Meltem Naz Kaso – UX Career Coach

Meltem Naz Kaso – UX Career Coach

My guest in this episode is my friend Meltem Naz Kaso, a Barcelona-based UX Career Coach with a background in UX Research. Her last full-time position was at Glovo, where she served as a UX Research Manager and Staff UX Researcher. 

She works with Senior UX professionals to unblock their careers by boosting their leadership and communication skills.

You can listen to it below, watch it on YouTube or subscribe to it wherever you get your podcasts.



Mel

Andy

Transcript

Note: This transcript is machine-generated and may contain some errors.

2025-04-08 PoT Meltem Naz Kaso

Andy Polaine (he/him): [00:00:00] Hello, welcome to Power of Ten, a show about design operating at many levels of zoom from thoughtful detail through to transformation in organizations, society, and the world. My name is Andy Polaine. I’m a design leadership coach, service designer, educator, and writer. My guest today is my friend Meltem Naz Caso, a Barcelona based UX career coach with a background in UX research. Her last full-time position was Glovo, where she served as a UX research manager and staff UX researcher. She works with senior UX professionals to unlock their careers by boosting their leadership and communication skills.

Mel, welcome to Power of Ten.

Meltem (UX Career Coach): Thank you. That was so impressive. I really want your accent one day.

Andy Polaine (he/him): You’ve got a good accent too. So all those, all those other people can be listening and dreaming of our accents. So tell us a bit bit more about who you are and what’s your journey, you know, from, from there, wherever there was, uh, to here. Because you have been in Barcelona for a while, but you’re not originally from there either right.

Meltem (UX Career Coach): That’s right. That’s right. So I [00:01:00] called Barcelona home and I’m extremely excited about it because I run a fully remote business. I feel that it’s important to be able to locate ourselves now. So I’ve been here about a decade. My two kids. Uh, all were born and, and they’re raised here. Before I was in the Netherlands, um, you know, doing my grad school and before that I was in, technically in 12 other countries.

So I’ve been everywhere pretty much. Uh, I was born in Istanbul, Turkey, and before starting UX career coaching, I’ve done, as you just said in the intro, a lot of UX work, particularly in the field of research. And before that I had, um, different careers. I’ve done investigative journalism, I’ve done research in academic and NGO settings in policy, uh, and and and whatnot.

So I had, uh, pretty much different things happening for me.

Andy Polaine (he/him): what was your trigger to start coaching? How did that get started for you?

Meltem (UX Career Coach): Right. Um, I’m curious about your journey [00:02:00] too, Andy, because we have some parallels in there. It happened very organically. It wasn’t that I woke up one day and said I’m gonna become a coach, or, I wasn’t aware that this was gonna be a thing for me when I was still, um, studying, but it just happened so that when I went down the managerial track, I begin to work through people as well as with people as you know, and I realize that.

There was a special sort of satisfaction when you succeed through people, but then, you know, um, when you work in an organization, you need to marry the needs of your direct reports with the needs of an organization. In ideal setups, it works and sometimes there is big clashes. But then I realized with further reflection that the thing that I really liked about management or working with people, helping them reach their goals, that was the coaching part.

When I got to ask them open questions, when I really understood their pain points, when I really, um, helped them. And I get unstuck basically. So that was the part, coaching [00:03:00] part was something I did when I was still working full time. I also did coaching on the side for many years before fully transitioning to running my business.

So it was sort of this whole thing where I was doing multiple things at once and that includes also training and and teaching at a university and whatnot. And eventually, about a year ago actually, I said, okay, let me give it a try. Let me make this my full-time effort to do coaching.

Andy Polaine (he/him): Yeah, you just posted your anniversary, right?

Meltem (UX Career Coach): Yes, exactly. Last.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you. No, it was one of the like, uh, last days of March. Uh, so it’s been just a little over a year. Crazy.

Andy Polaine (he/him): well done. Congratulations.

Meltem (UX Career Coach): Thank.

Andy Polaine (he/him): How much is your, mean, I’m guessing the answer is probably a lot, but I’m interested in how, in fact your, um, background as UX researcher has influenced the way you coach.

Meltem (UX Career Coach): Wow. Um, I wanna, I don’t know if I can help modify the question somehow. I know you’re the host, but I wanna say,

Andy Polaine (he/him): you can.

