Trust is our Currency: Design Leadership without Mandate

»We may have to admit it’s influence that limits us, and that it’s probably not that our design talents aren’t good enough.«

Scott Berkun wrote that in The Lost Designers, and I keep coming back to it. Because he’s right. In design leadership, trust operates as the mechanism that makes influence work. Without it, recommendations land as suggestions, alignment stays optional, and cross-functional work defaults to politeness instead of progress.

I’ve come to see trust operating more like a system than a state. It accumulates through repeated interactions, depletes when expectations don’t match behavior, and resets entirely when context shifts—like changing teams or org structures. In influence-based roles, trust is what you trade when you make a recommendation, ask for alignment, or navigate a tough conversation with a stakeholder who doesn’t see things your way.

Without it, you’re pouring into the void.

Stephen Covey wrote in The Speed of Trust that »trust is the one thing that changes everything. It’s the foundational principle that holds all relationships.« In design leadership, that’s the difference between your work shaping decisions or decorating slides—not some abstract philosophy.

»Trust is the one thing that changes everything. It’s the foundational principle that holds all relationships«

Covey, S.M.R. (2006). The Speed of Trust.

Influence without mandate

Design leaders in tech rarely control the levers that define scope. Not the roadmap. Not the budget. Not even, if we’re honest, the decisions. Yet for design to remain central—to shape processes, drive alignment, set vision, increase product quality—the gap between mandate and expectation is where trust becomes operational.

What lets a recommendation feel like a decision instead of one more input that gets noted and ignored? Trust.

We may have to admit it’s influence that limits us. That it’s probably not that our design talents aren’t good enough. That realization doesn’t make the work easier, but it does clarify where the work actually is.

This only works through trust—from peers, from execs, from the teams we serve. That trust doesn’t arrive automatically. You build it, intentionally, through repeated small acts of consistency.

Layers of trust

From my experience, there are at least three layers I needed to work with:

Trust in the craft. People need to believe you know good design when you see it. That you care about the work and what it does for people. Not just outcomes, but quality that holds up under scrutiny. When this is missing, design becomes decorative. Teams listen politely, then proceed with their original plan. I’ve seen this happen when a designer joins a team that’s been burned before—every suggestion gets filtered through »but will they actually follow through?« until the work itself rebuilds that belief.

Alex Williams put it well: »Trust is more important than good UX. It’s the lens through which people interpret everything you do.« Our craft matters, but it’s not enough on its own—that’s the uncomfortable part.

Trust in collaboration. Beyond skill, people need to feel safe engaging with you. They need to know you’re consistent, that you do what you say, that you’re open to challenge and not operating from ego.

I’ve watched this break in a single meeting—someone asks a hard question, you respond defensively instead of curiously, and suddenly the relationship needs repair work that takes weeks.

But not all trust-building is healthy. Sometimes we build the wrong kind. We over-promise to stay indispensable. We over-extend to prove value. We use personal closeness as a shield against critique. These patterns look like trust-building, but they’re actually self-protection. And they corrode the thing they claim to create.

Healthy influence requires boundaries, not just access. Transparency, not just alignment. The ability to say »I don’t know« or »I was wrong« without losing credibility. Trust built on performance doesn’t survive tension, and design leadership without tension isn’t really leadership—it’s decoration.

Research on toxic leadership shows why this matters. Zaghmout found that »manipulation, coercion, hostility, and abuse of power create detrimental work environments that lead to significant psychological distress.« Design leadership operates in the opposite space. We need psychological safety, not control. When that safety disappears, so does our ability to influence.

Trust in systems. This one’s quieter, but it might matter most. People need to believe you understand how work actually moves through the organization. That you know what’s feasible, what’s political, what’s worth the fight. When this is absent, your ideas feel disconnected from reality—intellectually interesting, maybe, but not practical enough to turn influence into action.

This doesn’t happen fast, and it doesn’t hold without consistency. You can’t fake your way through it or shortcut the time it takes.

What remains

Trust doesn’t come from perfect work or the right slide deck. It builds through showing up, through small moments of follow-through, through staying consistent even when the context keeps shifting. Through admitting when you don’t know something instead of filling the gap with confident guesses.

Sometimes that means accepting that influence really does limit us. The work isn’t just about our design talent—it’s about whether people believe us enough to let our work shape what happens next.

That gap between what we recommend and what gets built? Trust closes it. Or keeps it open.

Lipman-Blumen wrote that »the tragedy of the human condition is not that we must die, but that we choose to live by illusions instead of the more humble, often painful and challenging reality.« In design leadership, the illusion is that our talent alone should be enough. The reality is harder: influence requires trust, and trust requires work that goes beyond what we learned in design school.

That’s the uncomfortable part. And maybe the most important one.