There’s a common challenge among designers: feeling excluded from the decision-making table or that their ideas aren’t taken seriously during strategic planning sessions.

The instinctive approach might be to focus solely on creating great ideas, assuming they’ll naturally stand on their own. However, this often overlooks a critical factor: trust. To influence an organization effectively, designers need to invest in building relationships and credibility with their cross-functional peers before their ideas ever hit the table.

But how do you cultivate the soft skills required to earn this trust and wield influence? Let’s explore this through the lens of a chef working to open their first restaurant.

1. Test Your Recipe

Ask any renowned chef if they woke up one day and opened a successful restaurant without preparation. They’d likely laugh at the absurdity. Behind every celebrated menu lies countless hours of testing and refining.

The chef starts in their kitchen, meticulously tweaking recipes. A pinch more of one ingredient, a dash less of another—every adjustment is tested on a small, trusted audience who provide honest, constructive feedback. At this stage, the stakes are low, but the insights arrive in realtime.

For designers, this “kitchen” is your closest collaborators. Use small team meetings or informal settings to present your ideas in their rawest form. Trust within this group allows for candid feedback, and like a chef fine-tuning their recipe, you can make iterative improvements before exposing your concept to a broader audience.

Effort level: Low
Feedback type: Real-time and foundational

2. Throw a Dinner Party

Once a chef has perfected their recipes, the next step is to host a dinner party. This isn’t just a social event; it’s an opportunity to gather feedback from a broader, more diverse group—friends of friends, who represent potential patrons of the future restaurant.

This new audience brings fresh perspectives, helping the chef identify which dishes are truly standout and which might need to be left behind. By the end, the chef has a refined menu that reflects a balance of personal creativity and crowd appeal.

For designers, the dinner party is a metaphor for broader feedback sessions. Think lunch-and-learns, lightning demos, or lightweight workshops. These structured yet informal gatherings invite input from a more diverse cross-section of your team, providing a clearer picture of how your ideas resonate across the organization.

One trick to maximize impact: include a brief survey at the end of your session. This ensures actionable feedback while reinforcing the value of the exercise.

Effort level: Medium
Feedback type: Diverse and directional

3. Open Your Restaurant

After rounds of testing and refining, the chef is ready to open their restaurant. Armed with a knockout menu and a supportive community, the chef has the confidence and resources to succeed. They’ve attracted top talent, secured funding, and generated buzz—ensuring that opening night is met with eager anticipation.

As designers, this is the stage where you bring your fully developed ideas to the table. The groundwork you’ve laid—trust, collaboration, and thoughtful iteration—now pays off. Your team recognizes you as someone who consistently delivers ideas that align with organizational goals while opening doors to new opportunities.

Rather than waiting for a seat at the table, you’ve positioned yourself as a trusted partner who helps craft the menu for the organization.

Effort level: High
Outcome: Execution with confidence and influence

The Recipe for Influence

Influence isn’t something designers can demand; it’s something they cultivate. Like a chef perfecting their craft, building influence requires patience, collaboration, and strategic thinking.

By testing your ideas in small, trusted settings, gathering feedback from broader audiences, and delivering refined solutions, you demonstrate your value in ways that resonate. In time, your ideas won’t just be heard—they’ll be eagerly anticipated.

___

Content originally created and shared for the Gusto design team