Meltem (UX Career Coach): because [00:04:00] there is no way to answer that without also saying how being a journalist influenced my UX research. It’s like. You know, everything just going on and influencing each other. Um, so with journalism, I’ve learned in my research that storytelling did matter because you can run, um, the most rigorous UX research project in the world, but if you’re not telling the story the right way for the, uh, stakeholders to care about it for, um.

Users to understand the right way, your questions and that sort of thing. It was just not gonna work out. So my storytelling, communication skills gathered through journalism helped me run and communicate research, I believe, and the best way. And speed also influenced from journalism. One thing I had learned that, you know.

You needed to balance rigor with speed. I like to think of it as quality at velocity. You know, you cannot, um, come up with a best story, uh, whether it’s a research report [00:05:00] or when you’re publishing for a newspaper in 10 weeks. Right? Like, maybe it’s gonna be a lot better than what you’ll deliver in a day, but we don’t have that much time.

It has to be new to be news, right? So, I. You know, um, apply that for my research as well. I don’t like to call it quick and dirty because it has the rigor. It’s just that it’s not the most rigorous, like academic research. So fast forward, all those things influenced my coaching too, because I like to be present for my coaches.

I believe that if they need me, part of it is emotional, part of it is for the work, for their deadlines. I cannot just come back in three weeks and say, you know, I have the best. Response to what you’re asking because the need was then, not now. So speed is a big part of that. Uh, communication is a big part of this.

I guess those two things are, are, are quite relevant for me.

Andy Polaine (he/him): I, I am interested that you didn’t say about asking questions actually, because both in journalism and the research, how you frame the questions makes obviously a huge difference, right?

Meltem (UX Career Coach): Very true. [00:06:00] Very true. And and that’s absolutely right. My thinking of that was, that goes under communication. How can you communicate without asking questions? Someone implicitly or explicitly should be asking questions, reframing, setting the context. It’s absolutely, it’s an obvious one, an important one.

But I do believe that asking questions isn’t always enough. Like I went back to this best, uh, research example. No, you can ask those questions, but the way you deliver the results and the one that people consume, uh, if, if that doesn’t work out, if it’s a boring one, an appealing one, irrelevant one doesn’t create the impact, it still doesn’t work.

So I take it on the communication umbrella.

Andy Polaine (he/him): I mean, I, I often think that the getting the question right is. it’s the hardest bit. There’s a book called Designing Design by Kenya Hara, and, um, he’s, I dunno if he still is, he’s the, um, creative director of Muji, or he was,

Meltem (UX Career Coach): Okay.

Andy Polaine (he/him): talks about this and it’s called Designing Design because his whole thing was, he, he has a few different examples of coming up with [00:07:00] trying to sort of write, find the right question for a design brief or a design project or whatever. It, you know, is the hard bit once you get it really well. So there was a project where they did, where they got different architects to, to redesign pasta forms each architect took their sort of classic forms, um, and sort of translated them to the pasta. But it turned out. Well, it turned out that the, the, the classic shape of like penne and stuff that had been developed by Italians, um, over the years was still the best one for kind of carrying the sauce.

But he had this kind of whole thing in the book. You just keep seeing, once you get an interesting question, everything else sort of flows much more easily from it. Um, and I, I kind of think that’s sometimes true of coaching of, of, you know, people come in and that I, so I, you know, I want this, this, and this, so I’m having this problem with that. And there’s often that moment of like, Hmm, but is that really the question here? You know? So I’m interested for you,

Meltem (UX Career Coach): Hmm,

Andy Polaine (he/him): have, you know, you focus on [00:08:00] UXers and UX has been through a particularly difficult period. I mean, lots of us have in the

Meltem (UX Career Coach): course.

Andy Polaine (he/him): of couple of years or so what have been, what have you been seeing coming up in your coaching and the kinds of issues that people have been dealing with?

Are there any patterns there?

Meltem (UX Career Coach): Yeah, there is. And, and thank you for that. Um, questioning example too. I’ll go ahead and say something a little provocative and hopefully that’s gonna make a more interesting podcast episodes for us. I do believe the value of open non-bias . Non-judgmental questions. Indeed. Important ones to ask ourselves before we coach, because as a coach yourself is your most important tool.

