Influence without authority

One of the most consistent themes in the episode is influence. Early in her career, Catt recalls being told to “build your influence skills” without anyone clearly defining what that meant.

“Managers knew what influence was to them,” she said, “but I didn’t know what it meant.”

At the staff-level designer stage, influence replaces hierarchy. You’re not assigning tasks—you’re aligning teams. You’re not approving designs—you’re shaping direction.

That requires:

• Strong design communication skills
• Deep cross-functional collaboration
• The ability to frame problems in strategic terms
• Comfort with ambiguity and competing priorities

Catt describes how relationship building becomes an investment. She meets with people across the organization, not because she has to, but because awareness compounds. The knowledge she gathers from brand, product, and engineering becomes connective tissue when alignment is needed.

Think of it like building a network of bridges across an organization. When a gap appears, you already have a pathway in place.

This is what influence without authority looks like in practice.

Invisible work and strategic impact

Much of the work at the senior individual contributor level is invisible. It doesn’t always result in a shiny deliverable. It might look like facilitating a difficult conversation, connecting two teams, or reframing a vague objective into a clear problem statement.

Catt draws a distinction between valuable work and promotable work. Early on, she took on a lot of what’s often called “glue work”—important cultural and team-support activities. But she realized that not all impact is recognized equally.

“If you are doing things that are outside of the realm of what’s defined in the career ladder as valuable,” she noted, “you can end up in a situation where you are making an impact, but it’s not the kind that will actually get you promoted.”

In The Staff Designer, she emphasizes intentionality. Staff designers must align their effort with organizational priorities. That often means focusing on:

• Company-wide design consistency
• Long-term design strategy and influence
• System-level thinking
• Enabling others to do their best work

This “invisible work in design” isn’t accidental. It’s deliberate and strategic.

From craft to clarity

Designers often enter the field because they love craft. But at the transition from senior to staff designer, the focus shifts.

Staff designers are responsible for shared understanding. That means sometimes resisting the urge to jump into high-fidelity mockups too soon.

Catt explains how she uses low-fidelity diagrams to align stakeholders before touching interface design:

“I will literally just make diagrams that are like, here’s like an icon of a person, and here’s an icon of a team. And let’s talk about the relationship between these objects.”

This approach prevents conversations from getting derailed by color palettes or typography before the core problem is clear. It’s a reminder that product design leadership starts with thinking, not polishing.

The level of fidelity should match the fidelity of your thinking. When ideas are still forming, artifacts should reflect that.

This shift also positions staff designers as translators—bridging documentation, strategy, and execution. In that sense, they function less like pixel-perfect craftspeople and more like architects sketching the blueprint before construction begins.

Navigating politics with empathy

Many designers describe themselves as “allergic to politics.” Catt used that exact phrase. But she also realized something important: ignoring organizational dynamics doesn’t eliminate them.

“To do good work, to actually get work shipped, a lot of the times you do have to understand the priorities of the people who are especially above you,” she said.

Rather than viewing politics as manipulation, she reframes it as emotional awareness.

“A lot of politicking, quote unquote, is just like managing people’s emotions.”

That insight is critical for UX leadership and design leadership without management. Staff designers must understand fears, incentives, and pressures across teams. Leaders are users too. They have needs, constraints, and decision-making patterns.

Catt found that curiosity—rather than defensiveness—transformed her conversations. Instead of insisting she was right, she began asking, “Where are you coming from when you say that?”

This mindset shift strengthens managing up as a designer. It replaces adversarial interactions with partnership.

Energy management as a leadership skill

Influence requires energy. Relationship building requires presence. Strategic thinking requires focus. And energy is finite.

Catt talks about conducting “energy audits” to understand when she’s most effective. She color-codes meetings, batches conversations, and intentionally designs her calendar.

“As people, we have a certain amount of time in the day, and we also have waves of energy that ebb and flow.”

This perspective reframes productivity as a design challenge. How you structure your week determines your capacity for impact.

For those operating in product design leadership roles, this matters. Without thoughtful energy management, staff designers risk burnout. With it, they create space for long-term thinking—allocating time between immediate deliverables and forward-looking work.

It’s not about doing more. It’s about doing the right work at the right level of focus.

AI as a tool, not a replacement

No modern conversation about AI for product designers is complete without addressing fear. Catt takes a pragmatic stance.

AI, she suggests, is “a really powerful intern.” Useful for research and exploration—but not a substitute for judgment.

“I still feel strongly that designers are there because we think critically,” she said. “You should always be the creative director.”

For design strategy and influence, this is crucial. Staff designers set the standard for how tools are used. They model discernment, experimentation, and responsible adoption.

AI can accelerate prototyping or research synthesis. But it cannot replace the intuition, lived experience, and critical thinking required to guide product decisions.

The confidence gap

Perhaps the most powerful theme in both the episode and The Staff Designer is confidence.

Even after reaching staff level, Catt admitted feeling out of place in rooms full of directors.

“I was like, y’all trust me? Like, that’s weird.”

That internal hesitation is common during the transition from senior to staff designer. The title changes, but imposter syndrome lingers.

Catt’s advice is clear: trust your intuition.

“You do have to step into that,” she said. “It is really uncomfortable at first.”

The move to individual contributor leadership requires self-belief. Not arrogance. Not certainty. But confidence rooted in experience.

At staff level, waiting for permission becomes a liability. Diagnosing problems, proposing direction, and shaping strategy become your responsibility.

Leadership is no longer something granted. It’s something practiced.

Designing your role

Throughout the conversation, one idea surfaces repeatedly: staff designers must design their own role.

They define how they spend their time.
 They clarify what impact means in their organization.
 They negotiate scope with managers as partners.
 They decide where to invest influence.

This autonomy is both liberating and daunting.

But as Catt demonstrates, the staff designer path offers something powerful: the ability to lead without sacrificing craft, to influence without managing people, and to drive meaningful change through clarity and empathy.

For designers seeking growth beyond execution, her book offers a roadmap. Not a checklist, but a framework for thinking differently about impact.

The shift isn’t about doing more design. It’s about designing how decisions get made.

As Catt put it, “If you want to be a leader and if you want to be at the staff level, like you do have to step into that.”

Episode links: 

• Catt Small on LinkedIn

• Catt Small's website

• Catt Small's Maven page

• Catt Small's book, The Staff Designer book page - 20% off with code UserTesting until Feb 28, 2026

• Reducing design rework with fast customer feedback — a session on how UX and product designers can lead strategic testing to reduce rework and influence design outcomes.
• How to engage and convert prospects from every customer channel — a guide focused on collecting and applying customer feedback to make smarter decisions across product, UX, and marketing.
• The evolving role of designers with Lacey Fabrizio — an Insights Unlocked episode that discusses how designers are becoming more strategic and influencing decisions with continuous user feedback.
• The product triad reimagined: how designers lead across product, engineering, and business — a blog post on how designers use human insight and collaboration to align cross-functional teams and broaden impact.