Experienced Leader Research

Tech Fleet wanted to understand how it could better support experienced professionals seeking meaningful opportunities to learn, contribute, and practice leadership.

My Role

UX Research / Product Strategy

Team

Self-organized team of 6

Timeline

1 month

Methods

Research planning, assumption prioritization, user interviews, synthesis

The Challenge:

Tech Fleet already provides hands-on learning opportunities, but we didn't yet understand what experienced leaders need from the organization—or what would make Tech Fleet valuable to people who already have significant professional experience.

We set out to understand what experienced leaders are looking for, what prevents them from participating, and what kinds of learning, community, and collaboration experiences would feel meaningful to them.

Defining What We Needed to Learn

We began with seven broad research topics around motivation, professional growth, collaboration, accessibility, and learning preferences. For each topic, we defined a research goal and surfaced the assumptions behind it. This helped us separate what we believed from what we actually needed to learn from experienced leaders.

Example from a larger exercise covering seven research topics and their underlying assumptions.
Research topic → Research goal → Sample assumptions. Mapping our assumptions exposed the gaps that needed validation through research.

Prioritizing Our Assumptions.

With a broad set of assumptions to investigate, we first prioritized them based on risk and certainty. This helped us identify areas where being wrong could have the greatest impact and where we had the least supporting evidence.

Top-priority assumptions: high risk + low certainty

Narrowing what we would ask users

The first prioritization still left us with more assumptions than we could reasonably explore in one study. We translated the priority areas into questions we could ask users, then conducted two rounds of voting to identify the questions that would provide the most valuable learning.

This narrowed the study to six core questions and the assumptions directly connected to them.

From a broad research space → 6 priority questions

What motivates you to learn, and what is your preferred learning format?
How do you feel about learning by working on a real project with a team versus discussing your own real-world challenges with peers?
Tell me about a time when you intentionally worked to improve a leadership or teamwork skill. What did you do, and why did you choose that approach?
When deciding whether to join a leadership program, what information is most important for you to see?
Have you taken part in any leadership opportunities or communities in the past? What stood out to you?
What are the biggest barriers to your growth or participation in leadership opportunities?

Choosing the research method

With the research scope defined, we classified the six questions by research intent—user vs. product, generative vs. evaluative, what vs. why, and near-term vs. long-term.

Because the questions primarily explored experiences, motivations, behaviors, and underlying reasons, we selected semi-structured interviews as the research method.

Recruiting the Right Participants

We created a screener to recruit 5–7 experienced professionals whose backgrounds aligned with the leadership experiences we wanted to explore.

Participant criteria

5+ years of professional experience
Experience supervising, managing, coaching, or mentoring others
Responsibility for team decision-making
Cross-functional collaboration experience

We launched the screener through UXtweak and shared it across Tech Fleet and professional communities, including Discord and LinkedIn. View participant screener →

Piloting and Refining the Interview

Before beginning participant interviews, we ran a pilot interview to test the clarity and flow of our interview guide. The pilot helped us identify assumptions embedded in some questions and refine the wording before conducting the study.

Original question →

Thinking about the last leadership opportunities or communities you considered, what stood out to you?

If nothing, what qualities or characteristics do you think would make a program memorable? Where would you expect to find that information?

What we observed →

The question assumed participants had recently considered a leadership opportunity or community. We needed a more open question that could work whether or not they had prior experience.

Revised question →
Have you taken part in any leadership opportunities or communities in the past?

If yes: Thinking about the last leadership opportunity or community you participated in, what stood out to you?
If no: What qualities or characteristics do you think would make a program memorable? Where would you expect to find that information?

What We Learned

FINDING 01

Participants valued growth through meaningful practice, not just more training

Participants described professional growth as applying existing expertise in new contexts, working through real problems, and developing skills they don't regularly get to practice at work. They were less interested in learning for its own sake than in experiences that felt relevant to their current goals.

Evidence: Participants described learning through real projects, collaborative problem-solving, coaching, and opportunities to practice leadership or teamwork skills. The synthesis also notes that experienced leaders may value peer learning and discussion alongside hands-on work rather than one format universally replacing another.

Design implication: Position Tech Fleet as a place where experienced professionals can practice and stretch leadership skills through meaningful challenges, with multiple ways to participate rather than relying on a single learning model.

FINDING 02

Shared leadership works when autonomy is paired with clear decision-making

Participants were generally comfortable with shared or collective leadership, but they did not equate it with everyone having equal authority over every decision. Successful collaboration depended on expertise, clearly understood responsibilities, trust, and knowing who had authority when a decision needed to be made.

Evidence: Participants described decision-making as dependent on expertise and context. Your synthesis also shows support for collective input while recognizing that a final decision-maker may still be necessary.

Design implication: Design shared-leadership experiences around distributed ownership rather than equal control. Make roles, decision rights, escalation paths, and areas of autonomy explicit while preserving opportunities for collective input.

FINDING 03

Participants valued psychological safety when experimenting outside their expertise

Our participants' responses suggest that empowered teams are valuable when people can try unfamiliar roles, contribute beyond their formal expertise, and ask for support without having to protect their professional status.

This is particularly relevant for experienced professionals: seniority doesn't mean they want to already know everything before participating.

Evidence: Participants emphasized openness about experience levels, opportunities to contribute in different ways, autonomy, mentorship/support, and environments where people can experiment without being judged for what they don't know.

Design implication: Create a low-risk environment for leadership experimentation where experienced professionals can practice unfamiliar skills, take ownership, receive support, and learn from peers without needing to present themselves as experts in everything.

FINDING 04

Professional growth isn't necessarily about filling a skill gap

Participants expressed interest in continued professional growth, but they did not describe a lack of skills or experience as the primary barrier to that growth. Instead, they described opportunities to practice existing skills in new contexts, develop capabilities they don't regularly use at work, and learn through new experiences.

Practical considerations such as time, relevance, and fit also influenced whether an opportunity felt worth pursuing.

Design implication: Tech Fleet shouldn't position opportunities primarily as training designed to address skill deficits. Instead, it can offer experienced professionals opportunities to stretch, practice, and expand their capabilities through experiences they may not have access to in their current roles.

What this means for Tech Fleet

Taken together, the findings suggest that supporting experienced leaders may be less about providing traditional leadership training and more about creating opportunities to practice, experiment, and contribute in meaningful ways.

Future experiences could combine real-world leadership practice, clear ownership, peer learning and mentorship, psychological safety, and flexible participation—giving experienced professionals room to develop skills they may not have opportunities to practice in their current roles.

Outcome

The research shifted the conversation from assumptions about what experienced leaders might want toward evidence about the conditions that make participation valuable to them. Rather than pointing toward traditional leadership training alone, the findings highlighted opportunities around meaningful practice, flexible participation, peer learning, clear ownership, and psychological safety.

What still needs to be explored

This exploratory study surfaced new questions that require further research. A next round could combine interviews, surveys, and desk research to better understand what experienced professionals need to continue growing as leaders and which learning or practice models best support that growth.

One question that emerged from our findings is:
What do experienced leaders want to practice with Tech Fleet that they can't practice at work?

Questions like this can inform a new set of assumptions to test, continuing the cycle of learning, validation, and refinement.

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse