Purpose: The purpose of this study was to describe and develop what set of skills a design leader require and if these differentiate them from the generic leader in SME organisations. Theory: The themes and concepts we have based the research on is first and foremost design leadership and skills. We have utilised studies by for example: Miller and Moultrie (2013), Joziasse (2011), Turner (2013) and Mumford et al. (2007) in order to develop an extensive theoretical framework.   Methodology: We have approached this research in a deductive and qualitative manner through a descriptive and somewhat exploratory design. We have conducted six semi-structured interviews with leaders at manufacturing SME organisations in ‘Småland’. Conclusion:  Through this research we have established a set of skills that a design leader requires in manufacturing SME organisations. In conclusion we found that the design leader requires well developed generic leadership skills in form of; learn/adapt, speak (convey information), listen (attentive), motivate, inspire, analyse, manage, problem solve, project manage, observe, plan and apprise as well as design specific skills; draw, synthesize, envision-imagine-visualise, edit, design and employ technology. We also identified the difference between the design leader and generic leader, whereby we found a slight difference, even though most generic leaders interviewed utilise aspects of design leadership due to positions interlinking. On top of this we tried to clarify what a design leader really is in these types of organisations, as this was found to be slightly vague in previous literature.