You need to be self-aware and you need to ask those questions to, to yourself as well as your, your clients, your, your coachees, right? But there’s a point to be made also to balance between the, the questioning part, um, as well as. You know, um, having more direct statements because one thing that I hear from my coaches over and over, and the reason why the ones that stick with me go ahead and [00:09:00] continue working with me and love the impact that they get is because it’s not this philosophical.

Um, engagement with open questions, one after the other. We need to e eventually narrow it down. We need to make final statements and we need to figure out what it is that we’re gonna experiment with. So questions tremendously important. I agree, but it also does not end with questioning. So for me, what success looks like is not that someone leaves like, oh, I got amazing questions.

Let me think about them. Of course, that’s part of it, but we need to also narrow down. The scope, see what we can commit to, to experiment with any given month or, and so on and, and take action. It’s all about taking action. Um, so that’s one part of it. And, and what you’re saying about what your X-rays are going through, that’s absolutely right.

And that’s why actually to be so transparent, I took a bet and, um, left my full-time job and wanted to be a UX courier coach because one thing we’ve all learned. Um, I’m curious. What you think is that no matter how, um, you get a [00:10:00] promotion, you are an over performer. You’re very loyal to your organization.

You might be laid off from one day to the next, due to reorgs, due to, uh, whatever that might be taking place, uh, in your, in your department or in your organization at large. So one thing I’m seeing from people is that it’s not, um, like a formula that you apply for your success. And as long as you get a green light from your organization, you’re good to go.

So people are realizing. Well, I’m employed full-time. I’m having a, you know, great salary. Uh, I love my colleagues, but I need to be networking. I need to be building my brand outside of my organization. I need to be more active. I think people are realizing that, um, people meaning UX rays, that they are, UX curvier is the most important product that they’re working on, so they need to design their UX careers.

It’s not just something that is hanging in there. Um, that’s an important one that we’ve, I think all learned.

Andy Polaine (he/him): Yeah, it is. There’s a, there’s a, um, screenwriter called John August. He wrote, [00:11:00] um, big Fish and uh. Charlie’s Angels and quite a lot of, uh, of other stuff. and he, he talks often. He’s got really good podcasts called script notes, and he talks often, you know, um, write in and they’re saying, you know, as a young screenwriter, what can I do and so forth and how can I break in, you know, get my break and things. And one of the things he said was to network when you are junior is because at some point. you know, I have now friends and colleagues who are kind of, you know, heads of CEOs and, you know, or kind of heads of design, you know, senior people, right? But there are people I’ve known since, well, you know, 25, 30 years.

And I think, um, it’s really important to do that because your peers, you know, the, the temptations always want to net to network to the senior people, which I think is also important. Um, but I think as you are building up your career. It’s really important to sort of stay in touch and network with your peers.

‘cause at some point they’re gonna be someone who might be hiring you or, uh, or any of that kinda stuff. that is really important. Yeah. [00:12:00] The, the career thing’s interesting. I mean, I, I put a comment on one of your posts the other day that I’ve had probably about, I sort of consider, I have about, I’ve had about three different careers.

I’ve had a sort of career. As some kind of digital interactive thing guy, you know, that’s changed over the years. 30 years ago in, you know, UX interaction design, um, you know, any of those things, they didn’t really have names. info information architecture, a little bit, maybe it was probably the first one to emerge as a clear discipline, but prior to that it was all like HCD and things like that.

Meltem (UX Career Coach): Okay.

Andy Polaine (he/him): Uh, yeah, and then I moved into sort of service design stuff in the early two thousands, but I’ve always also had a sort of academic life and been teaching more or less depending on sort of what’s going on now the coaching. So, um, sort of four careers if you like. Um, and I think it’s important for people right to remember, particularly when they’re in their, I dunno what the average age is of your coach is, [00:13:00] but particularly in their sort of twenties and thirties to remember. There’s quite a lot of life left to go, right.

Meltem (UX Career Coach): Absolutely. Absolutely. No, you, you said it out actually, but one thing that I appreciate from what you said is that you still. Teach and, and you have a diverse background as well as current experience, and I think that’s important for a coach because what I also insist on doing is I make sure I write at UX Collective.

I make sure that I teach and train and do group events because I need to be, I. In touch with the realities of the people. And I need to, um, you know, it’s, it’s not gonna sound, uh, very humble, but I am gonna say that from a place of humility, but also boldness that I think to be a good coach, you need to be that, you know, person that asks open question, but in a way, also an opinion leader.

