S3 Ep. 5: What Was Your Defining Moment as a Product Leader? Part 2: People
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Hope Gurion: Most leaders will tell you that when they’re solving problems, it’s either a process problem or a people problem. In a 2-part series, we’re hear from product leaders who had defining moments related to how they approach both people and process parts of their roles, both of which are critical to their success. In this second of 2 episodes of the Fearless Product Leadership Defining Moments miniseries, we’ll focus on People as we hear from 4 experienced product leaders share their epiphanies as they answer the question “What was your defining moment as a product leader?”
Welcome to the Fearless Product Leadership podcast. This is the show for new product leaders seeking to increase their confidence and competence. In every episode I ask experienced and thoughtful product leaders to share their strategies and tactics that have helped them tackle a tough responsibility of the product leader role. I love helping emerging product leaders shorten their learning curves to expedite their professional success with great products, teams and stakeholder relationships. I’m your host and CEO of Fearless Product, Hope Gurion.
Many of the product leaders I coach are new to leading the product function and also product teams. Because the nature of product development involves significant cross-functional collaboration, and because so many people working in product are relatively inexperienced, inevitably people-related challenges emerge. A great product leader can empower the people working together in product teams to collaborate well, make great decisions and understand and value each other’s expertise are hallmarks of a great product leader. In this episode, our product leaders share the defining moments that influenced how they recognized how better people practices in their teams could dramatically improved how they create and improve product experiences for their companies and customers. In it you’ll hear from leaders who changed:
· How they ask for help
· How they stay humble to empower their teams to do their best work
· How they scale their time by hiring the right people and investing in their success
Fearlessly tackling the question “What was your defining moment as a product leader?” are:
Nicole Brolan, Chief Product Officer, Redbubble, previously Executive GM – Global Services, Xero
Polly Howden, Chief Product Officer, Roleshare
Marc Abraham, Head of Product – Engagement at ASOS
Audrey Cheng, Chief Product Officer at SnapComms
First, we hear from Polly Howden, as she describes the defining moment when she discovered an unfounded fear was hindering her relationships.
Polly Howden: If I had to think about a moment that was defining to me in my leadership journey. I think it would be when I transitioned from being Senior Product into having to kind of build an own a team of my own. I guess all the imposter syndrome and nerves that come with stepping up a level. I think there was a couple of things that my manager at the same time said to me a couple of months in, that really stick with me. One of them was, you just you don't need to know everything about everything, to be good in this role, it's about, you know, getting support from other people, trusting experts. Equally, he also said something to me, which really shocked me said, “Do you have a problem trusting people?” and that really took me aback and actually really cut me because I thought, “No, I really do value people's contribution” But what I realized, was that being fearful of being found out as not good enough, was actually hindering me from asking for help, bringing people in; and the stupid thing is that as a product person, that's what you do. That is your bread and butter. You collaborate with people and ask them for support and you know that they know actually the job in your view, right. I think I would say, realizing that was the important thing at that level was a real light bulb moment for me.
Hope: Next, we hear from Nicole Brolan, who we heard from in the previous episode. In this story, Nicole shares the defining moment when she recognized her decisive style wasn’t empowering her teams.
Nicole Brolan: When I was in the product director role and so running all of product for ANZ. I've got quite a blunt and direct style. I don't mince my words, I get to the point. That can work for a lot of people, but it can also be, the flip side is, it can be pretty intimidating for some people. I'm quite decisive so if you ask me that you need a decision made and give me the facts, I will make a decision and unblock things. So, what I found early in my product director time is that with some of the product managers, they would present their thinking and their case and I could feel that the sessions didn't go that well. When I would reflect on it, I could see that what was happening was that my style wasn't really working with certain types of Product Managers. I was obviously, potentially a bit intimidating and therefore they will kind of shutting down a little bit, and not as you ended up in this world where you weren't you weren't having a robust conversation which was ultimately what I was trying to drive. I found with this that what changed for me is having to really own who I am, having to own the flaws that come with who I am, and having to two things: one be really vulnerable about that. So, I found the more I talk to my teams about where I'm coming from and why I'm doing the things I'm doing, and being really on the front foot that I'm not perfect, and apologizing for things, has made massive differences in just opening them up and having them be more receptive to me. The second piece is, adjusting my behavior and making sure that I'm being really careful; what I learned in that role is how careful you have to be as a senior product leader about the role you're playing in a room. You have to be very clear on what role, what do the team need from me, therefore, what role can I play to really help support that. Now sometimes, you have to play the hard role. Things are off track, it's not going in a good direction, but I think you need to be super deliberate about where you're doing that, and be conscious of the ramifications of how you behave in that meeting; what's going to happen after that meeting with those teams?
