Over my career, I’ve seen a pattern play out time and time again when designers transition into leadership roles. While the functional aspects of the leadership role may be known, many designers struggle with moving out of the spotlight.

As a leader, your job is to create a trail for others and allow them to have the spotlight. When I work with companies who are struggling with leadership, I refer back to my days studying atmospheric sciences to visualize this critical transition.

To the casual eye, lightning appears to be a single event. One bolt striking in an instant. In reality, though, there are many separate paths of ionized air which stem from the cloud at once. These paths of ionized air occur before the lightning strike and are called step leaders. Step Leaders are the tiny little fragments of light that spread out across the sky, forming different paths across the sky.

While they appear to only move down towards the earth, they, in fact, operate more like a sewing machine needle. Moving up and down with each downward movement, incrementally, the leaders get one step closer to the ground.

The leader that reaches the earth first reaps the rewards of the journey by providing a conductive path between the cloud and the ground. This leader is not the lightning strike; it only maps out the course that the strike will follow. The strike is the sudden, massive flow of electrical current moving from the cloud to the ground on the path the leader created.

Great leaders are those who create the paths for others to follow. They are the conductive element between their teams and their partners. They continually map ways for their teams to become lightning. My guidance for those leading others is to become a stepped leader. Map out the paths for which sudden pulses of energy will occur, and you’ll become the leader you’re expected to be.