⏰ Today in 5 Minutes or Less
Todays newsletter is part one of a three-part series exploring relationship archetypes. I’ll break down what they are, how to recognize them, their potential for business impact, how to spot them in yourself and others, and offer you strategies for managing each one effectively.
✦ WHAT'S HAPPENING ✦
When I was first promoted to Director of UX for a tech company business unit, I found myself working alongside executives with whom I had zero prior connection. The anxiety before our morning stand ups was intense. I was at a complete loss for what to say or how to advocate for my team in a language that actually resonated. It felt like pushing a massive Sisyphus boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll right back down every single time.
As it turned out, the business leaders did want to hear from me, they even suggested I get a coach to help me come out of my shell. That coach, Ed Gardner, introduced me to a Jungian framework of relationship archetypes. It completely transformed my perspective, helping me see and hear people in a fresh, objective, and far less reactive light:
Supporters: Advocates who actively endorse, promote, and champion your vision within the organization.
Saboteurs: Individuals who covertly or overtly work to undermine initiatives, stall progress, and block execution.
Fence Sitters: Uncommitted observers who remain neutral until they see which direction the organizational wind is blowing.
Provocateurs: Disruptive agitators who intentionally stir up conflict and destabilize dynamics to force a reaction.
A quick note of grace before we dive in: this isn't about pointing fingers or labeling people. We all embody each of these archetypes at different times, depending on the context and who we're interacting with. When life pushes past what my rational brain can easily process, frameworks like this give me a way to step back from my immediate emotional reactions. It quietens the mental noise, letting me objectively identify what’s happening and navigate it with clarity.
Part 1 focuses on Supporters and Saboteurs. Enjoy!
✦ THE SUPPORTERS ✦
Your Champions and Allies
Supporters actively champion you, your growth and well-being. They act as strategic leverage across the organization. They defend your design decisions in high-stakes reviews, amplify your voice when you aren't in the room, and shield your team from political noise.
Recognizing Your Supporters
CHARACTERISTICS | ACTIONABLE TACTICS |
Delegates with high autonomy | Express explicit, specific gratitude |
Shields you from org politics | Reciprocate strategic value early |
Publicly amplifies your voice | Involve them early in UX decisions |
Real-World Examples
The Cross-Functional Shield: A VP of Engineering who steps in during an executive review when a launch date slips, clarifying that design iterations were necessary to protect user retention rather than letting product leadership blame your team.
The Strategic Gatekeeper: A Product Director who ensures your Content Strategists and Design Systems Leads have a seat at the table before technical architecture decisions are finalized, rather than bringing design in at the last minute to "make it look pretty."
The Invisible Sponsor: A peer in Business Development who casually highlights your team's successful UX redesign during an executive staff meeting with the VP, ensuring your team gets public attribution.
The Value and Business Impact of Supporters
Having an active network of Supporters fundamentally alters a design leader's organizational output:
Accelerated Velocity: Decisions move faster when trusted allies sponsor your proposals, eliminating weeks of cross-departmental alignment cycles and bureaucratic pushback.
Higher Psychological Safety and Retention: When design leaders feel supported by cross-functional peers, burnout drops drastically. Teams operate with the confidence to take calculated creative risks rather than playing defense.
Expanded Strategic Surface Area: Supporters bring you into strategic conversations early, elevating design from a tactical service function to a key driver of core business metrics.
How to Recognize It in Yourself and Others
In Others: Look for peers who proactively share unprompted resources, attribute ideas to you publicly during large meetings, offer constructive backing during heated debates, or invite you to pre-alignment syncs before critical calls are made.
In Yourself: Notice when you naturally act as a Supporter for others. Do you actively credit junior designers or cross-functional partners in public forums? Do you shield engineering partners from scope creep, or advocate for a PM’s career growth behind closed doors?
How to Best Deal With and Nurture Supporters
Nurture Proactive Reciprocity: Supporters perform thoughtful acts daily without expecting explicit rewards, which makes it easy to take them for granted. Regularly ask them: "What is top of mind for your team right now, and how can design help solve that friction?"
Express Explicit, Public Gratitude: Send quick, specific thank-you notes to their manager or call out their contributions in shared channels when they advocate for your team. Gratitude reinforces the alignment loop.
Bring Structured, Low-Friction Solutions: Protect their political capital. When a Supporter invites you to co-lead an initiative, show up to reviews with clear, research-backed recommendations (e.g., bringing content strategy data to back up UI label decisions) so supporting you is always a winning proposition.
