For a long time, Cabo was where I went to feel safe.

It was my easy little getaway, close enough to California that I could slip away whenever I needed rest, quiet, or healing. I went so often that it started to feel like mine.

The Last Time I Was Here

The last time I went, in January 2024, I had just celebrated my birthday, and I flew down to keep celebrating. I had just moved into a new apartment. I had spent the holidays with my family, and everyone was happy and healthy. I was about to begin a new role at Google Search, and I was terribly excited about it.

I felt like I was standing at the very edge of a whole new, beautiful life. Optimistic. Open. So full of love.

But when I came home from that trip, almost immediately, my life took a tragic turn.

The Years of Survival

My dad got really sick, and we almost lost him a hundred times over. I wrote about that first year in Surviving a Year of Almost-Death, and that piece shares what our family went through.

What I didn’t know when I wrote it was that the story wasn’t over. The trauma kept coming. The roller coaster kept going for long after that.

When you live inside something like that for so long, you slowly become someone whose sole purpose is to survive. You go into emergency autopilot. You handle everything. You make sure you don’t drop a single ball, because the stakes of dropping one are too high to bear: the lives of the people you love, their well-being, their livelihood, and your own.

Everything narrowed into one quiet, relentless sentence. I have to survive this.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, I started to dream about Cabo. I would think back to my last time there and wonder whether I would ever again have enough safety, and enough peace, to do something as simple as take a vacation. It felt like a faraway dream. I couldn’t imagine a future where that kind of rest belonged to me. So I just kept going.

Then, and I am so grateful for this, my dad’s health stabilized enough that I felt I might finally be able to step away. And just as clearly, I knew I needed to. My body was reaching its breaking point. If I didn’t take care of myself, I was going to crumble, and then I wouldn’t be able to take care of anyone else.

So this summer, I let myself go back to the place that had always held so much safety, so much peace, and so much hope. When I booked my trip, I didn’t know yet how much going back would ask of me.

Here is what it taught me.

Lesson 1: My Body Didn’t Believe I Was Safe

And no amount of logic could convince it.

I had believed I was ready. I knew Cabo was where I felt safe, and I had told myself that my life was finally safe enough to let me go.

But when I packed my bags and boarded the flight, the anxiety that rose up in me was so sharp I was almost hyperventilating in my seat. In my head I knew it was safe to go now. My body simply didn’t believe it. Two years of danger and panic had cemented themselves into my nervous system, and no amount of logic was going to talk it down.

So right there on the plane, I began the physical, somatic work of helping my body catch up to what my mind already knew. I held myself, my arms wrapped around my own body, the way you would hold someone you love who is frightened. I breathed slowly and deeply, again and again, letting each breath tell my body: you are safe now, you can let go. I kept doing it after I landed.

When I checked into the hotel, the first thing I did was go up to the rooftop pool. There was no one else there. Just me. I sank into the cool water, and I could feel the unsafeness begin to melt away around me, my nervous system softening, finally, after so long spent bracing. It was honestly transformational, and it was the first time in years my body had felt safe.

What I learned? Your mind can know you are safe long before your body believes it. Sometimes you have to walk your body there gently, until it believes you too.

Lesson 2: The Woman Who Was Here Last

Same place. But a very different me.

Once I could breathe again, I started to notice something strange. Everything was the same.

My room looked almost exactly like the one I had stayed in before, and I am pretty sure it was the very same room. I went down to the bar and ordered myself a drink, and it looked exactly the same. The view in front of me was the same. The beach, the way the resort was laid out, all of it was exactly as I had left it.

It was eerie. It felt like I had stepped back in time, as if no time had passed at all and I was still that woman from January 2024. But I wasn’t her. So much had happened since she was here. My whole life had turned upside down. Standing where she had stood felt almost like being outside my own body.

I kept thinking about her. Everything she had hoped for, everything she was celebrating at the time, everything she had envisioned for the life waiting for her at home. It had all been violently uprooted. Nothing turned out the way she hoped, and some of it turned out more tragically than that poor, innocent version of me could ever have imagined. It broke my heart to think about how wrong she had been, not because she made a mistake, but because she simply couldn’t know what lay ahead of her.

So I grieved for her, for everything she endured and everything she never got to have. And in the very same moment, I felt so proud. She survived all of it. She took those horrible experiences and alchemized her entire identity, and that transformation directly shaped who I am now.

When you are living through change every day, you lose sight of it. You are too close. It takes going back to a place that stayed perfectly still to see the contrast, to look at yourself and realize how much you have changed.

And so I found myself holding a strange dichotomy I am still learning to carry: grieving what the old version of me never got to have, while celebrating what the new version of me accomplished by surviving it.

Lesson 3: Hope Is Allowed to Come Home With Me

Even after it broke my heart once.

As the end of the trip came closer, my thoughts began to turn toward going home.

The last time I flew home from Cabo, I flew home excited and hopeful, celebrating everything amazing that was about to come into my life. None of it happened. Everything went wrong.

So a fear crept into my heart. What if I let myself get happy and hopeful again? What if I go home believing a beautiful new chapter is beginning, and I am heartbroken and disappointed all over again, the way she was?

And right behind that fear came a voice that sounded like caution. Don’t get your hopes up. Don’t get too happy. Just stay in the present, enjoy the rest you’re getting now, and don’t let yourself hope for the future.

I didn’t want to carry that fear home with me. So every day, I sat with my notebook and let the fears and the old beliefs rise up, one by one, so I could look at them honestly.

And slowly, I found my way to something I could believe. Yes, it is good to be present. Yes, it is wise not to pin too much on a future that is still unknown. But I don’t have to close my heart to protect it. I can let it stay open, full of hope and full of dreams for what is still to come.

I wanted to go home not only rested, but believing again that good things can come to me.

The Healing I Didn’t Know I Needed

I went to Cabo thinking I was taking a vacation because I had exhausted myself over the last couple of years. But I didn’t realize how much healing I actually needed, or how hungry my mind, body, and soul were for it.

My body rested, sleeping on the beach. But my nervous system healed too. My conscious and subconscious mind healed. My heart healed. In ways I never anticipated.

I don’t know how I could have welcomed a new chapter of my life if my nervous system was still living inside the trauma of those years.

A body that has been braced for that long doesn’t know how to receive. It stays ready for the next phone call, the next emergency, the next thing that might go wrong, and even when something good arrives, it meets it with suspicion. For two years I had been living what I once called almost-life: almost joy, almost safety, never quite letting either one all the way in.

That was the part I hadn’t understood before I went. Rest wasn’t only about recovering from what had happened. It was about making room for what could happen next. A new beginning needs somewhere to land, and as long as I was still bracing, there was nowhere for it to go. The rooftop pool, the notebook, the hours of sleep on the beach were not a break from my life. They were how I made space for the next part of it.

If You’ve Been Living in Survival Mode

I want you to know that rest may need to reach further than your body. Your nervous system may need to learn, slowly, that it is safe again. Your heart may need to grieve the version of you who didn’t know what was coming, and to feel proud of the one who survived.

And when you are ready, you are allowed to hope again.

The place had stayed perfectly still. That is how, for the first time in two and a half years, I could finally see who I had become.

Love, Reena 🖤

I’m Reena. I lead UX at Google Search, and for 25 years I have led teams across tech. Everything I write, whether it’s about work or life, is about one core thing: what changes when we act from love instead of fear. I call that leading from love, and I’m writing a book about it. If this resonates with you, stay connected on Instagram and my website, where I’ll be sharing more. 💞

I have carried both of those questions for a long time, mostly in silence.

I am writing this essay as an exploration, even though I am not sure I have all the answers yet. So this piece is not a lesson. It is more me thinking out loud, and hoping you will think alongside me.

Throughout my career I have been told to be more aggressive. To be louder. And to pound on the table, to show that I am a strong leader. Somewhere along the way, that became my picture of what competing looks like: winning at someone’s expense, trampling over others so that I can rise. And I wanted no part of it.

Collaboration was also something I was encouraged to bring into the workplace, and I was glad to. It felt like the loving way to lead, and it came naturally to me. So I sorted the two words into good and bad, and I chose my side. I decided I was collaborative, not competitive, and I believed that for years.

What I have realized recently is that neither concept is as neat and tidy as I wanted it to be. And the deeper I have looked within myself, the more facets of each I have found.

I Am Competitive

For a long time I only acknowledged the gentle half of being competitive. I’m competitive with myself because I strive to grow, I told myself. And that part is true. I love the ambition within me to do better. I love watching myself succeed at something I was not sure I could do. That drive has carried me through most of my life, and I would not give it back.

But the other side of competition lives in me too.

I want to succeed in the systems I work inside, and unfortunately, those systems rank us. Which means success in them is always relative to someone else. In this context, having the drive to succeed is synonymous with wanting to be number one.

In a workplace that asks us to be collaborative, wanting to win can feel like something to be ashamed of. So I hid it from myself. Competitive felt like the opposite of loving, and loving is the leader I have worked so hard to be.

As I’ve navigated both these ideas in the workplace, I have struggled with the tension between the two. If competing is bad, how do I define success at work? And if collaboration is good, why aren’t the systems around us wired to reward it?

I Am Also Collaborative

I have a heart that cares deeply about bringing people along. I never want anyone to feel left out. Importantly, I truly believe we create better outcomes together, and I strive to create cultures where everyone can thrive.

And yet, at times, I have also been told that I am too collaborative. I brushed it off, because how can there be too much of the loving way to lead? But the note stayed with me. I have written before about the difference between being nice and being kind, and how niceness is often fear in disguise. Now I was starting to wonder whether the same could be true of collaboration.

I also noticed something in the way I speak, something I suspect many of us do.

I say we a great deal. Sometimes because I would feel terrible taking credit for a group’s ideas, and when I am conveying the group’s thinking, we is the honest word.

And other times for a quieter reason — I say we even when the work is mine, because I is a more exposed place to stand. What I’ve realized, though, is that hiding a good idea is not humility. It is a way of keeping oneself safe from vulnerability.

Everyone talks about the leader who says I too much. Almost no one talks about we as a hiding place. I realized that even collaboration has a shadow side. And this became the idea I could not put down.

The Question Underneath

So the question was never competition vs. collaboration. What matters more is what is underneath either one.

Competition from fear is scarcity. Collaboration from fear is hiding.

Both can look like leadership from the outside. Neither one is love.

Underneath my wanting to win, when it came from fear, was a belief that if I am not the best, I lose something. My credibility. My job. The respect of the people around me.

This is the world we live in. Promotions rank us against each other. Only the top candidates get hired. The systems we work inside reward being number one, and I do want to succeed in them. I am not going to pretend otherwise.

But wanting to be number one has two faces. One is the striving, the reach that pulls you toward your best work. The other is needing to be above someone in order to feel okay about yourself. The first comes from love. The second is dependence on external validation.

I like understanding where words come from, and the etymology here surprised me. Compete comes from the Latin competere: to strive together. Collaborate comes from collaborare: to labor together.

Both words, at their root, mean together.

Fear is what turns one of them into opposition and the other into a place to hide.

One Fear, Two Disguises

After years of reflection, here is what I finally see.

If I never say I, I can never be ranked. If I can never be ranked, I can never lose. But if I can never lose, I can never win either. And winning was the thing I secretly wanted most, because that is how the world rewards us.

I had built myself a hiding place from the very competition I thought I had to win.

That is when the two halves of my story stopped looking like opposites. Competing from fear and collaborating from fear were never two problems. At the root, they were the same fear, wearing two disguises: the fear of being seen, judged, and found unworthy. In one fear, we fight to be safe at the top. In the other fear, we try to find safety inside the crowd. Neither fear is about the work, or the people. Both are about protection.

Protection is what fear always wants. And for a long time I thought the answer was a better hiding place, or a higher rung. But protection never made me feel safe. It only made me feel hidden. What I needed was something protection could never give me: to be okay with being seen, even when I was ranked, and even when I lost.

And this is what brought me to the biggest realization of all:

The only place I can be seen, ranked, lose, and still be whole, is love.

What Love Asks Instead

Competing from love is real. It is the rival who makes you better. It is the race you can lose and still be whole, and be glad for the one who won. It comes from wholeness, from trusting that there is enough for all of us, that my rising does not require anyone’s fall.

Collaborating from love is the part I have always known. It is bringing people together to build something none of us could have built alone. It is empathy for the person across the table, and making sure every voice in the room is heard. It is trusting that what we create together will be better than what I would have created alone. That is the light side of collaboration, and I would not trade it.

Collaborating from love asks more of me than collaborating from fear ever did. It asks me to say I when we would be safer. To put an idea forward with my name on it and let it be judged. And then to give the credit away freely for everything that was truly shared.

And if the idea is turned down, if no one likes it at all, that does not make the idea, or me, any less.

This is what I mean when I talk about leading from love. Almost nothing we do at work or at home is good or bad on its own. Competing, collaborating, ambition, humility, I, we: each of them can come from love or from fear. From the outside, they can look nearly identical. Only the person doing it knows where they are stemming from.

What I Am Practicing

As someone who is still on the journey of getting this right, I can’t offer the final answer, but I can share what has helped me grow, in case it helps you too:

• Before I say we, I ask whose work it is. If it belongs to the group, I say we. If it is mine, I say I, and I let that feel uncomfortable.
• When I feel the need to be the best, I finish the sentence, Because if I’m not, then… Whatever arrives in the blank is the fear, and it helps to see it written down.
• I notice what happens within me when someone else wins. If I can be glad for them, I am standing in abundance. If something tightens, I get curious about why I’m feeling lack.
• I give myself the courage to put ideas forward as mine, and I let them be judged without letting the assessment affect my self worth.

Leading Wholly, From Love

So, is competing in the workplace bad? Is collaborating weak? I no longer think of either one in such definitive terms. What matters is where they come from. Competing from love makes me better without making anyone smaller. Collaborating from love brings everyone together without letting me disappear. And when I can do both from that place, I am no longer choosing a side. I am becoming a whole leader, one who leads from love, and who can both compete and collaborate without fear.

I want you to know: you learned both of these for good reasons. Wanting to be great is not a flaw. Neither is wanting to create belonging.

You are allowed to want to do beautiful work, and you are allowed to succeed doing it. Your ideas are good enough to stand with your name on them. And you are allowed to care deeply about others. All of these can be true.

If any of this sounds like you, tell me in the comments. I am still working this out, and I think we can work it out better together.

Love, Reena 🖤

I’m Reena. I lead UX at Google Search, and for 25 years I have led teams across tech. Everything I write, whether it’s about work or life, is about one core thing: what changes when we act from love instead of fear. I call that leading from love, and I’m writing a book about it. If this resonates with you, stay connected on Instagram and my website, where I’ll be sharing more. 💞

Trigger warning: I’m about to go deep in this post, including reflections about death. Please only continue reading if you’re comfortable exploring these depths with me. 🖤

The last 12 months didn’t kill me — but at times, it came terrifyingly close.
Not in a medical, headline-worthy sense. But emotionally, spiritually, psychically — it took me apart. Quietly. Brutally. Repeatedly.

It was the year of almost-death.

Not death with the finality of funerals and closure. But the suspended, suffocating, nearly kind. The kind that lives in hospital corridors and voicemail messages. That stretches over months. That starts and stops without warning. That gives you just enough hope to feel terror again when it crashes.

This kind of crisis doesn’t just break your heart. It breaks your sense of time, identity, and control.

And yet, somehow, I survived. Not polished. Not triumphant. But breathing. Changed.

Here are the truths I learned in the process — and how I found tiny footholds that helped me climb out of the dark.

The Year That Bent Time

In the beginning, I thought it was a single crisis. One sharp, terrifying incident. My father was rushed to the ER, and we weren’t sure if he’d make it to the hospital. Surely this was the hard part. We’d stabilize. We’d heal.

But that moment unraveled into months. New tests. New fears. A second crisis. Then a third. Then another after that. The rhythm of life warped. Days became long, suspended windows of waiting. Nights became battlegrounds for panic.

I watched someone I love hover between life and death over and over. Each time, we were given the gift of “not yet.” But the price was relentless: hypervigilance, uncertainty, emotional whiplash.

You don’t get to grieve almost-death the way you grieve death. There’s no closure. No ceremonies. No community rituals. You just keep holding your breath.

Eventually, your nervous system can’t tell the difference between anticipation and aftermath. You become permanently braced. Sleep-deprived. Haunted by the idea that the next phone call might be the one.

This was the crucible I lived in.

Lesson 1: The Cycle Is Real

And it’s not linear.

Shock. Panic. Research. Hope. Control. Release. Exhaustion. Repeat.

I thought the worst part would be the first time it happened. But it wasn’t. The hardest part was the seventh time. When you’ve used up your coping strategies. When your body is fried from adrenaline. When you no longer have a narrative that explains what’s happening.

The lesson here? Survival isn’t a one-time decision. It’s a series of tiny choices you make again and again — even when you’re numb, terrified, or too tired to hope.

Lesson 2: You Can Go On

Even when you think you can’t.

There were nights I truly thought: This is it. I’ve hit the edge. And somehow, I made it through those nights. Often without knowing how.

Resilience isn’t glamorous. It’s not about stoicism or hustle. It’s about softening when everything tells you to harden. It’s about making room for grief, rage, helplessness — and still feeding yourself. Still brushing your teeth. Still whispering to yourself, just one more day.

What kept me alive wasn’t grand. It was small:

• Putting my feet in the grass.
• Letting myself cry in the shower.
• Listening to a meditation on loop until I fell asleep.

It’s in these microscopic acts of presence that life quietly continued.

Lesson 3: Old Pain Resurfaces

Crisis wakes up your past.

What I didn’t expect was how much old trauma would come roaring back. Being in crisis unearthed things I thought I’d resolved years ago. Childhood patterns. Old family wounds. The ache of always being “the strong one.”

I realized I was navigating this year with tools forged in an earlier battlefield. Tools I didn’t remember choosing. Hyper-independence. Perfectionism. Trying to control the situation.

They got me through childhood. But they were harming me now.

Almost-death didn’t just demand presence — it demanded reckoning. I had to reparent myself. Set boundaries. Relearn how to ask for help. Begin therapy again. Let go of the idea that strength meant doing it alone.

Lesson 4: The Dreams Burn

And they don’t always come back.

I lost things this year that mattered. Time. Opportunities. Imagined futures. What hurt the most was losing versions of myself — identities I had worked so hard to build.

Almost-death also means almost-life. You live in a half-reality. Almost joy. Almost safety. Not the full life you dreamed of. But you hold on anyway.

There’s a particular kind of grief that comes with realizing life may never look the way you planned. A grief for the “before” version of you. For the dreams that now feel naïve or out of reach.

But even in the grief, I’ve started to notice flickers of something new. Not yet formed. But there. Quietly.

And I’m learning: sometimes the dream dies, but the dreamer doesn’t. And as long as the dreamer breathes, new dreams take life.

Lesson 5: Inner Peace Isn’t a Mood

It’s a muscle.

The idea of staying “peaceful” in crisis used to feel like spiritual bypassing to me. But now I understand: peace isn’t pretending everything’s okay. Peace is staying centered in the not-knowing.

It’s not detachment — it’s anchoring. It’s neutrality.

And neutrality is hard. It requires daily discipline to maintain equilibrium and believe that you will be okay no matter how things turn out. It takes nervous system regulation. Honest emotional hygiene. Fierce gentleness with yourself. It requires having the stomach to feel everything — without letting it swallow you.

Peace, I’ve learned, isn’t passive. It’s forged.

What Helped Me Survive

This is not a prescription. Just a soft offering. A list of what kept me upright.

1. Radical Self-Compassion

Not just bubble baths or affirmation mantras. Even more basic. The quiet, gritty kind of compassion that says:

• You’re doing your best.
• You don’t have to be okay right now.
• You’re allowed to fall apart.

I had to stop punishing myself for not being stronger. I had to mother myself. I’m still learning how.

2. Tiny Rituals of Grounding

I couldn’t “fix” anything. But I could:

• Make tea every morning.
• Light a candle at dusk.
• Do five minutes of breath work.
• Sit in silence for one song.

These rituals weren’t a cure. But they gave my day structure. They reminded me I still existed outside the crisis.

3. Movement

There were days when walking felt impossible. But stretching for 60 seconds helped. So did swaying to music. Laying in child’s pose. Breathing deeply with my hand on my chest.

When trauma gets stuck, movement helps it move through.

4. One Safe Person

Some days, it was a friend. Some days, a sibling. Sometimes even a therapist or a nurse.

You don’t need a village. Just one person who says, I see you. You’re not alone.

5. Letting People Help

This was hard. I wanted to manage everything myself. But the truth is, people often want to help — and they don’t need you to be grateful or graceful.

Sometimes help looked like someone bringing food. Or texting “thinking of you.” Or just sitting in silence while I cried.

I let myself receive it. Even awkwardly.