If you're trying to really build a high performing product organization, particularly large companies like SEEK, you have senior leaders. Now, those senior leaders you're only going to attract great senior leaders and retain them. If you're giving them the right level of common autonomy. So, the challenge for a role like this is when do I have to get in and potentially be directive or potentially use these because things are going off track, versus when do I need to let the guard because I trust them, and they're on the right track, and even if they get it wrong. It's still better that they work that out versus me stepping in and I think that's it. I try to focus a lot of my effort is on being the connector. So, I'm in a lot of the, you know, business meetings, I'm talking to strategy, I'm talking to the managing director of ANZ all the time. I'm hearing different perspectives and different context. And so what I always try to focus on with the team is challenging their views with all of the different perspectives that I know are going around the business and helping them to make sure that we're thinking about things broadly enough; and we're catering for those different views and perspectives in our thinking.
Hope: Marc Abraham shares a personal and painful story that taught him the importance of humility as a leader.
Mark Abraham: Yeah, so I think a moment, obviously there's a variety of moments I would say, have been quite influential in me trying to become a product leader. I would say with the caveat that I'm learning every single day. If I pick one moment that definitely has left a big mark in that kind of journey and it was really quite pivotal moment in terms of me becoming a product leader, was actually a moment that I'm not particularly proud of to be honest with you. It was a moment a few years ago when I was head of product and was sitting down with a team of about six engineers in a room, and we're talking about particular piece of work that I, as head of product, and on behalf of the team we'd committed to. I thought it was all in progress being worked on. Moving in the right direction. And it turned out as we were talking about that particular piece of work that it hadn't been done. I said, “What's happening here? We committed to it, we started the work.” And one of the engineers said to me, “Mark, no, you didn't do the work because there were no user stories for it because the BA was off for a few days. and you know how it works right? No user stories, we don't do the work.” At that moment, I haven't done too much analysis into what it triggered within me, but I can tell you that I'm not proud of it. I speak about it openly because it was a huge learning moment for me. I completely lost it. I felt let down. I felt that they were throwing the BA under the bus. They were not taking responsibility. Now I felt stressed because I had to go back and say, “We're not anywhere where I thought we'd be.” I completely lost it. I got aggressive, only verbally luckily, but still, to the extent that people afterwards told me that they were trembling in their seats. I left the room, obviously, fairly quickly after, after I calmed down, I called them back into the room and apologized profusely and explained what happened and why I was disappointed.
What that moment taught me were a couple of things. First of all, its leading by example. It's really hard, and it's not an excuse, don't get me wrong, but as a product person you've got all these pressures, coming from lots of different angles lots of things that you are accountable for but you can't necessarily control or influence or have authority over. So, the risk of a product person losing it or really feeling trapped, or not supported is perhaps a bit higher than compared to some other roles, and I was definitely feeling that in the moment. I would say in any role, but particularly as a leader when you want to take people on a journey, you want to bring people together, you have to lead by example. So, particularly in those moments as hard as it can feel in the moment because you're thinking “what's happening here?” Why didn’t you just write a few user stories in this example?
A couple of things that I've learned from that experience which I'm still applying to this day and sometimes, to be honest with you again, I have to remind myself that these are the things I need to keep doing. For instance, I discovered what I call the “power of the pause”, just taking a moment. People like me with my energy that I like to bring to the table. In the moment, I can react very spontaneously; and that's not always a good thing. Sometimes it's smart to just let it sink in, even if it’s for a few seconds but just those few seconds, I've learned over the years, can be just enough to take off the edge and respond in a slightly more constructive way that people will actually respect you for and will listen to you and it won't alienate people from you. I came across this quote from a guy called, his name is Laszlo Bock who used to work at Google. He talks about humble people are better at bringing others together to solve tough problems, and that word humble really stuck with me. from that experience from reading the quote, from thinking about it. Having that humility. Actually, after that having that episode, I sent myself to an assertiveness course, not because I didn't think I was assertive enough, it was almost like I felt I was over assertive, too aggressive at times, too pushy. Again, how do I take a step back? How do I listen? How do I understand where other people are coming from? In whichever field you're trying to be a leader in be it product management, be it technology, be it something completely different, doesn't matter, I think, humility and being able to listen and being able to take a step back, are critical if you want to be a good leader.
Hope: Finally, Audrey Cheng shares how she hit a wall when she moved to being a product leader at a hypergrowth company and how she came to realize it’s better to let small fires burn so she can focus on what really was most important, hiring and investing in developing her team.
