When you realize that your team member is better than you, what would you do? First, congratulate yourself that you are not one of those “leaders” who carefully avoid hiring people who can be a potential threat to their position. You have made the right choice of hiring smarter people. A couple
When promoted to a leadership role, one may wonder if it’s necessary to continue functioning as an individual contributor (IC). For instance, a product manager may be tempted to write a PRD and launch a feature instead of delegating them to a team member. Frequently cited reasons for taking up IC work
John was a product leader at a global firm known for its people-centred culture. He was an empathetic leader who always put his team members first. He cared deeply about his team members’ careers and emotional well-being and didn’t reprimand them when mistakes were made. He spent a lot of time mentoring
Feedback from managers could be misinterpreted by team members. Here is one possible misinterpretation – Imagine you had a feedback session with your manager. Your manager listed 5 items under “areas to focus on and improve”. Since there were a bunch of things to work upon, you pick up 2 items from
Sheela, the Director of products had a quarterly feedback session with her PM Sahil. She conveyed the following to Sahil – “Hello Sahil – Good to have you join our team (from the last quarter). Things have gotten better after you joined and started managing the customer experience initiatives. Few long pending
New leaders find it difficult to delegate their responsibilities to their team. A consequence of this is another challenge that leaders hardly notice and reduces their effectiveness. We call this ‘reverse delegation’. Imagine you are the leader. One of your team members drops by your desk and says ‘Boss, there is a
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?”.
Lakshmi was a hungry Product Manager. She had enough work on her plate but still sought more work where she can learn and grow. Her boss, being appreciative, gave her more features to own and build. I.e. more of what she was already doing. In a couple of months, Lakshmi became tired
Rahul (name changed) joined a series-B startup to lead the product function as Senior Director. He was the first product hire and had the mandate to build his team from scratch. He was excited about this new role and the prospect of faster career growth. At this stage, he needed solid PMs
Ahamed has been leading a product line at Ring-ring technologies for the last 3 months. He has 4 Product Managers reporting to him. Prior to this, Ahamed was an individual contributor (IC) and was given the leadership position owing to his contributions as an IC PM. Ahamed started feeling overwhelmed in the