6. Lowering the Bar

I let text messages go unanswered. I missed social commitments. I said no to things I used to say yes to automatically. I hyper-prioritized. I gave up on being impressive. I focused only on being intact. And I trusted that those who truly loved me would be there for me unconditionally, even when I wasn’t at my best.

That’s enough. You are enough, even when you do less.

7. Therapy and Coaching

I leaned on therapy to keep myself centered. I discovered the power of somatic work — nervous system regulation, body-based awareness, and grounding tools that helped me feel instead of dissociate. I delved deep into my subconscious beliefs to center my awareness on opportunities rather than catastrophes.

Life’s challenges can be beautifully alchemizing if you allow them.

8. Spiritual Connection

I don’t subscribe to any dogma. But I do meditate. I journal. I ask for signs. I surrender what I can’t hold.

Sometimes, I prayed not for answers — but just for the strength to keep going.

And sometimes, I received exactly that.

If You’re in a Season of Almost-Death

I want you to know: you are not weak for being shaken. You are not broken for feeling undone. You are not alone.

This is the hardest kind of living. But it’s still life. And within that, there is still you.

You don’t have to heal quickly. You don’t have to turn it into a success story. But if you are waking up each day and trying again, you are doing something miraculous.

This might not be the chapter you would have chosen.

But maybe — just maybe — it’s the alchemy of this chapter that will make everything after it more sacred, more honest, and more yours.

Love, Reena 🖤

I’m Reena. I lead UX at Google Search, and for 25 years I have led teams across tech. Everything I write, whether it’s about work or life, is about one core thing: what changes when we act from love instead of fear. I call that leading from love, and I’m writing a book about it. If this resonates with you, stay connected on Instagram and my website, where I’ll be sharing more. 💞

Surviving a Year of Almost-Death was originally published in OurVoice on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We live in a world that still often equates kindness with weakness, and empathy with indulgence. Especially in leadership. The unspoken assumption? That to succeed as a leader, you need to toughen up. Cut through emotions. Lead with logic, not love.

But here’s the paradox: the most transformative, trustworthy, and resilient leaders I’ve known aren’t cold or detached. They are deeply human. They lead with heart. And they are anything but weak.

The problem isn’t kindness.

The problem is that we’ve confused it with niceness.

The Niceness Trap: Why Being Liked Isn’t the Goal

Niceness is performative. It’s about making others comfortable — sometimes at the cost of clarity, accountability, and truth. Nice leaders want to be liked. They avoid conflict, hesitate to give hard feedback, and often over-accommodate.

That might look like:

• Letting poor performance slide to avoid discomfort
• Saying “yes” when “no” is more aligned
• Prioritizing harmony over honesty
• Avoiding the hard conversations when your team needs direction

It might make things feel easier in the moment — but over time, niceness creates confusion, hidden resentments, and mistrust. Standards get murky. Courage fades. Performance suffers.

Niceness, in many cases, is just fear in disguise.

Kindness Is Clarity with Compassion

Kindness, in contrast, is grounded in truth. It’s not about being liked — it’s about being real. Kindness is direct. Discerning. Sometimes uncomfortable. But always anchored in care.

Kind leadership sounds like:

• “Here’s the feedback you need, because I care about your growth.”
• “I value your wellbeing and this team’s integrity, so let’s address what’s not working.”
• “I’m here for you — but I won’t sugarcoat the truth.”

The heart of kind leadership is this: you can be honest without being harsh, and compassionate without being permissive.

Kindness Is Not for the Faint of Heart

Leading with kindness and empathy requires emotional labor, which many overlook.

It takes strength to:

• Listen instead of react
• Speak difficult truths with love
• Slow down when the pressure says “move fast”
• Stay open-hearted in systems that reward detachment
• Understand and untangle human emotions in the workplace

Empathy is not a mood — it’s a muscle. One that must be exercised through maturity, emotional intelligence, and courageous self-awareness.

There is nothing soft about that.

In fact, this kind of leadership is one of the hardest to practice — especially under pressure. But it’s also the most sustainable, human-centered, and transformational kind there is.

What Kindness and Empathy Actually Do

Kindness and empathy don’t remove accountability — they deepen it. They don’t lower expectations — they elevate them through connection.

Here’s what happens when leaders lead with heart:

1. Trust grows.
When people feel seen and respected, they show up more fully.

2. Growth is normalized.
Empathetic leaders place a focus on continual learning and improvement rather than perfection.

3. Healthy debate flourishes.
People don’t resist being challenged — they resist being shamed. Kindness allows you to challenge people without diminishing them.

4. Cultures become resilient.
When things go wrong, people remember how you made them feel. Empathy builds cultures that bounce back stronger.

Leadership Myths That Need to Die

Let’s dismantle a few outdated assumptions:

“Kind leaders get taken advantage of.”
Not if they’re clear, boundaried, and courageous.

“Empathy clouds decision-making.”
Empathy informs better decisions. It sharpens judgment by considering more perspectives.

“You can’t be kind and assertive.”
Actually, that’s the winning combination. Assertiveness with kindness earns trust and respect.

“Kindness makes you soft.”
Kindness makes you strong. It’s easy to close your heart in leadership. Keeping it open? That’s the real courage.

Leading with Love Is a Leadership Advantage

Leading with love isn’t about being everyone’s friend. It’s about seeing the whole person — and showing up as a whole leader.

It’s about:

• Creating space for truth and growth
• Choosing curiosity over judgment
• Caring deeply while leading clearly
• Creating belonging — and brilliance along with it

Love in leadership isn’t sentimental. It’s strategic. It builds the kind of culture where people want to stay, grow, and contribute. It makes organizations not just effective, but alive.

So… Are You Leading with Niceness or Kindness?

Ask yourself:

• Am I avoiding conflict to keep things comfortable?
• Am I sacrificing clarity for harmony?
• Am I setting clear expectations with empathy?
• Am I holding people accountable with care, not control?

If you’re leaning into niceness, don’t judge yourself. Many of us were conditioned to believe that being liked is the highest form of leadership.

But the real path forward is not being liked — it’s being trusted. Being respectful. Being loving in the deepest, truest sense.

Final Word: Soft Is Strong

We don’t need more leaders who armor up and push through.

We need more leaders who are brave enough to be real.
To feel. To listen. To care. To love — fiercely and unapologetically.

Kindness is not the easy way out.
It’s the brave way through.

And if leading with love makes you “soft”?
Then softness is a strength the world needs more of.

Love, Reena 🖤

I’m Reena. I lead UX at Google Search, and for 25 years I have led teams across tech. Everything I write, whether it’s about work or life, is about one core thing: what changes when we act from love instead of fear. I call that leading from love, and I’m writing a book about it. If this resonates with you, stay connected on Instagram and my website, where I’ll be sharing more. 💞

The past year has been tough for all of us. And one of the many impacts has been the physical distance that has wedged itself between us. This has affected all of us not only on a personal level, but in the workplace as well. The magic of team connection that once came naturally, has required intentional design in new and unique ways.

I work on designing the consumer-facing YouTube ads experience, and I am fortunate enough to work with an incredibly talented team of warm, kind, and caring humans.