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✦ THE SABOTEURS ✦
Saboteurs actively or passively derail your efforts, whether to protect their own scope, outpace you for a promotion, preserve budget, or out of pure organizational resentment. Saboteurs create intentional friction that threatens both your initiatives and your professional standing.
Recognizing Your Saboteurs
TACTICS USED | STRATEGIC DEFENSES |
Withholding critical data/specs | Maintain explicit written paper trails |
Claiming credit for UX concepts | Depersonalize and stay delivery-focused |
Whispering campaigns and framing | Establish clear cross-functional RACI |
Passive-aggressive compliance | Audit your "Average of 5" network |
Real-World Examples
In tech organizations, sabotage is almost always masked as "due diligence," "process," or "scope preservation."
The Information Bottleneck: An engineering or product lead withholding critical technical constraints or API specifications until a design milestone review, forcing your team back to square one in front of executive leadership.
Idea Hijacking: A cross-functional partner staying silent in your design review, only to present your strategic UX framework or research insights as their own initiative in a separate C-suite sync.
Passive-Aggressive Compliance: Agreeing to design handoffs in cross-functional meetings, but deliberately deprioritizing component builds or allocation of engineering resources behind the scenes to make the design release miss its target metrics.
Whispering Campaigns: Undermining your team's credibility through subtle framing in leadership circles e.g., labeling user experience research as "unnecessary fluff that slows down shipping speed."
The True Business Impact of Unchecked Sabotage
Sabotage isn't just an interpersonal issue; it inflicts severe damage on organizational performance and business metrics:
Sunk Product Costs and Delayed Time-to-Market: Reworking design systems or product flows late in the development cycle due to deliberately withheld information drains engineering hours and delays revenue-generating launches.
Erosion of Psychological Safety: When team members witness credit-stealing or subtle undermining go unchecked, psychological safety plummets. Risk-taking stops, innovation stalls, and teams default to self-preservation over user-centric design.
Talent Attrition and Executive Burnout: High-performing design leaders and individual contributors leave organizations not because of the work, but because of the emotional tax of navigating political sabotage.
How to Recognize It in Yourself and Others
In Others: Watch for repeated behavioral patterns, not isolated mistakes. Look for commitments that mysteriously slip without warning, sudden back-channel pushback during executive reviews without prior alignment, or a consistent failure to acknowledge design contributions.
In Yourself: Be brutally honest about your own shadow side. Do you ever withhold context from a competing team lead to make your own initiative look stronger? Do you downplay another manager’s contribution during strategic planning to safeguard your team's headcount? Recognizing these impulses in yourself is the first step to curbing destructive workplace dynamics.
How to Best Deal With Saboteurs
Build an Unassailable Paper Trail: Document all design decisions, scope alignments, resource allocations, and cross-functional sign-offs in writing. Use public project boards, shared PRDs, and follow-up meeting summaries to ensure commitments are transparent and undeniable.
Depersonalize and Focus on Quality: Never engage in emotional tit-for-tat or personal retaliation. Keep your communication grounded strictly in data, user impact, and business outcomes. Quality and composure strip a saboteur of their leverage.
Audit Your "Average of 5" Circle: Motivational speaker Jim Rohn famously noted that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Surround yourself with colleagues who challenge and uplift you. If an organization's culture is fundamentally toxic and sabotage is rewarded by leadership, protect your energy and pivot toward an environment where your strategic value is recognized.
✦ THE TAKEAWAY ✦
🧠 The Short of It Is
Navigating executive dynamics isn't about categorizing people into rigid boxes or playing workplace politics, it’s about giving yourself the psychological distance to lead with clarity. Supporters elevate our impact and protect our energy, while Saboteurs force us to sharpen our boundaries, rely on data, and build transparent alignment. Recognizing these dynamics allows us to respond with intention rather than reacting out of stress or fear.
Next week, we’ll dive into Part 2: Fence Sitters and Provocateurs. We’ll unpack how to win over the uncommitted observers who hold the balance of power, and how to redirect the energy of disruptive agitators to drive meaningful change. See you then!
Ready to Stop Going in Circles?
Book a Discovery call with me today. Let’s map out a bulletproof strategy to reclaim your executive presence, lock down your professional narrative, and fast-track your path back into a leadership role that matches your true strength, passion and expertise.
That’s all for this week!
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