UX Leadership and Influence

Your instructor: Joe Natoli
Tickets: Get a ticket ↓

Workshop includes:

🔖 Practical frameworks to take away
🗣 Interactive sessions
📺 Workshop recordings
🎤 Dedicated Q&A time
🏅 Smashing Certificate

Workshop, 5×2h + Q&A • Thu & Fri, April 23 – May 7 2026
9:00 – 11:00 AM PT • 18:00 – 20:00 CET • Check your time zone ⏰

Learn practical frameworks and tools to become a better communicator and a more influential UX professional. Turn internal friction into collaboration, earn respect from stakeholders, and advance to more senior roles. No fluff — just actionable strategies that work in real-world conditions.

This workshop bridges UX expertise and organizational influence. You’ll learn frameworks for diagnosing communication breakdowns, building stakeholder trust, and understanding the business priorities that drive decisions. Skills that separate senior practitioners from everyone else.

Here’s What You Should Be Expecting:

Interactive live sessions

5 × 2h live sessions

Practical frameworks

From the UX Value Loop to the UX Charter

Hands-on exercises

Real-world scenarios and reflective prompts

Life-time access

To all video recordings and frameworks

Dedicated Q&A time

To ask all your questions

Smashing Certificate

A well-deserved reward for your work

$350^.00 $450^.00 Register for this workshop → 5 × 2h live sessions + Q&A. Apr 23 – May 7.
With all video recordings & slides. Get a ticket.

🎪 Save up to 25% on this workshop with a Smashing Membership.

What Will You Learn In This Workshop?

Why friction happens inside organizations — and how to diagnose where communication and alignment break down.
The UX Value Loop — a powerful framework for understanding and fixing collaboration failures.
How to shift from talking at people to talking with them.
The Five Requirements that build trust and respect (and why most teams skip them).
How your behavior becomes your brand — and how to intentionally shape how others perceive UX.
How to close your influence gaps and earn credibility across departments.
How to define your 8-word mission statement and create a UX Charter that sets clear expectations.
The 4 pillars (product, process, people, politics) and how they drive or derail every decision.
What “business first, users second” really means — and why it’s essential to your influence.
How to understand business models, cost structures, margins and constraints that shape priorities.
How to use the Feasibility Matrix to determine what’s actually worth doing vs. what’s loudest.
How to say no — confidently, respectfully and without burning bridges (12 ways!).
Storytelling techniques that make your ideas impossible to ignore.

Check the full day-by-day schedule below to get a complete list of topics and exercises.

What You’ll Take Away

By the end of the workshop, you’ll have:

A clearer understanding of your role in the organization.
A new way to communicate so your ideas land the first time.
Tools to pre-empt and diagnose friction — and turn it into alignment.
A mission statement, brand definition and UX Charter you can share immediately.
Practical methods for making smarter decisions and guiding teams.
A repeatable framework to grow influence.
Confidence to push back — respectfully, strategically and effectively.

Your work gets better, your conversations get easier — and your relationships with the rest of the business get stronger.

Who Is This For?

This is a full workshop, delivered in five 2-hour sessions with lots of time for Q&A. It’s for UX designers, product designers, service designers, researchers, product managers, engineers, team leads and anyone who’s tired of fighting the same battles over and over.

If you work with people — especially people with different goals and pressures than yours — you’ll leave with clarity, confidence and practical tools you can use immediately.

Every session includes a hands-on exercise or reflective prompt you can use immediately with your team.

About Joe Natoli

Joe Natoli has spent more than 30 years helping UX and product teams in large enterprises, government agencies and global organizations turn chaos into clarity — and friction into collaboration. He’s the founder of the UX 365 Academy and has taught over 400,000 students. He’s authored the bestselling books Think First and The User Experience Team of One (with Leah Buley).

And most importantly, he’s a trusted partner to thousands of designers, product managers, engineers and executives around the world.

Joe has built three decades of career success on a straightforward, practical approach — no jargon, no fluff, no dogma — that helps people succeed in the real-world conditions no one prepares UXers and Designers for.

Time & Schedule

This workshop is split over five days. Each session is 2 hours, filled with practical examples and guided exercises. The workshop sessions will run on the following days:

Thu, April 23, 9:00 – 11:00 AM PT (18:00 – 20:00 CET)
Fri, April 24, 9:00 – 11:00 AM PT (18:00 – 20:00 CET)
Thu, April 30, 9:00 – 11:00 AM PT (18:00 – 20:00 CET)
Fri, May 1, 9:00 – 11:00 AM PT (18:00 – 20:00 CET)
Thu, May 7, 9:00 – 11:00 AM PT (18:00 – 20:00 CET)

$350^.00 $450^.00 Register for this workshop → 5 × 2h live sessions + Q&A. Apr 23 – May 7.
With all video recordings & slides. Get a ticket.

🎪 Save up to 25% on this workshop with a Smashing Membership.