“I realised that staying calm gives me the space to structure my thoughts, communicate with conviction, and make a stronger impact.”

As a Senior Designer at Google Maps, my role goes far beyond designing features. I work across teams, collaborate with multiple stakeholders, understand complex systems, and increasingly find myself doing work that sits at the intersection of design and product management. I also need to defend ideas, negotiate priorities and create enough conviction for leadership to support them.
The quality of my work was never really the concern. I knew I could produce strong design work. The challenge was communicating the thinking behind it with enough structure, depth and presence to influence a room. Working in a team with some of the strongest designers in the industry added another layer of pressure. I felt that I needed to establish my ideas with greater clarity and conviction, especially as I started thinking about moving into larger leadership responsibilities.
Earlier, when conversations became stressful, my instinct was to respond quickly. My thoughts could jump between different aspects of an idea, and I would sometimes find myself explaining several things at once instead of taking the conversation in one clear direction.
Kapable helped me recognise that the first thing I needed to work on was my internal response. When stress takes over, it becomes difficult to think clearly, structure an idea or communicate it effectively. Learning to pause and calm myself created the space I needed to think before responding.
That shift has started changing how I approach conversations. I now pay more attention to the details, listen for the context, and consciously decide when I need to speak rather than feeling the need to respond immediately. I have also become more aware of how my ideas are being received and what the audience actually needs from the conversation.
Structuring my thoughts has been another significant change. Instead of letting multiple ideas compete for attention, I now try to establish the context, make the main point clear, explain the reasoning behind it and then support it with relevant examples. This has helped me stay connected to one chain of thought and avoid unnecessary digressions.
I have already noticed the difference in how I navigate conversations. I feel more confident driving discussions in my direction, and I have been able to use these skills while negotiating, defending ideas and working through disagreements. I am also becoming more conscious of building trust, particularly in situations where people may already feel insecure or resistant.
One of the biggest shifts has been understanding that leadership presence is not only about having strong ideas. It is also about how those ideas are communicated, how people experience the conversation and whether they feel enough trust and clarity to engage with them.
There is still work ahead, particularly around articulation, storytelling and making my communication more impactful but I now have a clearer understanding of what I need to practise and how I want to show up as a leader.
The one thing I want to carry forward is stay calm under pressure, structure my thoughts, and create the kind of presence that makes people genuinely look forward to hearing what I have to say.