How to Lead with Impact: 5 Mistakes Great Product Leaders Don't Make

Becoming a leader that people respect

Leadership is more art than science.

How often do you stumble upon the following?

• An outstanding PM gets promoted to Head of Products

• A few months later, the team crashes

• The once great PM is now a poor Head of Products

Why does that happen?

When you raise to the level of your incompetence, it’s tough to understand you’ve got a lot to learn. Unfortunately, imitating good leaders won’t cut.

The hard truth is that nobody will teach you to lead correctly; you must learn that independently.

This episode is more personal than most of mine. It’s a reflection of my mistakes as a new product leader, mistakes that hurt me and other people. Sadly, I wasn’t the only one screwing up. As I started coaching, I noticed that many first-time leaders make predictable, avoidable mistakes.

Let me unveil them to you.

Do You Know the Cost of Bad Leadership?

Have you ever had a bad manager? What happened?

Let me guess: you tried your best to dodge them, and if your manager still disturbed you, quitting was probably the only alternative. Maybe that’s what you’re facing now.

What about the oppositve? What happens when you have a great manager?

I bet you tolerate more things you dislike because your manager makes your life easier. Maybe your manager inspires and supports you while listening to you. It’s unlikely you’ll consider quitting.

No matter how good the job is, people will quit bad managers.

The cost of poor leadership is high. Turnover keeps increasing while results decrease.

Do You Know What a Great Leader Is?

You probably have your definition of a good leader, which may vary from mine. Yet, we’d share some traits of what great means:

• Lead with direction, not command

• Support you to overcome challenges you face

• Help people grow

• Set clear objectives

• Give prompt feedback

For me, Simon Sinek’s definition of a leader best describes it as creating the space where ideas can happen, not about coming up with all the great ideas.

The 5 Dangerous Mistakes Most First-Time Leaders Make

Even seasoned leaders fall prey to common mistakes. It’s just natural that first-time leaders will face some missteps before they can master the art.

It took me a decade to officially start leading people. As I evolved my product craft, I mentored many product people but didn’t lead any. When I became a leader, I thought I was ready for it. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I made frequent mistakes because I got things wrong.

Let’s talk about them so you don’t fall prey to the same things as I did.

#1 Be The Leader You Always Wanted

When I first became Head of Product, I thought, “Now, I will be the leader I wish I had.” I thought that was precisely what I should do, so I did the following:

• Empowered teams with clear outcomes

• Gave them trade-offs to ensure value creation

• Set guardrail metrics to protec what mattered

• Create room for prompt feedback

After a few months as a leader, I noticed something weird happening. Progress was slow, and I couldn’t understand why. As I poked into the situation, I learned teams struggled to make decisions. They scheduled meetings to discuss everything but didn’t involve me, as I shouldn’t care about that. Why did we get into that situation?

I made a wrong assumption. I assumed everyone thought like I did. They didn’t.

I became the leader I wanted, not the one the team needed. I failed to understand that the team longed for structure and needed guidance to accelerate decisions. I didn’t notice that my team had no prior experience making decisions based on evidence, as they always worked on a feature factory game. In short, I asked them to play a game they were clueless about and left them alone—shame on me.

Great leaders are like chameleons. They adapt according to the situation. Be the leader your team needs, not the one you wanted.

#2 Leaving the Team Alone

As a PM, I hated micromanagers, so I decided I should be one. Yet, there’s a thin line between micromanaging the team and understanding when to intervene.

First, I left the team alone to figure out the work. I distanced myself from the tactics and focused on getting business folks and C-level executives. In short, I did all I could to shield the team from noise. That worked, but I overlooked the issues the team faced.

Most problems came to me as escalations or complex issues. I knew what the team was working on and the results they created. However, I didn’t know how they were working, which made it impossible for me to see issues they couldn’t see.

To fix this situation, I adopted a different strategy:

• Building Together: Recurrent session where PMs brought what they were working on and challenges they faced. Everyone in the room, including me, could help and challenge the work.

• Async Feedback: We created an open channel where PMs shared their work, and anyone could give feedback and understand what was happening.

I intervened little but could give precise feedback, unlocking progress as I understood how the team worked.

#3 The Good Boss Who Kills Potential

Being nice isn’t the same as being helpful. Don’t make the same mistake I did.

It’s easy to be a “good” boss; you need to:

• Defend your people

• Listen to them

• Give them freedom

• Trust them

Yet, that will limit your people’s potential. The hard way, I learned that whatever you tolerate becomes the norm. For example,

• People arrive late to meetings, and you say nothing; that’s the new norm.

• When someone fails to deliver on a promise, you turn a blind eye to it. That becomes the norm.

• A PM lets the product quality slide, and you don’t react to it. Soon, more PMs will do the same.

• When a feature goes to production without evidence that it makes sense, you give no feedback. Soon, more PMs will do the same.

You need to be mindful about what you tolerate because, without further notice, that will become the norm.

Sadly, I tolerated too much. Soon, I realized the bar was too low, and fixing that was no easy job. I wasn’t a good boss anymore, but a picky boss. The second led to better results than the first.

Trust me, you want to be the leader who enables growth, not the leader who lets the team settle for little.

#4 Misunderstanding Your Responsibility

I’m passionate about crafting products and have always been and will always be. That’s helpful as a product manager but can get in the way as a leader. I came to a harsh realization that took too long: The product was no longer my responsibility.

My real product was my people. I had to help them grow instead of keep putting my finger into the product.

When I first became a leader, I still thought a lot about the product, its dynamics, its business model, and how it solved worthy customers’ jobs. I even interviewed customers and shared some ideas with the team. What did I miss?

The more senior you become, the more careful you should be with what you say. People will interpret your ideas as orders even when you don’t mean that.

The attitude you want to see is different. You want to ask more questions than you give answers because you want your people to develop critical thinking.

As the master, Bill Campbell, continuously said, “It’s about taking care of those in charge.”

#5 Lack of Critical Feedback

One of the toughest things about being a Product Leader is telling people what they need to hear, not what they want.

Sometimes, people think something is great and want confirmation. But if you see holes in it, you better give critical feedback and ignore it.

Some people will come to you to solve conflicts with other people. They want you to solve it for them. Yet, you better encourage 1:1 feedback first before you step in.

Feedback is a present that enables growth. Yet, it’s hard to give that when people don’t expect to receive it.

Great feedback will:

• Focus on what you observed.

• State the situation, action, and impact.

• Be timely - old feedback doesn’t help development.

Whenever I lead teams, I do my best to create an environment where feedback is natural. Since I’m not a coach, I even invest in hiring external coaches to help team members master the art of feedback.

Final Thoughts

You’ll be a poor leader before you become a good one. Yet, you’ll only become a good leader if you’re humble enough to step back and rewire your brain.

Being a great product manager is incredible, but that doesn’t automatically make you a great leader. Leading requires different skills and attitudes, but if you’re up to the challenge, you can help teams drive value while having fun.

It all starts by acknowledging our mistakes or potential pitfalls. From there, we can move to mastery. You only need to answer one question as honestly as possible:

Are you ready to reinvent yourself?

Go a step further and download my 5 leaders’ mistake checklist.

Product Leadership checklist by David Pereira

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