Audrey Cheng: So, I think there are a lot of moments in a product manager and a product leader’s time where you feel like, “Wow! That made a big impact on you know how am I function in the future.” I think the one thing about product managers, is that we make a lot of mistakes, and we're resilient and we pick ourselves up and figure out a path forward. I think for me, one of the defining moments as a product leader, I think being in a hyper growth company, the way that you've had worked in the past, does not scale. So, my previous way of working, prior to experiencing this hyper growth was always like, “I'll just put in a couple more hours, it'll be fine. I’ll just get through this bump. It'll be fine.” but when you're in hyper growth, the only way is up; like more work more hours, there are no more hours in the day, there's more work coming at you, more fires, more opportunities, more challenges. There's just no more time. So, I think one of the moments that was really defining for me was I just got to a point where I was like, I just don't even know how to deal with this. One of the things that was burning that was on my plate that was actually hiring, and I hadn't prioritized that high enough on my list. I kind of thought, if I actually don't write these requirements tonight, the engineers won't have anything for tomorrow, or for the next week. So, I always prioritize something else and I was like, ah the heart I've got the hiring pipeline going like those applications are coming in but I was just really delaying, reviewing them trying to find the right people to come in and see, and actually accepting the fact that, “You know what? Engineering might not be able to work on this piece that is going to add customer value, but there are other components in the pipeline that actually would add value that they could actually spend some time working on that would create some space for me to be able to get the right people in seat to support the growth that we wanted.” I think that was probably when I came to that realization, and it wasn't like I just woke up and was like, “Oh, I'm going to do this” I actually hit a wall, like real hard. I realized that I was breaking. the product, nothing was working well. Usually, what I have is a pretty smooth process going forward and it started to crumble a little bit in front of me you know and I realized that actually I wasn't setting our organization up for success, I wasn't setting the product team up for success for supporting the business in the way that it needed. That required a big fundamental shift in my mindset of letting some fire small fires burn, while you actually take care of the things that really matter. So, hiring and getting the right people see was became a real focus for me and investing in my people became more and more of a focus, rather than thinking just about the product and writing those detailed requirements. Getting the right people to ensure that you can actually execute on supporting your customers and delivering value and supporting business with the ambitious goals that they have in terms of growth. Those are the things that you have to keep in mind as a product leader. I think in those early days, particularly for a new product leader that it's really hard to transition to. I think sometimes it's because we love solving the problems we love getting into the detail, but it's really hard to let go of those pieces, but I think in order to grow and succeed as a product leader, you have to recognize that in that moment like, “Hey I have a choice here that I can stay on this IC [individual contributor] track, or I can move into a more of a leadership role” and I think that's a decision that everybody will have to come to and make a decision on like do you want to help grow the product practice, and have exponential impact on your business, or do you want to be super strong and craft, and be able chart out a lot of that and define that product practice and coach and, you know, so you can leave in different ways just those are really different practices of product management.
Hope: One of my defining moments as a product leader came when I was early in my career as a CPO and after benchmarking our organization’s structure to investing and approving projects blessed by the leadership team against the best practices of others organization, I decided that too much valuable time would be wasted if we did an evolutionary approach. It was time for revolution to shock the system and set ourselves up for success by creating dedicated, cross-functional product teams working towards our desired outcomes based on the products in our portfolio. I worked with our CTO and my leaders to reorganize the individuals into new missions with product trios of PMs, UX and Eng leads. There were casualties. Some Product Managers in title but most comfortable with project management were offered Scrummaster roles requiring retraining. Some PMs were in products that were in sustain vs invest in their lifecycle and weren’t happy about it. I had to make some tough calls and while some embraced their new roles, others opted to look for new roles internally and externally. My CTO was fully in support but also let me bear the brunt of the why, how and who required in the new structure.
Heads spinning, we executed the changes in a matter of just a few weeks to expedite everyone having clarity about what it would take to be successful in our structure, practices and team relationships to achieve some ambitious goals. While it was intense and painful to execute, and eroded some personal relationships, the re-org set us in a powerful new direction that began a new and rewarding era in our product culture and company history of discovery, evidence-based decisions and outcome-oriented durable product teams.
As a leader, you have to make the tough people calls and know when to make small, optimization changes, or big moves to expedite success of the company and teams.
Special thanks to Polly, Marc, Nicole, and Audrey for revealing their defining product leadership moments on this episode.
If you’re a product leader seeking to improve the people part of product development in your organization, I’d love to be of help. Contact me on Linkedin or Twitter or schedule an initial consultation with me using the Contact Me page at fearless-product.com.