Learning to Let Go: What Leadership Ateliers Lisbon Taught Me About Influence, Impact and Growth

What does leadership look like when your role isn’t defined by managing people, but by bringing different perspectives together?

As a Product Designer at Mercedes-Benz.io, Mariana Pereira works at the intersection of user needs, business goals, and technical constraints. Every day, she collaborates with engineers, product managers, and stakeholders across the Mercedes-Benz ecosystem to transform complex challenges into intuitive digital experiences. In an environment where success depends on alignment between multiple disciplines, leadership often looks less like authority and more like influence.

Those were some of the themes explored at Leadership Ateliers in Lisbon, an international event dedicated to helping designers develop leadership capabilities beyond their craft. Through workshops, talks, and discussions led by industry experts from companies including Apple and adidas, participants explored topics such as organisational influence, stakeholder management, business impact, communication, and personal growth.

For Mariana, the experience offered practical frameworks and valuable conversations. More importantly, it sparked a reflection on her own professional growth and the kind of impact she wants to create moving forward.

Mariana Pereira

Product Designer|MB.ioneer since June 2022

Fun fact:On her first day as a university lecturer, a student handed her the attendance sheet because they thought she was a classmate.

Growth Means Letting Go

One of the most transformative moments came during The Messy Middle of Design Leadership, a session led by Steve “Buzz” Pearce, VP Design & Product.

Through an exercise that explored careers through the lenses of craft, invention, and influence, Mariana found herself reflecting on her own professional journey. It was an opportunity to look back at where she started, understand where she is today, and think more intentionally about where she wants to go next.

What stood out most was a surprisingly simple realisation: growth often requires letting go.

As designers progress in their careers, some responsibilities naturally become less central while others take their place. Rather than seeing that shift as a loss, Mariana began to see it as a sign of development. Instead of measuring value solely through execution, the exercise encouraged her to think more about how she creates impact through collaboration, alignment, and influence.

It helped me understand that it’s okay to let things go. At this specific moment in my career, it makes total sense to focus my effort on other areas, and that stepping away from certain tasks is just a natural part of growth.

That insight stayed with her throughout the event and became the thread connecting many of the lessons that followed.

Influence Goes Beyond Expertise

The next piece of the puzzle came during Building Influence with Executive and Cross-Functional Peers, led by Brad Donnelley, Design Lead at Apple.

Coming from a brand design background before moving into product design, Mariana immediately connected with his perspective on influence. While technical expertise remains essential, creating impact often depends on helping others understand the value of what we’re building and why it matters.

One of the workshop’s key themes was adapting communication to different audiences and stakeholders. Rather than presenting the same message to everyone, participants were encouraged to understand what each person or team values and frame their narrative accordingly.

Brad showed how to understand exactly who, when, and how to pitch our story. It wasn’t only about communication; it was about navigating daily friction, building alignment, and creating stronger relationships across teams.

For Mariana, the session reinforced an important lesson: leadership isn’t only about having expertise. It’s about creating understanding.

Be Data-Informed, Not Data-Driven

If there was one idea that truly clicked during the event, it came from a statement Brad shared during his workshop: “Be data-informed, and not data-driven.”

In product development, “data-driven” has become one of the most commonly used phrases. We build data-driven products, make data-driven decisions, and measure data-driven outcomes. While data remains essential, Mariana found this perspective refreshingly balanced.

We work with data, absolutely, but our job is to ask why and what.

The comment challenged her to rethink the role designers play beyond the numbers.

If data alone could provide every answer, there would be little need for designers to explore context, question assumptions, and uncover the human side of a problem. Data helps us understand what is happening. Design helps us understand what it means.

The insight also highlighted the importance of translating information into narratives that resonate with different stakeholders. Every team, leader, and partner has their own priorities, and effective collaboration often depends on speaking the language that matters most to them.

Bringing New Perspectives Back to Mercedes-Benz.io

While the personal reflections were valuable, Mariana also left Lisbon with practical approaches she is eager to explore further in her day-to-day work.

One is Brad Donnelley’s storytelling framework, which provides a structured way to build stronger narratives and create alignment with cross-functional partners.

Another is the Management Map, introduced by Farley Fernandes during his workshop Design for Business Impact. The framework helps visualise the connection between data insights, design decisions, business goals, and measurable outcomes, making it easier to communicate value across different stakeholders.

For Mariana, these learnings are particularly relevant because much of a designer’s impact happens through collaboration.

At Mercedes-Benz.io, building successful digital products means working closely with engineers, product managers, business stakeholders, and partners across the wider Mercedes-Benz ecosystem. The better teams communicate, influence, and align around shared goals, the stronger the outcomes they can create together.

In a company where collaboration spans products, domains, and markets, the ability to connect user needs, design decisions, and business objectives can be just as important as the solutions themselves.

The Most Valuable Conversations Happened Between Sessions

Beyond the workshops themselves, some of the most memorable moments happened in the conversations between them.

Surrounded by Product Designers from different companies, countries, and industries, Mariana discovered that many of the challenges she encounters every day are shared across the wider design community.

Whether the conversation focused on cross-functional collaboration, demonstrating the value of design, navigating organisational complexity, or understanding how emerging technologies such as AI may reshape future ways of working, the same themes kept emerging.

It was reassuring to realise that many of the challenges we face aren’t unique to our own environment. Designers everywhere are navigating similar shifts, and that creates a huge opportunity to learn from one another.

Those discussions provided something every great event hopes to achieve: perspective.

They served as a reminder that while every organisation is different, many of the questions teams are trying to solve are remarkably similar and that there is enormous value in learning from how others approach them.

After Leadership Ateliers, Leadership Means…

When asked to complete the sentence “After Leadership Ateliers, leadership means…”, Mariana’s answer was simple:

Leadership means having the courage to ask the right questions, the flexibility to adapt our narrative to the audience, and the wisdom to know what to let go of so we can focus on what truly drives impact.

Looking back, the most valuable lesson from Leadership Ateliers wasn’t a framework, a workshop exercise, or even a new methodology.

It was recognising that leadership often starts with letting go: of the need to have all the answers, of the work that no longer aligns with our greatest impact, and of the assumption that influence comes from authority alone.

Leadership is about asking better questions, telling better stories, and creating the conditions for others to succeed and that’s a mindset that extends far beyond design.