And you cannot do that if you’re only practicing coaching. So for me. All those other things you’re mentioning, like teaching, what does it take to teach? You need to continue to learn, you need to be, um, giving workshops, master classes, writing articles. You even wrote a [00:14:00] wonderful book. Like all those things are so important to, I believe, establish yourself as a co a coach that stays relevant and I do my best in, in doing those things as well because like, it’s so important as you, as you just described.

Andy Polaine (he/him): Talking of that, um, you’ve got a, uh, session at one of the leadership atelier. So I’m doing the one in Lisbon, um, for the Hatch Conference guys. And you are doing the one in Barcelona. So my one’s in. Yeah, my one is, um, in Lisbon, in, in a few weeks time. Actually, not, not long, in a couple of weeks time in, uh, in April.

When is your one in Barcelona?

Meltem (UX Career Coach): Fifth and 6th of May. I know it by heart because the sixth is my daughter’s birthday,

Andy Polaine (he/him): Uh, yeah, it’s

Meltem (UX Career Coach): sixth.

Andy Polaine (he/him): mine actually. Yeah. Um. So what will you be doing in that? Can you, can you share anything It might know, depending on the timing It is. I hope that this gets out before then, but, um, might have already have. What did you do? Yeah, exactly.

Meltem (UX Career Coach): [00:15:00] Somehow. Um, so I will be giving a masterclass for two groups of, of, um, cohorts let’s say, and it’s gonna be an hour and a half, uh, to help people, um, do their best in communicating designs value to non-design stakeholders. Because no matter. The, the sector in which you work, the kind of organization where you, um, collaborate.

Um, people keep on coming with this, you know, I’m a UX or I’m a designer and I find it very hard to communicate the, the value of my team’s work, whether if you’re a senior IC or, or a manager or a director. For, for those that are not UX extras, like they don’t understand. It just feels like an add on irrelevant thing.

Like why is this guy wasting our time? So, um, it’s gonna be an interactive session where we’re gonna establish, you know, everything that is worth knowing. Uh, very pragmatic, very actionable about communication styles and what it is that, um, business leaders, product leaders, care about. Uh, when we [00:16:00] build, um, material to, to sell, to be profitable and all that, like different languages.

Different priorities and whatnot. And then we’re gonna deep dive into the kind of ways we can still root for, for UX and like be flexible, um, but also adjust our communication style to make sure that it, um, works out well with a CEO or, or a product reader or business leader or what have you. So it’s gonna be a session where it is gonna be a lot of, uh, engagement across participants and, uh, yeah, hopefully it’s gonna be both relevant and exciting.

Andy Polaine (he/him): Nice. Good. Um, I’m sure it’ll be fantastic. You sound, it’s

Meltem (UX Career Coach): I am

Andy Polaine (he/him): very clear.

Meltem (UX Career Coach): I got even so excited to be honest, because I’ve spoken with you as you know, and like two of my colleagues that I really, really trust at Miro and, um, you know, a a, a freelancer that also publishes books and they were like, oh my God’s super relevant. I know, have thought about it. That was like, that’s great.

And I just checked out the list of participants and they’re coming from Middle [00:17:00] East, they’re coming from all across Europe and, and the US. And so I’m like, whoa, like this is gonna be a historic moment, not because I believe the value of the material. Of course, that’s beautiful. But I really appreciate that.

It’s gonna be very international because design is very cultural as well. Um, and also people are gonna bring diverse set of experiences as they engage in, in pair. So I’m quite excited. Yeah.

Andy Polaine (he/him): It’s one of the things I really like about my coaching actually, is I coachee from all over the world, from all different, you know, from startups to scale up to kinda large enterprises, to agencies and, and you know, owners of agencies, small agencies and things like that. And I think it’s been a bit, and it’s a sort of cliche to say it’s a privilege, but it really has been, I find it a real privilege to. See a much experience, a much broader set of people’s experiences, uh, than I have myself and especially as like, you know, middle-aged white guy, right? So, uh, I’m as, as kind of in the middle of that privilege as you can get, but it’s, it’s, um, I. [00:18:00] I know, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. but yeah, no, it’s, it has been really good.

That’s also, you know, goes for sort of race and gender and, uh, sexualities too. You know, it’s been, there is a real kind of range there um, it’s it because the sort of coaching so intimate, I dunno if you find this, I feel like this sort get in someone’s life and I really, you know, you know, and I feel. Yeah. And I feel, you know, I feel kind of, yeah, it’s privileged. I feel, um, very lucky to be that, that those people and honored really, that those people kind of let me in like that. Um, I dunno if it’s the same for you.

