Finding My Voice: Reflections on My First Year as a UX Writing Manager

Three years ago, I made the leap from Senior UX Writer to Lead UX Writer, suddenly responsible for managing a team of writers spread across various product squads. What I thought would be a natural evolution of my career turned out to be a transformative journey that challenged everything I knew about communication, leadership, and myself.

From Wordsmith to People Leader

As a UX writer, my success was measured in clear metrics: reducing support tickets through clearer interfaces, improving conversion rates with persuasive copy, and crafting language that reinforced our brand voice. My words lived in products, interfaces, and style guides. It's all tangible artifacts I could point to with pride.

When I stepped into management, the canvas of my work expanded dramatically while the visibility of my impact seemed to shrink. Instead of crafting microcopy that millions (yes, 'millions!') would read, I was having one-on-one conversations in zooms, lot of asking questions which I don't have to work on as writing deliverables. The immediate gratification of shipping polished copy was replaced by the delayed (and often invisible) rewards of helping others grow.

The Cross-Squad Challenge

Perhaps the most unique challenge of my transition was managing writers embedded in different product squads. Unlike leading a centralized team sitting together, my reports were scattered across the organization, each working with different product managers, designers, and engineers. They faced different deadlines, conflicting priorities, and varying squad cultures.

Early on, I made the mistake of trying to standardize everything—identical processes, identical documentation approaches, identical meeting cadences. This attempt at consistency backfired spectacularly. The client squad's rhythm couldn't accommodate the same review process as the growth and marketing site team's waterfall approach.

I fell, hard.

I learned that effective cross-squad management wasn't about enforcing uniformity but creating a flexible framework that could adapt to each context while maintaining core quality standards. We developed modular writing processes with required checkpoints but customizable workflows between them. Using tools that helps our process also boost our productivity without skipping a beat.

The Confidence Gap

As the only writing expert (or so I thought) in most rooms, I had grown comfortable being the authority on content decisions. As a manager of other writers, particularly when some had domain expertise I lacked, I struggled with a nagging imposter syndrome.

When was I supposed to trust their judgment?

When should I assert my own perspective?

During one particularly tense crafting session, a writer on my team proposed messaging that contradicted what I would have written. I overruled them, only to discover later that their approach had been informed by user research specific to her squad that I hadn't seen. The incident forced me to reckon with my need to be right and to develop a more nuanced understanding of my role.

I began to see that my value wasn't in being the best writer in every situation, but in creating systems where good writing could flourish regardless of who authored it. This meant building robust review frameworks, fostering peer feedback mechanisms, and cultivating a culture where writers felt empowered to advocate for users' needs.

The Invisible Work

Perhaps the most frustrating realization in that first year was how much vital work became invisible. As a writer, each word I crafted would eventually see the light of day. As a manager, my most important contributions—career conversations, conflict resolution, resource planning—happened behind closed doors (well private zooms) and rarely received recognition.

But if something goes wrong, I have to own it completely.

I found myself maintaining two parallel workstreams:

The visible outputs expected by leadership

• style guides
• metrics reports
• process documentation

The invisible nurturing that kept my team functioning

• emotional support
• career guidance
• cross-functional relationship management

Learning to value this unseen work was a profound shift. I developed a personal reflection practice to acknowledge my own invisible contributions and began explicitly recognizing the behind-the-scenes efforts of my team members, creating a culture that valued the full spectrum of work required for great UX writing.

Finding (New) Balance

The hardest lesson was managing my bandwidth. Unlike writing tasks that could be timeboxed and completed, management responsibilities expanded infinitely. There was always another check-in I could schedule, another process I could improve, another skill gap I could help bridge.

I fell into the trap of being perpetually available, responding to Slack messages at all hours and letting my calendar become a patchwork of other people's priorities. This approach left me depleted and, ironically, less effective as a leader.

The turning point came when I realized that my own sustainability was a prerequisite for my team's success. I began blocking focused work time, setting communication boundaries, and—most importantly—explicitly prioritizing my efforts based on their impact rather than their urgency.

The Writer's Perspective

Eventually, I discovered that my background as a UX writer offered unique advantages as a manager. The same skills that made me effective with users (empathy, clarity, and the ability to structure information) served me well in leadership.

I brought a writer's precision to feedback conversations, replacing vague directions with specific, actionable guidance. I leveraged my understanding of user psychology to help my team navigate organizational politics and advocate effectively for their work.

What I initially perceived as a career detour from writing into management gradually revealed itself as a natural extension of my core skills, applied at a different scale and in service of different objectives.

Full Circle: Finding My Path

Three years after that first uncertain step into management, my career has taken another turn. Today, I find myself back in the clickity-clackity, building a product storytelling business where I'm directly crafting copy and building websites again. The hands-on work of creating compelling narratives and shaping user experiences has pulled me back to my roots.

Do I miss being a manager and leading people? Of course. There's something uniquely fulfilling about watching others grow under your guidance, about creating an environment where multiple voices can flourish. The ripple effect of good leadership (which I rarely see) isn't easily replaced.

But this return to hands-on work has also been refreshing. There's an immediacy to crafting copy that management lacks, a direct connection between effort and outcome that I had forgotten I cherished.

Perhaps my journey isn't about choosing between writer and leader, but about seasons in a career. Maybe if the time is right and a company with values aligned with mine approaches, I'll step into it again. Until then, I carry the lessons from my management experience into every piece I write, every website I build, and every client relationship I nurture.

I even build tools for my own amusement, helping me through my daily writing and documenting task.

The journey from writer to leader and back again hasn't been straightforward, but I've found my voice across these roles, even if it resonates in different ways than I expected.