Meet the team: Aïcha Doucouré
Design Leadership Coach
We are honored to welcome Aïcha Doucouré to the Design Dept. coaching team. Aïcha brings deep experience in design and research to her role as a Design Leadership Coach. We’ve enjoyed getting to know her perspective, and think you will too.
What is design leadership to you?
I’m passionate about leadership coaching. Design leaders have the potential to be change-makers. I believe that we need more self-aware, attuned, empathic, collaborative, grounded leaders so we can tackle today’s reality. It’s a lot to ask for a human to sustain these qualities over a long period of time. The good news is that our biology can support that with the right kind of coaching.
To me, leadership is something to practice every day with intention and focus. There is a lot of unknown and noise to deal with. Just like an athlete, leaders have to work with their mind, their intuition, and their presence to find the clarity necessary to perform. I’m passionate about helping people optimize their genius, develop new abilities, and adopt the mindset that will set them and their team up for success.
I also believe that design leadership is about creating the conditions to find clarity. When you have clarity, then you engage the right resources to support your team and you can set a clear course of action to achieve your goals.
What are topics that often come up for design leaders?
Self leadership
“Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power” — Lao Tau
To be a complete leader, you need to bring all your intelligence to the task. Yes, the mind and the emotional intelligence, but what about your body and gut intelligence? Developing your body intelligence is often a piece that is neglected. I guide leaders to reconnect with their body intelligence and their intuition. I also help them learn to work with the body capacity: regulating their nervous system to be fully present and connected with others in key moments, and not letting emotions distort their intentions.
70% of communication is nonverbal
What does that really mean? How do we best use the 70%? How can learning leadership embodiment help you day to day?
I help leaders develop somatic practices so they can build the presence that will manifest their leadership in the room.This is important in moments where you want to be engaging while sharing your vision, when you want to make people feel included in the conversation, or encourage your team to participate.
Practical emotional intelligence
Some of the biggest questions that come up are around conversations and emotional intelligence. How do I build partnerships? How do I build trust? How do I repair relationships? How do I bring people on the journey with me?
I use various relating methodologies, including authentic relating and nonviolent communication to help people say what they mean with precision.
There is no leader without a coherent team
How do you become aware and deal with team dynamics that are counter-productive? Understanding your team dynamic isn’t intuitive. If you’re part of a team, you inevitably have blind spots.
Having a coach who can highlight where your team stands, polarities that may hinder your team’s performance, and unveil opportunities to work collaboratively beyond role descriptions is essential. For this, I run Enneagram team workshops that allow the team to feel invested in the development of each member. It’s an excellent way of building trust, creating a sense of safety, and getting people more invested in the teams and company goals.
Finding your leadership style
I think it’s essential for a leader to lean on their core essence and find their own way of leading that resonates with who they truly are and what they deeply value. It takes a lot of energy not to be fully oneself, to mimic others, or to apply formulas. Simply put: If your leadership style doesn’t come from a place of authenticity, you spend more energy dealing with what’s coming at you instead of leading from your vision. When we don’t come from a place of internal alignment, it’s difficult to be fully creative, regulate our nervous system, and instill trust in others.
What’s the biggest piece of advice you would give to design leaders?
There is no true leadership without a deep understanding of yourself. Because the world is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, there’s a lot of noise.
You are the common denominator. You need to anchor your sense of self and what you stand for — independently of external demands. Most of us have been conditioned to react to external demands. How do you get back in touch with your true self? This is where the work of self leadership comes in.
Here are three ways Design Dept. can help you grow as a leader:
- Work one-on-one with leadership coach like Aïcha to tap into your creativity as a leader and transform the way you work with your team
- Attend a workshop to focus on a learning area, or design a customized learning series for your team
- Sign up for our newsletter to get design leadership wisdom in your inbox each week