Meltem (UX Career Coach): It, it is, it cannot be. Uh, it cannot resonate more with me, honestly, because, um, my take is that, and I say to everyone, like, I’m not a lives coach. You know, I’m not like a relationship coach. It is very specific to your UX career. It’s very specific to the impact you wanna create at work. You wanna get a promotion, you wanna have more influence in your organization.

You wanna be [00:19:00] hired in a better organization with whatever principles. So. We are very action oriented. It’s not just like, um, philosophical or cheesy materials. Not to disrespect that kind of coaching. Maybe it’s appealing to others, but I’m very clear like, Hey, I’m a coach, but before a coach, I’m a uxr. I actually.

You know, I’m gonna talk about tangible things that will resonate, uh, with you as gonna impact. But that being said, one thing I also tell everyone is like, when it boils down to talking about your family dynamics, of course we’re gonna talk about it because there’s no way for you to concentrate at work and be successful by our definition if you’re doing the heavy lifting constantly with your partner.

So your work, uh, life, you know, emotional life, your, your private life is, uh, you know, under a bigger umbrella. Of your yourself and you know, without considering that we cannot think of your career. You know, so everything emotional, everything personal do come in. So there is some sessions that people cry or we laugh a lot.

And

Andy Polaine (he/him): Yeah. Yeah.

Meltem (UX Career Coach): so those are indeed [00:20:00] part of what we do. And I feel, I. Extremely, um, like gratified because part of what I did for my undergrad studies was clinical psychology. Obviously, I’m interested in understanding people through the lenses of, you know, cultural anthropology. Even revolutionary biology was part of what I did, which I love and, and psychology, but I.

Uh, entertained the idea of being a therapist. Um, but then I realized that I actually love to offer a little bit of empowerment to high functioning successful people that wanna get even more impactful. That, to me, delivers a lot more value than maybe treating someone with a very serious mental illness, and that is an absolutely rewarding line of work.

I don’t disrespect at all, but I feel like in what we do, Andy, we can help people, uh, to feel better. Create more impact at work, um, and also be part of their personal lives in a way that is very action driven, and I really appreciate that.

Andy Polaine (he/him): Yeah, no, I mean similar thing for me, right? So I, I [00:21:00] always say I’m kind of opinionated as a coach. ‘cause I think, you know, the whole point of coming to someone who’s had the, who’s

Meltem (UX Career Coach): Yeah.

Andy Polaine (he/him): path or that you’ve been through, is that’s, that’s the reason for coming to it, rather than just a sort of general career or life coach that’s just gonna say, you know, what would having that do for you?

And, you know, those open questions are useful sometimes, but I usually switch, I’m usually sort of saying, okay. Uh, here’s my opinion now, but you know, you take it or leave it, and I don’t wanna sort of set myself up as a guru, but I kind of think there’s, what’s the point of coming to me if, if, you know, if I don’t give that?

Well, yeah.

Meltem (UX Career Coach): Like, no disrespect to HR professionals or, you know, I know that there’s amazing certification programs for for coaching, but I also do feel like, hey, if I have, for instance, right now, 17 clients, all the async exercises I provide, or the questions I ask them and what we are doing with them, they’re all very different from each other.

There is not like this HR worksheet sort of template that everybody. Yes. Because this is like companies, uh, training or anything like that, and the way that I attain these [00:22:00] individuals is because of the experience. So, and, and, and having my sense of, you know, what success looks like together with, with each person is, is that co-creation.

Andy Polaine (he/him): yeah. It’s funny you said I’m not a relationship coach ‘cause I kind of feel like I am more and more and more, I mean, I was aware of this some time ago, but it just becomes ever more clear to me that

Meltem (UX Career Coach): Hmm.

Andy Polaine (he/him): none of my coaching, none of my job as a design director. Uh, very little of it was actually di directing designers and, you know, in a, any, any creative sense, just all the time and so much of the coaching is, oh, I’m having this really difficult problem with this stakeholder or with someone else, or this colleague.

