Product Collective - Become a product leader 💪

Going from product person to Product Leader

When you transition from managing products to managing the people who manage products, you can’t rely solely on your product management skills. You also need to add people management skills to your toolkit. Here are some perspectives on what those new skills are and how you can go about picking them up.

Moving from individual contributor to product leader. There’s a huge shift that takes place when you move from managing a product (with a team) to leading a product team. It’s not just a change in how you spend your day—it’s a whole new outlook, with a focus on different skills and competencies. Jason Knight, Product Director at DueDil, joined The Product Experience podcast to talk about some of the lessons he’s learned along his journey.
(via @MindtheProduct)

Becoming a Product Leader. James Wang has struggled with the move from individual contributor Product Manager to Product Leader, and has seen others struggle with it as well. While James felt there is some good guidance available, he thought there could always be more. So he wrote a series of articles to share his understanding of the kinds of outcomes and behaviors necessary in moving from Product Manager to Product Leader. 
(via @wangjamesj)

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Ready to Rise?

Earlier this week, we kicked off a brand new program for Product Collective – our Rising Leaders program. It’s a small-group program specifically for those transitioning from Product Management to Product Leadership… the exact topic of today’s newsletter. The program filled up quickly… and really, it shouldn’t have been a big surprise to us.

Making that transition to product leadership is just… hard. It was already hard enough to figure out how to do our jobs well as Product Managers. But when we’re asked to focus less on our products and more on our teams and product strategy combined… it’s not exactly the kind of thing that some on-demand course will teach you. 

So what do you do if you’re in this challenging spot? Many of the resources in this week’s newsletter should help. But beyond that, keep these things in mind:

1. Find your group. Maybe you find it in a Slack group, like we have for the Product Collective community (or others out there)... or maybe it’s just that close-knit group of friends you have who were all Junior PM’s at some point and now you’re all growing in your careers. Either way, finding a group of people like this helps you face challenges with others instead of doing it alone.
2. Be mindful of what you’re learning. Be thoughtful about what you want for yourself. Is it to learn how to manage other PM’s? Is it to be more confident about Product Strategy? Set some FAST goals, and every week… reflect on what you’ve done to get farther in accomplishing these goals, whether in a small or big way. 

Making that transition is hard, which is why our Rising Leaders program exists. But people do make that transition successfully every day… and you can, too – whether you’re in a program or not. Just be sure to be intentional about the process and you’ll give yourself the best chance to succeed. 

(Oh, and you can register your interest here if you want to be a part of our next cohort!)

Latest Slack Activity

Tips for becoming a Head of Product. Becoming a Head of Product and managing a group of product people is a significant career step. Roman Pichler shares his recommendations to help you get ready for the new job and be off to a great start.
(via @romanpichler)

Bridging the gap: From Product Management to Product Leadership. Great Product Managers are adept at problem-solving and connecting the dots between business, technology and user experience. Great Product Leaders are competent with these things and are also skilled at people management. The value of Product Leaders isn’t what they can do as an individual product person, but what overall outcomes their product teams create. Becoming a Product Leader means becoming a leader of leaders. Anthony Tan explores three fundamental shifts that Product Managers need to build their people management skills and become great Product Leaders.
(via newcampushq)

Leveling Up From Product Manager To Product Leader. You can’t advance from Senior Product Manager to becoming a Product Leader just by doing what you’ve done before on a bigger scale. As a Product Lead you fundamentally need a different set of skills. Sogol Fathian shares the key transitions to become a successful product leader she learned from a talk by Jules Walters at INDUSTRY virtual in April 2021. When Jules got promoted from Senior Product Manager to a Product Lead at Slack, he struggled to keep up with the new job.  
(via @sogolff)

The Relationship between Product Managers and User Researchers

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