No-Nonsense Product Leadership Guide
How lead teams with impact while every pushes you in different directions
A good product leader is the difference between outstanding and mediocre results.
Yet, can you define what a good product leader is?
It’s not about knowing all the product frameworks and tools and being the smartest product person in the room.
It’s all about creating the conditions so your product people have a chance of doing great work.
I based this episode on my observations across Europe over the last few years. I don’t claim to be the ultimate product leadership guide, but I can guarantee it’s grounded on earth. Here’s what you will get from this post:
Overview of what product leadership is in reality
Leadership principles I wish I knew before I screwed up a few times
How to craft a routine that matters instead of being busy for the sake of it
Setting expectations:
Free Subscribers: Overview of No-Nonsense Product Leadership (5 minutes reading time)
Premium Subscribers: Deep Dive including hands-on and clear direction (18 minutes reading time)
Once a month, I share a premium deep dive full of applicable insights. Here’s what you may have missed:
101 PM Skillset: Understand which skills you need to rock the product world
33 Anti-Patterns That Transform Product Managers Into Backlog Managers: Learn how to spot and overcome common anti-patterns that block your growth
Product Delivery Guide: Clarify how to drive value beyond features from end to end
Product Discovery Guide: Understand how to apply discovery that enables you to drop bad ideas fast enough while uncovering hidden opportunities
Product Strategy Guide: Learn how to craft a product strategy that simplifies decision-making.
Now, back to our episode!
The Real Job
Product leaders come with different labels, such as Head of Product, Director of Product, VP of Product, Chief Product Officer, Product Lead, or whatever creativity allows. We’re not wasting time discussing the differences. I will call Product Lead throughout the episode, referring to someone who leads Product Managers.
Becoming a Product Lead varies a lot. You may get promoted from Senior Product Manager or switch companies, starting with a leadership role. Now, let’s be honest: either way, you’re inexperienced doing the new job. That’s what happened to me.
I was a successful Product Manager but soon became an inexperienced Head of Product. In a few minutes, I will share my painful mistakes, which many other leaders frequently make.
Let’s start our chat with the job itself.
What You Think a Product Lead Does
I thought that being an experienced product manager would be enough to rock as a Product Lead. I was wrong.
I thought my job related to:
Coach product managers to use the most fitting frameworks
Define roadmaps with product managers
Help product managers avoid common and predictable traps
Be a sparring partner for product managers to create better products
Have you ever had a leader who was too involved in getting the job done? That’s how I initially behaved because I thought the job was to help product managers create better products. Doesn’t that make sense? Maybe, but it gets you lost in the woods, and you won’t see the forest.
If you’re new to Product Leadership, you’re likely doing something similar to the above. That’s normal. Now, let me clarify what the actual job is all about.
What a Product Lead Really Does
Once you become a Product Lead, you’re no longer in charge of the product. You’re in charge of people. Product managers become your product.
Your role isn’t to help product managers create better products. Your role is to create a space where product managers can maximize their impact. You’ve got to step out from doing the work because you’re no longer the one accountable for that.
It took me a while to recognize that because I’m passionate about crafting. Yet, a leader’s responsibilities move from product to people, making the game more challenging.
Here are a few things you’ll do (we will have a deep dive in a few minutes)
Set a clear direction so your team knows what success looks like
Remove blockers so your people can progress faster
Develop your people to outgrow their role
Understand the individual needs of each team member
Make hard decisions fast - whatever you tolerate becomes the norm
Common Challenges
Once you step into a Product Lead role, you will have challenges you couldn’t foresee as a product manager. Here are some examples:
Some people don’t get along with each other, yet you need them to work together
You will face ambiguous choices, and you may please management at the expense of pissing off your people or vice-versa
Your comments can become orders even when you don’t want that
Some people don’t fit professionally but are great team members. Handling that is sensitive, to say the least
Often, product managers will tackle problems in different ways than you would. You’ll itch to step in, but you shouldn’t because it’s not your job
You’ll need to fly at different levels to understand where to act, and that’s tough
The above are a few examples of what you will inevitably face. You will make mistakes, like I did. Let’s expose them.
Common Mistakes
I’ve been a product leader over the last five years. And I’m not ashamed to share my mistakes because it’s normal when you raise your incompetence level.
Here are the most common mistakes you will face:
Tell people what to do. You’re probably the best product manager on your team, but that’s no longer your role. I used to tell people what they should do. Initially, they liked that, but then I realized I limited their growth because I didn’t help them sharpen their critical thinking.
Provide feedback too late (or, even worse, don’t provide it). Feedback enables growth, but giving timely, meaningful feedback is challenging. A thin line between observation and interpretation can offend people and create distance. Yet, you owe your people honesty and critical feedback whenever necessary. Not giving feedback is a huge mistake, but giving it too late is also unhelpful.
Ignore what you hear. No matter how you lead, you will listen to complaints from different people. Sometimes, you may think that’s irrelevant, and people have to get used to work challenges. But you need to be careful about what you ignore. Something unimportant to you may be the reason somebody resigns.
Obsession with now. As a Product Lead, you will have pressure to get your team to deliver results, which leads to a tricky situation. You can demand your team to work on what matters most now with full power, but if you keep doing that, you quickly limit your team’s potential. First, nobody will look further than a few weeks, and second, they won’t get excited with considerable pressure. A balance between present, future, and professional growth is necessary for the long run.
No time to think. Your job requires a lot of reflection. Some examples are what you should double down on, what to cut short, who to promote, who to let go, how to attract talents, and more. If you get busy the whole day in meetings, you won’t have time to think, quickly diminishing your impact.
Leadership Principles
It took me too long to understand that principles matter more than anything else. Without solid leadership principles, you’ll struggle to lead with impact.
After working with many outstanding leaders and exchanging with many others, I uncovered the principles that can help you become an exceptional leader.
Let’s now clarify how you can bring the above 6 principles to life.
1. Be the leader your team needs
What kind of leader do you want to be?
It’s easy to envision becoming the leader you always dreamed of working with. While this makes a lot of sense, it’ll quickly fail because your people will have different needs from yours.
You need to be the leader your team needs, not the one you’d like to have.
When I first became a leader, I empowered teams and gave them the space they needed to achieve their desired outcomes. Why did I do that? Because that’s what I always longed for. All I needed as a product manager was direction and flexibility. Yet, that’s me, not the team I had. After months, I noticed teams didn’t progress much. I wondered why, so I talked to my team. Here are some things I heard:
I have many choices and don’t know what to do next.
We have many meetings to discuss the work, but we cannot agree fast.
I don’t have clarity on what you expect from me.
I realized I wasn’t the leader the team needed. People had different challenges and expectations, which I wasn’t addressing.
My most critical learning: You’ve got to understand what your team needs and become the leader that delivers on that. You won’t find a standard answer because your situation defines your actions.
2. Give clear direction to your team
What matters most right now?
Be very careful how you answer that question. The most common way will include a list of items the teams must address. That may be goals, objectives, tasks, or features. What’s the problem with that?
Plural.