And, and you know, that’s the stuff that really fills people’s heads really kind of, you know, sets them off on a kind of spin, you know? And. Quite often people will prefer to leave a job than have, uh, a difficult or conflict conversation with a

Meltem (UX Career Coach): Absolutely with their broth especially, or, or with, [00:23:00] but I will add one more thing. I don’t disagree with you. Anything around like emotional, um, awareness. Uh, relationship management. Those are key because I always tell it to people, hard skills are amazing. You can either learn them, claim to have them. I don’t necessarily think your hard skills alone will make, uh, a major difference, especially in the era of ai.

So the, the relationship management will, however, I think there is a difference between someone that calls themselves a life coach, that sort of relationship. Um, term that applies so broadly and abstractly without any context. So I really appreciate that we can offer, you know, um. How to build influence, how to gain more power in a way that you can be more impactful in your organizations.

How to be more, um, smart about your relationship management at work. But within ux, where we understand UX, um, processes, how product teams work and, and what it really takes [00:24:00] to, you know, empower ics if you’re a manager, if you’re an ic, how to then go ahead and, and defend the value of your work and that sort of thing.

So I think it’s the application of that. Relationship bit within a particular field makes it all very, very, um, relevant in my opinion.

Andy Polaine (he/him): Yeah. But even the storytelling stuff, the, the things where I keep coming back to the relationship stuff is, ‘cause I think I’ve, I’ve learned more from, you know, books about relationships, uh, listen to podcasts about that stuff. Um, even things like dating for networking, right? And stuff like that. I’ve learned more about that from that world, from the world of really understanding interpersonal relationships than I ever have from reading any kind of management books or, you know, how to build high performing teams and all that kind of stuff. Because actually even something like the storytelling thing, if you’ve ever had that thing in a, in your personal relationship of like, you know, I’ve got this need here. There’s this thing that bothers me and every time I talk about it, my partner somehow just doesn’t get it. And you just seem, we seem to be kind of talking across purposes and all of that stuff is exactly the same. Uh, [00:25:00] why is this not landing with that person, with that stakeholder? It’s exactly the same as, you know, how is it that we can misunderstand each other so much and yet we know each other so well at the same time? And all of those kind of dynamics about what people, where people go when they get stressed. So my thing I’ve just talked about over and over and over is that this idea that world of work is just really filled with fear and anxiety, right?

Everyone seems to be operating from a position of fear and anxiety and it, Yeah. And it sort of explains so much behavior and it’s kinda much more like a, an empathetic view really. ‘cause once you get the fact that this person isn’t being and annoying because that’s what they wanna be, it out a place of fear and anxiety. I think it kind of can really help reframe the way you kind of then approach that person. That’s, that’s why I think the relationship stuff is so important.

Meltem (UX Career Coach): I mean, what I do hear you say, and I definitely agree with you, is sometimes we, um, narrow down our focus on the work itself [00:26:00] that we’re talking about. We’re talking about retention, acquisition, user flow, these pain points. But it’s important when you collaborate to remember that you’re collaborating with a human being that was once as a, you know, child had their challenges with their parents, and if they have a conflict at work with their, you know, at home with their wife or.

Their kids or whatever. All those things are part of the equation. So building a relationship that extends beyond the superficial challenges that are being paid, uh, you know, faced in any given project, that’s key. But I also wouldn’t create a, um, you know, duality between reading about relationships and personal stuff versus business MBA books because I learned also a great deal from those books.

And I think for UXers especially. Gaining the trust of their stakeholders, of, of their, um, you know, um, collaborators. They need to be able to showcase that they understand the language of business they need to showcase, uh, their competencies. So to be able to contact switch from [00:27:00] one to another will be an important one.

So I wouldn’t zero in on, in, in one way or another. I think we can gather something more holistic.

Andy Polaine (he/him): No, I, I think you’re absolutely right. I, I guess my view is that the language of business is not really the language of business. when we say that, what, you know, what is it that we actually mean? And I think what we mean is I. stakeholders we are presenting to care about different things than we care about. And it’s not really about kind of business. ‘cause business is this like hand wavy term, right? It doesn’t

Meltem (UX Career Coach): Of course.

Andy Polaine (he/him): Um, and you know, but, but it’s, what we’re really saying is that you’re having that kind of stranger and a strange land moment where you’re going somewhere and you are presenting to people.

