even if they, they know it when they hear someone else saying it, it can allow them to feel. Yeah that's right, that's right. I'm not the only one. And, and then, then some other things in their spirit kind of kick in, where they remember. Okay, I'm not as desperate as I, as it feels, I'm not the only one in this, there are other people I can reach out to those are two, two ways that I appeal, navigate tricky situations and the last thing that happens is, if, if we've had a good conversation on those two respects. They're feeling heard and they're beginning to realize it's not like the end of the world kind of tricky situation but one that could be actually gotten out of, then we've talked about action steps and I get just one or two tips on things they might, they might do as a kind of like experiment. Hey, why don't you try in the next manager meeting to bring up the fact that you would be more productive if you, if you were able to get some rest that you are dedicated to the job and you love being there. And so, I give an actual step, and then get them to say, Yeah, I'll then we set up a check in time to see how that went. That went well or they learned something from it doesn't need to be that solves the problem but it gets them started,
Thomas Morrell Fantast. Well, you sound like you make a fantastic coach. So, so I know you went into recruitment you said to learn, and now you're doing this whole new kind of UX design community building, where do you go to learn more, get inspired. Yeah, to grow.
Jeffrey Paul ColemanYeah, absolutely. Well, when I was recruiting I was inspired by the people I'd be talking to. And I have found that I am consistently being inspired by the things that, that people are doing. Of course, there's content like podcasts and articles, conferences, etc, but I find when I begin to know a person, whether them being on their personal story in the content, or I actually get to meet them. Whether I missed them and compliment them on, on the really helpful content that they made, and when we meet, or whether I, I've met them some other way. I find that that can be really inspiring. But even people I haven't met, following their journey now but there's social media and so many other ways that people can be just like transmitting what they're doing, newsletters, etc. There's, there are people like Vivian Castillo who do who I've never met but she was connected on, on LinkedIn it. She recently created her own company, leaving corporate, I think that's a really brave thing and she's standing a lot for humans, centered design and talking about trauma, talking about fear talking about how to really bring ethics into design thinking, and design teams. I find that really brave inspiring. Also, I read one face though I hear the making of a manager by Julie ish do, like really inspiring for like thinking about ways to be a good manager so many times we think that like a black box of how to be a better manager and, like, oh, there are people that are shared what they did, you can read that and then get ideas, Or I'm reading right now. It's only Claire Evans, who about Claire Evans, she, she's a vice journalist, and also a part of a band, but she wrote this book about women who made the internet and just talking about the history of the tech that's inspiring to me realizing that sometimes that gap, we think of tech is like innovation newest thing. Oh, have you, have you tried out, doing, doing design for AI, have you gone to that event, and remember also there's the past of the first computers, and who, who those people were the first computers, and how software languages came about, were people that were dismissed and kind of written out of history or secretaries and then become people using the machines and coming up with a language to communicate to it then you're like, oh, that's how it all fits together that inspires me to. And, yeah, even the people that I'm coaching, there's a person who had been coaching their career foundry, and I'm sure she would say that I was helping her but when I see someone go from feeling and kind of frustration that they had been she had been a successful teacher and art therapist and then she became UX graduate but she was having trouble getting that first job and she was used to having successful interviews but it's different than the UX industry when you're first starting out your change. I wasn't surprised she didn't give up. She kept learning, and she emailed me just last week when she got a full-time job with a company She interned with. It was beautiful, I was inspired and I and I find that's where I get a lot of my energy is through these relationships about people, and what they're willing to do, as they grow.
Thomas Morrell Fantastic. So where should people go to connect with you? Get in touch.
Jeffrey Paul ColemanI could find me on LinkedIn, for sure as a starter point, I find it can be distracting form but, I mean that's how you and I reconnected, and then it can always share an email from there, but So Jeffrey Paul Coleman, as there's a lot of Jeffrey comments out there, so Jeffrey Paul Coleman, on LinkedIn, and I was thinking whether to talk about this is a newsletter I started last year called ‘The Bridge’ that is sharing things on like intercultural communication, personal and organizational development, and just remaining ever curious about the world. And so I've been writing that every two weeks since last August, that's called the bridge, and that's not something you can easily find online but we can share a link in the show notes, or you can bet on LinkedIn I can share it, people want to go on there.
Thomas MorrellYeah, I would love to personally follow that the newsletter is something I've thought about doing for a long time so congrats on doing it and you know sticking to it to week format I know that a lot of work, and also share the UXinsights conference like for November because I think a lot of people listening to the show would love to be able to attend that virtually, that'd be That sounds fantastic.
Jeffrey Paul Coleman
Oh, we're really excited about the program. And will we already have one link that I can share, promoting running it and then in September? We'll be announcing it officially that with the program and tickets and so on. So, yeah, we'll be happy to share that.
Thomas MorrellPerfect. Jeffrey is really nice to meet you. Finally, in person and not just through email or LinkedIn, I hope you enjoyed yourself here I really enjoyed that.
Jeffrey Paul ColemanYeah, thank you.
Thomas MorrellThank you. And that's the show everybody thank you so much for tuning in today. If you haven't already please subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts.
I will be releasing a show about every other week or so, if you'd like to be a friend to the show, leaving a review or a comment on Apple would be very much appreciated. Share a link to the show with your friends or anyone else you might know who is interested in UX design, feel free to recommend topics you'd like to hear discussed and if you have any questions about design. Design careers or anything else for that matter, you can DM me on Instagram at @userflowspod. If you'd really like to help me out, you can visit thomasmorrell.com/survey to let me know what you'd like to learn on the show or here more or less. So, thank you I appreciate you listening, and let's go create something.
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