Together, we have cultivated a culture of humility and compassion — a culture where our consideration for each other comes before all else.

Although our team has always been distributed across the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles, we’ve consistently been able to foster deep connection, even across geographical boundaries. Working remotely has always been commonplace for us too. So one would think that the transition during the pandemic would have been somewhat seamless. But it proved harder than any of us could have imagined.

A combination of societal shock, personal grief, and global instability rocked all of us to the core in 2020. Almost overnight, the COVID-19 pandemic jolted us from our day-to-day routines and suddenly isolated in our homes. And immediately, the ways of working that were once second-nature to us, no longer applied. Our entire team is monumentally grateful to have had work during this time. And part of our work has been determining not only how to stay productive, but also how to stay whole.

In collectively navigating this time, we have learned some valuable lessons. I would like to share a few of them with you, along with some tools and techniques that have helped us stay whole and discover the magic of virtual team connection.

Creating Space for Authentic Connection

As we transitioned into fully working remotely, one thing that became apparent almost immediately was that we no longer had organic moments of authentic connection. Connecting with others on a human level is much easier in person. Normally, when we would collide in the micro-kitchen or sit beside each in conference rooms, it was much more natural to have sparks of connection that went beyond project-speak.

But with geographical distance and laptop screens between us, it was much harder to open up spontaneously about life, friendship, and feelings.

Our initial approach was to create a forum for this. We set up a weekly virtual “team coffee time”, which helped significantly and provided us much-needed connection and support during the earlier days of the pandemic. But with time, it became yet another video meeting within a sea of back-to-back video meetings, quickly losing its magic touch. An alternative that has worked well for us is creating occasional sessions completely dedicated to authentic connection.

Sweet Farm is an animal sanctuary that offers virtual tours. During the summer, we were fortunate enough to have a Sweet Farm ambassador join us for a team meeting, introducing us to their beautiful rescued farm animals, and sharing stories of animal friendship. It was not only an educational session for a good cause, but all of our feelings were completely overflowing, creating a beautiful team bonding moment. These were the emojis that flooded our session: 💖💖💖💖💖

More recently, as part of a virtual holiday gathering, we created space for team reflection on the past year. It’s been such a difficult year, but we all took some individual time to think about the things we are grateful for, and what we will take forward with us into 2021. We added our thoughts to a virtual gratitude board and also sent private gratitude notes to each other offline. As we went around and shared our stories one by one, several of us were brought to tears in hearing about each other’s 2020 journeys, our lives, our growth, and our losses.

Nothing has brought us closer as humans, not even the many in-person team building activities we’ve done in the past. Intentionally designing space to connect authentically has helped us get through this year while growing closer as a team. And we have been surprised at how doing this virtually, though challenging at first, has ultimately created an even stronger bond between us.

Building and Learning Together

Another technique that we have found very helpful, is actively learning and co-creating things together. There is a certain bonding and collective gratification that comes from solving something as a team, or gaining a new skillset together. And there is fun, laughter, and joy that comes from stumbling through the learning process jointly. Building something together also results in a final product or artifact that serves as a memoir for times to come.

After gathering input from the team, we were able to narrow down to a few topics that folks were especially interested in learning together. We recently conducted a virtual drawing class in which the facilitator shared his favorite portrait techniques with us as we drew alongside on a video call. We shared our drawings with each other along the way and drew inspiration from each other’s techniques. We’ve collected photographs of all our drawings so we can look back and smile in the future.

There are many other things that teams can learn together. A few other things we have tried this year include learning how to knit chunky blankets, and also strengthening our Figma skills together as a team. Finding areas which the team is interesting in exploring and conducting externally or self facilitated training sessions can provide valuable team growth and a sense of collective accomplishment.

Bridging the Offline Void

In addition to creating online moments and activities for connection, we also recognized that being fully remote means there is a lot of void in between those rich online moments. There are large chasms of offline dead space where it is difficult to maintain the thread of connection and bonding. And so another technique that we have found helpful is filling that space with meaningful offline connection.

Earlier this year, we created a “get to know the team” survey. It contained 12 questions of fun loving goodness, and covered everything from swag sizes, to favorite movies & music, to detailed descriptions of favorite food. These are details that we seldom tell each other in conversation, but are mostly observed in person. Whether a team member likes chocolate syrup and sprinkles on their morning latte is rarely something they will mention, but many times something we notice about them in person. We not only had a lot of fun sharing these delightful details with each other via the survey, but it was incredible reading about others later. It also gave us ideas on how we could surprise team members with special deliveries on birthdays.

Over the months we’ve also experimented with offline team co-creation including multiple team music playlists. Gathering our music has been a great way to share our favorites with others, and watch a beautiful playlist come together and evolve offline. There has also been something almost magical about listening to others’ favorite music. It has made us feel as if we are immersing ourselves in our team mates’ worlds, and has reinforced that we are really in this together.

Finally, we’ve also created several slide decks for offline fun. Recently for the holidays, we created a team Santa list where we filled in fun requests offline. We also used Figma to co-create a team holiday card for each other titled “Goodbye 2020, a Team Snuggie holiday”. 🎄

Co-creating together offline has helped us bridge the gap between the online bonding moments and has maintained our thread of connection across distance. It’s also given rise to magical team artifacts that keep growing and evolving and further add to our expanding repository of team memoirs.

These are just a few tools and techniques that have helped us navigate this year. Not only by helping us stay productive, but most importantly by helping us stay healthy, whole, and united. We’ve tried so many things — some have worked, while others haven’t really clicked. But what’s key is that we’ve tried and iterated together as a team. And in this way we have been able to not only maintain our connection through adversity and across geographical distance, but also spark new magical connections.

“There is magic in long-distance friendships. They let you relate to other human beings in a way that goes beyond being physically together and is often more profound.”

Diana Coretes

I don’t think any of us have fully processed what’s happened this year. This is likely because we’re still experiencing it and haven’t yet come out the other side. But as I reflect on this past year and the things that have brought us closer, I wonder… maybe it’s the fact the we’re going through something this tragic as a global community, maybe it’s because we put more thought and intentional design into connection, or maybe it’s because distance really makes the heart grow fonder. Whatever it is, we’ve connected in ways that we never had before, and we likely never would have had the universe not pushed us out of our comfort zone. And for that I will always be grateful.

Love, Reena 🖤

What has worked for you and your teams? Please share in the comments! Wishing you all health, wellness, and love. ❤️

⭐️ Here is a link to our holiday slide deck template with our gratitude and other activities. Feel free to leverage and adapt to your needs.

🙏🏻 Credit original holiday template design to SlidesGo.

I’m Reena. I lead UX at Google Search, and for 25 years I have led teams across tech. Everything I write, whether it’s about work or life, is about one core thing: what changes when we act from love instead of fear. I call that leading from love, and I’m writing a book about it. If this resonates with you, stay connected on Instagram and my website, where I’ll be sharing more. 💞

Creating Space for Authentic Connections Within Your Team was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“I should have listened to myself.”

