Many years ago, I was building a team in a startup. One day my manager pulled me into a conference room to discuss something ad hoc.
He asked me – “I noticed that you were in the boardroom with your product managers and the engineering team for hours together. What is happening?”.
I replied, “Yeah, we are doing sprint planning for our PODs and clarifying the work items”.
“What are you doing there? Isn’t that part of your PMs’ responsibilities and not that of yours?”
“That’s right. But we are a startup and we have hired people with very little PM experience (0 to 2 years). I have to work with them closely so that things get done the right way”.
“You don’t need to do handhold your people”
“If I don’t do this, they might fail. What if they fail? I would be directly responsible for the failure, right?”
He blatantly replied, “Let them fail! I am fine with that.”
Of course, my manager was not secretively hoping that my team fails. He had earlier observed me handholding my team more than required and this incident was just a trigger point.
The subtle message to me was this –
“A strong team is one where individuals can stand on their own, face relevant challenges boldly and learn from mistakes.
Being too protective only weakens your team instead of strengthening them.
It would be hard if not impossible for someone to grow in his/her manager’s shadow indefinitely.“
I learnt something useful that day – on leadership!
In some functions, being protective can yield good returns. A good developer in early years is better off protected by her manager against distractions caused by stakeholders so that she can focus more on delivering awesome code. But this wouldn’t work in the product function. PMs should stand on their own and fight their battles.
To clarify, I am not advocating a leader disowning his/her team.
A balanced approach looks like – “You (the PM) have to perform your defined job responsibilities. If a question or concern is related to your product, you will directly answer/address/defend/influence irrespective of who it comes from – including the CEO. I will stand on the sidelines (not in the middle), observe, mentor and coach you in areas where you would need help”.
Looking forward to both your learnings and disagreements on this topic 🙂