You’re talking to people who, who daily speak a different language to you. would argue that a lot of the language of business, um. Is masking right for, um, it lacks honesty. A lot’s particularly jargon and the kinds of things you may ever listen to, like a quarterly earnings call. And the CEO just kind of spout like nonsense. and [00:28:00] it’s, you know, we are, we are having, it’s, uh, it’s been a challenging quarter because of kind of, you know, market headwinds. It’s like, what, what are you saying? We didn’t earn as much money as we expected to. Um, but there’s a real lack of, uh, emotional honesty in the language of business. And I think one of the clashes between. culture in general and, and sort of business culture is, is the kind of, I think design generally is, is closer to being, closer to you sort of to that kinda emotional language and more so maybe emotionally honest around, uh, in their interactions and interested in that area and interested in that language.

And when we’re doing research in people, in people into people, we wanting to understand people’s lives and things. and yet there’s this kind of distancing, which I blame the fear and anxiety thing, you know, and this idea of being professional, where you kind of move away from that into this kind of language of business. But underneath that is, underneath that armor is all the kind of human stuff. And you know, CEOs and senior stakeholders, they make [00:29:00] decisions not on hard facts and numbers. Many of those things are hand wavy anyway, like a spreadsheet is way more vague. Like a

Meltem (UX Career Coach): Oh yeah.

Andy Polaine (he/him): is maybe more vague than a prototype that you put in front of people.

Right. much more hand with, yeah,

Meltem (UX Career Coach): Dataset, you can take a bunch of different decisions and just them, but I think, and I think a healthy, um, divergence, let’s say with, with review in mind, even if we have a lot of points in, in common, is that if UXers, and this is my view, and if anyone watches this podcast and wants to challenge that or give examples or otherwise, I think it’ll be interesting to hear.

Um, to be able to gain influence.

Andy Polaine (he/him): Yes.

Meltem (UX Career Coach): don’t think that, um, you know, providing opposing, um, approaches to towards our non ux, non-design stakeholders will help. We need to first mirror them, use the same language to be able to communicate, uh, directly and indirectly. That I hear you. I understand you. I’m like you, I’m one of you.[00:30:00]

If you wanna even pull them into that. Space beyond the armors where we can talk in a more human way. Because I think it’s one thing where we reject that language. It’s another thing where we say, look, we understand that language. We, I we under, we identify why there’s a need for it and we are articulate.

We can speak that language, but at the same time, there’s more than that and we can also

Andy Polaine (he/him): Yeah.

Meltem (UX Career Coach): you see that. I think. So it’s gonna be important to, instead of like creating oppositions, I’m not saying that’s what you say.

Andy Polaine (he/him): I

Meltem (UX Career Coach): I’m saying that, um, it’s gonna be an important, that like UX series also begin to see themselves as business people in two ways.

First, um, serving within their organizations, but also the business of running their own business,

Andy Polaine (he/him): Yeah. Yeah, no, I

Meltem (UX Career Coach): their career.

Andy Polaine (he/him): agree. I mean, I think the, certainly the shift kind of to leadership in the kind of conversation designers tend to talk design to other designers, you know, and one of the shifts as you move into a sort of management leadership role is you actually have to talk about design less.

I. You know, in the same way that accountants, well, I guess they talk about [00:31:00] accountancy, but they will kind of talk about what matters to the business and that sort of shift of how does the design serve the business rather than how can the business recognize design as being this kind of fantastic thing is really important. So we’re coming up to time. We could talk for ages. Um, I have one final question for all my guests. Uh, the podcast is named after the film Powers of 10, uh, by Ray and Charles Eames, and it’s all about diff the relative size of things in the universe, and it’s, it’s, go watch. It’s really great. So my question is, what one small thing is either overlooked or could be redesigned that would have an outsized impact on the world?

Meltem (UX Career Coach): It was a big one and, and, um, I’m glad I, I got to think about it just a little bit. I think, um, it’s time that we redefine, um, what we understand from success. That’s a small thing because we’re not gonna change how the business world works, how products are being made, but it’s how you reframe [00:32:00] success, uh, to make it work in your own terms today.

For many people it tends to be about your title. It tends to be about where you work, the, the name of the organization, your, your income, but these don’t necessarily correspond with your degree of fulfillment. You might have the most sexy title, earn great deal, uh, work for a really fancy organization, but you might be depressed.

I actually have clients working at Meta, Google, all those places, pretty senior roles, wonderful salaries, and yet they have autoimmune diseases and, and, and, you know, they are being triggered more and more due to whatever it is that they, they feel. And, and there’s that lack of fulfillment. I’m not gonna go ahead and in the remaining minutes, blame your organizations, not.

