What’s stopping your work from shipping? It’s probably not the design itself. This week, I chat with Guy Segal about the soft skills that make the biggest difference—giving feedback, earning trust, and aligning with your team when things get tough.

What if the biggest reason your designs aren’t making it to production has nothing to do with design?

You know your work is solid. You’ve put in the hours, iterated on the flow, and covered every edge case. But when it comes time to hand it off or get sign-off, something breaks. It stalls, gets picked apart, or falls flat. Sound familiar?

In this episode, I sit down with Guy Segal—design leader and host of Design Downtime—to talk about why “soft skills” are the hardest part of UX, and how improving them can be the difference between your designs shipping or collecting dust. We cover how to give better feedback, how to handle misalignment without blowing things up, and what it actually means to be someone your team wants to work with.

This conversation is a must-listen if you’ve ever felt like good design work wasn’t enough. Because it isn’t. The way you show up—how you talk to people, how you build trust, how you respond to tension—is what moves the work forward.

Topics:
• 02:31 – The Importance of Relationships in Software
• 02:57 – Interview with Guy Siegel: Building Great Relationships
• 04:09 – Challenges in Team Dynamics
• 05:26 – Empathy and Communication in Teams
• 13:00 – Feedback Framework for Better Team Collaboration
• 28:58 – Aligning Team Goals and Values
• 32:45 – Establishing Team Values and Hiring Practices
• 33:27 – Importance of One-on-Ones and Setting Expectations
• 35:06 – Empathy and Communication in Design
• 36:08 – Feedback and Continuous Improvement
• 37:09 – Challenges in Designer-Engineer Collaboration
• 38:21 – Managerial Insights and Team Dynamics
• 43:09 – Building Strong Work Relationships

Helpful Links:
• Design Downtime
• Connect with Guy on LinkedIn

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