I can’t count the number of times I have said these words to myself in retrospecting on past “mistakes” in my life. Of course, there are no mistakes in life, so there really shouldn’t be any regret. Yet regret is something that we as humans can’t easily escape. And fear of future remorse paralyzes us in the present when we are faced with difficult decisions.

As we navigate multiple global crises, we are being faced with seemingly insurmountable collective uncertainty. As humankind, we are navigating one of the most challenging times in history. In today’s reality, we are both collectively and individually having to make decisions we are not accustomed or equipped to make. Decisions where the stakes are terrifyingly high.

On an individual level, we are having to make decisions about our health, families, travel, jobs, homes — our survival. And we are being faced with these choices all at once and on short notice. These decisions are especially challenging because so much is variable, and there isn’t much we can pin down or count on. Even the things that do seem relatively constant are new as most of us haven’t navigated a situation like this in our lifetimes.

When no decision is easy, and fear of making the wrong choice can paralyze us, how can we lean into our inner knowing to guide us through ambiguity? How can we listen to ourselves and step out of the fear of future regret?

Fear Based Decisions

What makes listening to ourselves hard? When the choices are simple and there is less at risk, listening within is usually fairly easy. However, when the stakes are higher, and our options have convoluted and interdependent considerations, things get a bit trickier.

Endless possibilities can whirl through our minds. “Should I choose option A? But option B is easier. Option C seems the safest though!” <insert brain exploding emoji here> We create pros and cons lists, flip coins, ask our friends and family for input. I’ve even created complex weighted sum spreadsheets before. But the more we do this, the more confused we can get. Because in the most turbulent of situations, there usually isn’t a clear winner. And no amount of coin flipping or spreadsheet wizardry changes that fact.

Ultimately, when left unchecked, this inner swirling leads to fear based decisions. When we can’t identify a clear logical winner, we choose the option that either feels least scary, or the one that appeases our biggest fear.

The problem is that a fear based choice isn’t always the best for our well-being. And although it may seem like the easiest way forward in the short term, it doesn’t always lead to the best long term outcomes.

The Answer Lies Within

Though seeking data and information externally is useful in informing our decision making process, the final answer always lies within. Once we’ve done our research and gathered external input, we have to make the final call. No one else can do that for us.

Fear and panic can cloud our ability to listen to ourselves. If we are able to quiet our fear, the answer is usually clear. When seeking answers within, it’s important to temporarily quiet the outer noise.

When we can make decisions from a place of calm, these usually end up being decisions we can trust.

And, trust based decisions yield positive outcomes that are likelier to persist long after the initial fear passes.

Trust Based Decision Making

In my life, trust based decisions have brought me the most confidence in the short term, while also delivering the strongest outcomes in the long term. As I’ve navigated turbulent times in my own life, I have realized however, that making trust based decisions isn’t always easy. Over time, I’ve formed a framework that I frequently lean on, and I’d like to share it in hopes that it may help others. My ability to make trust based decisions always depends on how well I can hear my inner voice. The process I use to tap into this consists of three steps:

Step 1: Identifying my inner voice

Step 2: Listening to my inner voice

Step 3: Trusting my inner voice

Step 1: Identifying our inner voice

What is our “inner voice” and how do we identify it? At any given moment, we each have many threads of internal chatter running concurrently, and this is one thing that makes listening to ourselves particularly challenging. How do we know which parts of our internal chatter to pay attention to, while being able to ignore the noise? Separating out our internal dialogue into three layers can help with isolating the fear from the knowing.

The Mind

The mind houses our most frenetic, fastest shifting internal dialogue. This is the space in which we weigh pros and cons. Our mind-voice is thought based and is the most logical.

The mind is extremely useful in helping us frame the problem at hand. What are we trying to solve? What is the decision that needs to be made? What are our options? And what are the factors we should consider? The mind helps us navigate life in this way.

Sometimes the answer is clear. If we are considering whether we can safely walk into fast, oncoming traffic, the clear, mind-based answer is NO. This is a very logical decision and the answer is straightforward. In most cases, we would not be torn in making this decision.

But sometimes the answer isn’t as clear, and the decision is harder because we may be pulled between various options our mind is presenting. When this happens, it can be helpful to go a bit deeper.

The Heart

In comparison to the mind, our heart-voice is feeling based. The dialogue in the heart space is primarily focused around how things will make us feel. The chatter in our heart does shift, but less frenetically than the mind. It feels more stable and slower moving.

The heart helps us understand the emotional states various options will evoke. How will option A make us feel versus option B? Which will make us feel happier? Will any of the options make us sad?

The key to truly hearing the heart is quieting the mind. If our mind is still running a million miles a minute, it will immediately jump in and confuse our ability to hear our feelings. For example, if determining whether a relationship is right for us, we may undoubtedly feel love for a partner, but our ability to “hear” this may be hindered by our mind’s interference.

Quieting the mind can allow us to separate our mental logic from the feelings in our heart. And organizing the chatter in this way can make things easier to navigate.

Sometimes, allowing ourselves to feel into our heart can effectively augment the thoughts in our mind, and our decision can become clear at this point. But other times, fear can still get in the way and cloud our emotions. And this is when going even deeper can be helpful.

The Gut

The voice in our gut is the most constant and stable. Of all our internal chatter, our gut-based voice is most intuitive, consistent, and calm. This voice is knowing-based. If we can quiet our mind and quiet our heart, isolating our various layers of internal chatter, we can then create the space necessary to hear our gut — or our intuition.

What we truly and intuitively sense at our core isn’t just a thought or a feeling — it is a knowing. It’s always there, and we can count on its stability.

It doesn’t feel frenetic, and it is never fear based. The knowing in our gut can always guide our decision making process when the choices are too complex for the mind and the heart to parse.

The mind, the heart, and the gut are all important and none of them should be discounted. We need all three in harmony. But during challenging circumstances, our inner voices can panic and start chattering all at once, internally debating and making it impossible to clearly move forward. When this type of confusion or fear arises, organizing our inner dialogue can help us identify our inner voice.

Step 2: Listening to our inner voice

Once we identify our inner voice, the next step is to listen to it. Because our inner voice is knowing-based, it usually won’t be yelling out the answer with blaring sirens. That’s rather the mind’s technique.

Our intuition speaks to us subtly, and usually the way we know what it’s trying to say is via the peace we feel inside. Something simply feels right — and we just know the way forward.

Step 3: Trusting our inner voice

The final step is to fully trust our inner voice. Many times we silence our inner knowing out of fear. We rationalize our way out of facing and accepting our knowing because our mind or feelings can get in the way. But having the courage to believe our inner voice is foundational to making trust based decisions.

Final Thoughts

Listening to ourselves can be challenging, especially in difficult times, but like exercising a muscle, it is possible for us to strengthen this capability. When we can quiet the external chaos and focus our attention within, we can bypass the fear that paralyzes us. In listening within ourselves and organizing our inner chatter, we can clearly tap into our inner knowing and trust our decisions, moving forward confidently and calmly no matter how turbulent the outside world is.

Wishing you all health, safety, and peace at this time and always.