Andy Polaine (he/him): Yeah.

Meltem (UX Career Coach): Like that, but it’s about really be honest yourself and asking, okay, well, what is success? You live only once you deserve to be fulfilled, but the only way to make that happen is if you can be honest about what success looks like. You know, rather than just adopting [00:33:00] external formulas.

Andy Polaine (he/him): Yeah, it’s funny, the, the, the, um, that’s a very good answer. The, the question that, well, an issue that comes, coaches come in a lot, is around confidence. I think, know, that’s probably for you too, right? And I.

Meltem (UX Career Coach): Yeah,

Andy Polaine (he/him): I, I always feel that confidence comes from, you know, the, the closer you are to being true, true to yourself, the more you have confidence.

‘cause you have nothing to be sort of found out about. Nothing to be, you know, you’re not hiding

Meltem (UX Career Coach): I.

Andy Polaine (he/him): You know, and, and, uh, they, it’s actually about being comfortable with yourself more than any kind of thing that you somehow exude, you know, or, or put on.

Meltem (UX Career Coach): I, I couldn’t agree more. And it just sounds like from the way that you described it, the opposite of confidence is actually like defensiveness maybe. Like you need to be there just like defending yourself, um, or feel bad about yourself. And you know, those like imposter syndrome is part

Andy Polaine (he/him): to be someone else, right. Or

Meltem (UX Career Coach): Yeah.

Andy Polaine (he/him): you know? Yeah. Yeah. Mel, where can people find you [00:34:00] online?

Meltem (UX Career Coach): Uh, that’s a very fun question. I don’t know when you’re gonna publish this, but, careerwithmel.com is a website that we are building right now. It’s not ready yet, but it’s gonna be already very soon. But until then, where I’m most active is LinkedIn. So they can search me on LinkedIn. I’m sure you’re gonna drop the link.

Andy Polaine (he/him): Yeah, I’ll, okay. And, uh, your, your substack, would that be going away or, um,

Meltem (UX Career Coach): No, it’s gonna stay. I love to use that, um, space. But of course, let’s see what future brings. If people find me on LinkedIn, um, I have it on my profile, my substack newsletter link, and I’ll make sure to add that to my website as well. It’s gonna be a simple, easy one with some videos and hopefully fun views from Barcelona.

Andy Polaine (he/him): Yeah. And then people will find your writing and talks, uh, all over the place, actually. So if you, if you Google Mel, then you’ll find them there.

Meltem (UX Career Coach): It sounds like you Googled me.

Andy Polaine (he/him): I also got some special links from you. Oh. I have Googled you. Of course, of

Meltem (UX Career Coach): Oh, good. I Googled you [00:35:00] too.

Andy Polaine (he/him): It’s, it’s a research. It’s research journalistic research.

Meltem (UX Career Coach): Of course, I Google people all the time and I’ve even like, uh, used ChatGPT.

Andy Polaine (he/him): Yeah, ChatGPT, I tried it on myself the other day, um, and it, it

Meltem (UX Career Coach): Yes.

Andy Polaine (he/him): it wrong. So, you know,

Meltem (UX Career Coach): Oh really?

Andy Polaine (he/him): Yeah, it got, got the title of my book wrong, so, um,

Meltem (UX Career Coach): Oh, sorry for that.

Andy Polaine (he/him): I’d written something else, so, which I hadn’t

Meltem (UX Career Coach): Oh, no. You had a fight.

Andy Polaine (he/him): I used to just, it’s just not very good. Uh, I’m, you know, I’m an ai, a bit of an AI skeptic, so there we go.

Meltem (UX Career Coach): Okay.

Andy Polaine (he/him): an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for being my

Meltem (UX Career Coach): Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me and having this conversation.

Andy Polaine (he/him): Thank you.

You’ve been watching and listening to Power of 10. You can find more about the show on p lane.com where you can also check out my leadership coaching practice online courses, as well as sign up for my very irregular newsletter. Doctor’s Note you have any thoughts, uh, put them in the comments below or get in touch.

You’ll find me at [00:36:00] apolaine@pkm.social, on Mastodon. On LinkedIn or on my website. All the links are in the show notes. Thanks for listening and watching, and I’ll see you next time.