Love Reena 🖤

Accompanying Guided Meditation

If you find this framework helpful, you may be interested in downloading the free guided meditation that I have prepared to accompany this article. This mediation will help you find calm amidst external chaos, and will walk you through the steps of quieting the mind and heart, so you can more clearly hear and trust the answers within you.

The meditation is available for FREE here on YouTube.

I’m Reena. I lead UX at Google Search, and for 25 years I have led teams across tech. Everything I write, whether it’s about work or life, is about one core thing: what changes when we act from love instead of fear. I call that leading from love, and I’m writing a book about it. If this resonates with you, stay connected on Instagram and my website, where I’ll be sharing more. 💞

Trusting Ourselves During Turbulent Times was originally published in OurVoice on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

On November 19, 2019, we kicked off OurVoice’s San Francisco event series with our first workshop — “I Am Me” featuring Jill Pixley. The focus of this event was personal values and the role they play in authenticity.

Recognizing that the journey to self-confidence and authenticity begins with a deep, intimate awareness and understanding of self, we decided to center our first event around the goal of exploring our personal values. Our guest speaker was Jill Pixley. It was an incredible treat to have her present and support us through a hands-on workshop and heartfelt dialogue. Jill helped us understand the connection between authenticity and personal values. Throughout the evening, we leveraged themes and tools from Brené Brown’s The Daring Way™ framework.

Authenticity & Values

Authenticity is defined in many different ways. Personally, it has always resonated as congruence. If we look deep within ourselves, beneath all the layers of social conditioning, and beneath all the masks we wear (consciously or subconsciously), the beautiful place beneath all this gunk is where we exist in our truest, purest form. In our most aligned moments, we have an awareness and understanding of this true self, and other times we struggle with finding clarity on who we are at our core.

On my personal journey, it has taken deep work, digging within, and many times untangling some pretty unpleasant cobwebs (it isn’t always fun to gopher around the deepest, darkest, corners of your shadow side) to be able to learn who I truly am. But the beauty and joy I’ve felt in finally beginning to know myself has been unparalleled.

Once we begin to get acquainted with who we are internally, we can start to determine how to achieve congruence between who we are on the inside and how we show up on the outside. This is authenticity.

Our values come into play as we explore within and start to define what we find. What makes us happy? What do we stand for? What do we not stand for? What is important in our lives?

Values form the bridge between who we are on the inside, and the world that exists around us. Knowing and defining who we are ultimately helps us stand in our truth and power — this forms the foundation of our self-confidence.

Event Recap

In her guest talk, Jill discussed that showing up authentically is a choice that we can all make, and that making this choice takes courage as well as daily commitment. Jill shared that we are all made of strength and struggle, we are all made of imperfections… and that it takes great vulnerability to believe that we are enough in spite of this. But once we can embrace ourselves in fullness, and demonstrate compassion in knowing that we actually have perfection in our flaws, we can truly nurture connections with others and create a shared sense of belonging.

As we discussed authenticity, one attendee asked “How can we show up authentically if we don’t know who we are?” This foundational question served as the perfect opening into the topic of values.

As Jill shared her thoughts on values, the group discussed how defining our values is a big part of understanding who we are. Values serve as a navigational tool in our lives and provide a much needed guiding light for us when we feel lost. Values are a compass. They give us a deep sense of what matters in our lives and help us rise when we fall. We discussed how hard it is to consistently live life according to our values, and shared with one another our stories of stumbling and triumphing in this journey to authenticity. Jill walked us through activities through which helped us define and identify our core values, and create manifestos to help us live by them.

Takeaways

In just a few hours together, we managed to co-create magical moments of depth and connection. Here are my top takeaways from the evening.

Our values are constantly evolving

At the event, a few folks shared how similar exercises they had done over the years indicated a shift in personal values over time. If our values change what does that say about us? If our values aren’t constant can we count on them? Can we really lean on them as a foundational definition of self — one that our authenticity can stem from?

Ultimately, we are growing, evolving beings, and the life experiences that we have dynamically mold and shape us. It is normal for our values to shift over time, and for us to become more consciously aware of their evolution as we progress through life. It can actually be an incredibly beneficial self-study exercise to go back and map how our values have shifted over time and which external events were catalysts to these shifts.

Ultimately, authenticity is about being aware of how our values are changing — and showing up in our truth in acceptance of their constant evolution.

Our values manifest uniquely in various contexts

In spite of who we are on the inside, we each choose to show up uniquely in the various external contexts of our life. When we are with family or friends, a certain subset or interpretation of our values may manifest. And our values may manifest differently when we are at work or in relationships. Does this varying expression mean we are being inauthentic or false in any way?

The masks that we wear externally serve as adaptation or translation devices that help us coexist with others in our external world. Wearing these masks isn’t necessarily bad, as long as those masks aren’t coming from a place of shame, self-doubt, or fear.

The term “mask” has a somewhat dark, shadowy connotation and seems to imply that the wearer is being fake, or donning a disguise that transforms them into an inauthentic character. And sometimes we do exactly this… when we are ashamed of our true selves, or afraid of how we will be received.

But if we are standing in our truth, and simply looking to build a bridge that connects us in healthier ways with others, then a layer of abstraction between our true selves and our life’s contexts can many times be helpful, and can help us form stronger relationships with others. And that’s not a bad thing.

Sometimes our values just won’t align — and that’s okay

We’ve all experienced situations in which our values simply don’t align with others. Attendees at the event courageously shared their own personal stories — some of relationships where value misalignments were recognized and addressed, and others of marriages where the chasm was so huge that it ended in divorce. Some spoke of work situations where there were value mismatches.

Sometimes our authenticity can help us heal situations, bridge with others, and help us co-exist in the world. And other times, we just have to accept that stepping away from certain situations or people is the best thing we can do for ourselves and everyone else involved. And the most important thing is to recognize that this isn’t failure, but rather a very self-aware success.

Final Thoughts

What I found most heart-warming throughout the evening was how the group slowly opened up and shared their own personal stories around authenticity and values. What was even more wonderful was hearing feedback after the event, and learning of the deep thinking and conversations that took place afterwards as we all processed our takeaways.

One attendee shared, “This (event) has changed how I deal with situations entirely.” Another met me for coffee afterwards and shared deep post-event thinking about how her values differ from her significant other and his family and what this may mean for her future.

I am incredibly grateful to everyone who came and played a part in creating this magical evening. For sharing their stories and thoughts. For quietly reflecting. For demonstrating courage in exploring the vast topics of values and authenticity. I personally took away so much from our first OurVoice event, and I feel such a deep sense of community already. I am eagerly awaiting (and planning for) an opportunity to connect with you all very soon. Stay tuned for more information on our next event!

Love, Reena 🖤

About Our Guest Speaker

Our guest speaker for the evening was Jill Pixley. Jill is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Certified Daring Way™ Facilitator. The Daring Way™ is an experiential curriculum, developed by Dr. Brené Brown, based on her research on courage, worthiness, shame and vulnerability. Jill received her M.A. in Counseling Psychology from the University of San Francisco and B.A. in Drama from Stanford University. In addition to counseling, Jill has worked as a professional actress, a playwriting coach with incarcerated teens, and a personal trainer, all of which have informed her therapeutic work in creative and active ways. She strives to help others re-connect with their truest selves by identifying their strengths, passions and values in a way that is both empowering and healing.

Our Sponsors

A heartfelt thank you to Google San Francisco for sponsoring our venue for this event.

I’m Reena. I lead UX at Google Search, and for 25 years I have led teams across tech. Everything I write, whether it’s about work or life, is about one core thing: what changes when we act from love instead of fear. I call that leading from love, and I’m writing a book about it. If this resonates with you, stay connected on Instagram and my website, where I’ll be sharing more. 💞

Authenticity, Values, and “I Am Me” was originally published in OurVoice on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It’s always felt a bit esoteric trying to describe what I do for a living.

Calling myself a designer frequently results in the misunderstanding that my job is to make software products “look pretty”. On the other hand, venturing to call myself a design leader or design strategist frequently garners looks of confusion, especially in those outside the technology and design industries. Even when speaking with others within the industry, a truly aligned understanding of design roles is rare.

What is Design?

Every company, every team, has their own understanding of what design is and what the role of designers should be. Within the user experience field, there are so many specializations within design roles — interaction designer, visual designer, information architect, motion designer, prototyper — and these roles can have overlaps with other domains such as marketing, architecture, industrial design, or even sound design.

To add to the confusion, no matter what the mix of roles on a team, UX as a discipline itself can be at varying levels of maturity within organizations. Some teams might be playing more of a service role and fighting for a seat at the strategy table. On the other hand, some companies might have Chief Design Officers and deeply embedded design teams that contribute at the highest levels of business and product strategy.

The understanding of what design is, can really vary across companies, organizations, and teams.

The Evolution of Design

In spite of the varying interpretation of design roles, we have universally seen a gradual maturing of the UX field over the years. At the industry level, the understanding of design and what designers do has evolved.

Design is no longer seen as just crafting UI elements or even product experiences. There is a broader understanding in the industry that design can influence the experience a user has with all of a company’s touchpoints. Ultimately, all these touchpoints and product experiences culminate in the overarching perception of a company’s brand — and design impacts all of this.

The focus has shifted. We’ve gone from the idea that designers simply create usable components and product designs, to the understanding that their work impacts the perception of entire brand and customer experiences.

Let’s Talk About Feelings

As we consider this broader impact of design on a company’s brand, it becomes important to see design as not just about usability, but also about feelings. People don’t just want products that work — they want to feel happy while using them.

Delivering delight and pleasure to our customers is critical for user engagement. However, what we are seeing increasingly is that customers want more. We are learning that delight alone isn’t enough.

As Steve Jobs spoke of the turmoil his generation experienced in the sixties, he mentioned a shift that began leading up to the new millennium:

“We wanted to more richly experience why we were alive, not just make a better life…there was definitely more to life than the materialism of the late 50’s and early sixties. We were going in search of something deeper.”

This search for depth has grown. Increasingly, people are finding gratification and a sense of purpose through creating connections, memories, and experiences. People are looking deeper for a sense of identity that can’t be derived only from material product purchases.

People want to feel as if they are involved in something bigger than themselves. They want to be able to identify with the products and services they use. People want to feel like that their lives have meaning.

What is meaning? Meaning is what gives us a sense of importance or worth. It’s very specific to each of us and it helps us interpret the world and decide how to act. Meaning is what helps us assess and determine what we value, believe, and desire.

Every choice that we make in our lives contributes to our own personal framework of meaning. Products or services that we decide to buy create a bond between us as the customer, and the company that we buy them from. And this bond becomes an intimate part of the meaning of our lives.

Designing for Meaning

Design isn’t just about making things look appealing, or just about usability, or even just delight. It is about taking products from being usable to delightful, and then beyond that — to meaningful.

Design is a way for us to deliver deep meaning to our customers through the experiences we craft.

We must strive to elevate the value we deliver to our customers from a basic, functional one, to one that goes much beyond. Design needs to not only deliver pleasure and delight, but must deliver the deep meaning that we know people are seeking.

The book Making Meaning is a great reference that contains powerful insights on driving brand and product innovation. It aims to get to the core of how to deliver meaningful experiences. It captures the 15 types of meaningful experiences that people most value and is based on extensive research around human needs.

Here are a few examples of how the work my teams have delivered in the past has translated to the concept of designing for meaning.

Example 1: Remote Collaboration

While working on a past remote collaboration design initiative, our team’s focus was to deeply understand how people work, and how they communicate and collaborate with each other remotely. Through our ethnographic research, we found what was really driving people was the desire to do well at work.

People wanted to appear valuable, they had a deep need to build strong relationships and rapport with others, and they were seeking to create things together. The deeper meaning that our customers were seeking was that of Accomplishment, Creation, and Community.

Example 2: Gaming & Entertainment

On another past project, our team was seeking to understand the deep meaning that people seek when they immerse themselves in gaming or entertainment contexts.

People lean on this type of entertainment to escape from reality and it was our job as gaming and entertainment designers to deliver fun, joy, and enjoyment to our users. The deeper meaning our customers were seeking was a sense of Freedom and Wonder — and a Community through which they could experience this with others.

Though I’m only a few months into my design leadership role at Google, I have already been exposed to some beautiful stories of the way Google products have changed people’s lives. The way in which Google products deliver a deep sense of meaning to users is astounding. The story below about Google Translate’s impact on the lives of new immigrants is bound to tug at your heartstrings.

Meaning is Important to Business

Everything that we design needs to embody the core meaning that users are seeking. Delivering meaning cannot be an afterthought. The desire to do so needs to be deeply embedded in a company’s culture, its mission, its strategy, and the core values of its employees.

Meaning needs to be part of the core intent of an organization.

Designing for meaning is not only beneficial for the user, but is also key for business success. Delivering experiences that get to the core of what customers really value means that they will identify more deeply with the brand and form a stronger bond with the company. Brand loyalty and advocacy will be higher and customers will have deeper engagement with products. This will in turn lead to higher use and retention. Rather than brief, transactional interactions with a product or brand, the interactions will be deeper and longer lasting.

Meaning is the guiding and driving force within each of us. It’s what helps us value ourselves, and the products and companies we interact with. Delivering meaning through experiences creates a deep bond with users. It elevates design to a higher level of maturity and strategic presence. And it helps deliver positive business outcomes.

Without meaning, we are missing the heart of what users are looking for.

No matter what industry we are in — whether we create products or services, whether we have an enterprise or consumer focus, and no matter what our role is — we have an opportunity to drive successful business results in a way that also impacts people’s lives.

Every touchpoint with the customer becomes an opportunity to bring more meaning to the lives of users. Regardless of whether you are a designer, product manager, marketer, or developer — I hope that you will allow your craft and your decisions to be guided by the goal of delivering meaning to others.

I’m Reena. I lead UX at Google Search, and for 25 years I have led teams across tech. Everything I write, whether it’s about work or life, is about one core thing: what changes when we act from love instead of fear. I call that leading from love, and I’m writing a book about it. If this resonates with you, stay connected on Instagram and my website, where I’ll be sharing more. 💞

The Meaning of Design was originally published in Google Design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.