Product leadership is an important part of the product management role, and it is important that the product manager has a good understanding of how to lead their team.
A product leader knows how to communicate their vision for the product and help others understand its importance. They also know how to effectively manage other teams that are part of the building process. Product leaders are able to translate their vision into a successful final product by aligning with other leaders in the organization, such as marketing and development. The best way for a product leader to do this is by being persistent and focused on deadlines; they must be persistent in their day-to-day while enabling others to be persistent as well and lead them to meet deadlines and improve the product. Communication skills are also very important when it comes to leading others. A good communicator can help motivate people by setting clear expectations and goals, while also making sure everyone is on board with them.
There are many kinds of leaders, including those who lead by example, those who inspire through passion, or those who lead through power or intimidation. Whatever kind of leader you may be or want to be, remember that your success depends on your ability to create an environment where people feel safe enough to share ideas without fear of reprisal—and where they feel valued enough that they’re willing (and excited!) to be a part of your project’s success!
The way I think about a product leader’s job is that it can be broken down into three areas of focus and responsibility.
The first area is the execution of individual features. This is where the single product manager owns the design and implementation of the feature and interfaces with their engineering teams and other cross-functional groups to make sure they have everything they need to deliver that feature.
The second area is strategy, vision, and alignment. This is where you’re driving the overall strategic direction for your product area (or even your entire company) with respect to your specific feature(s) or set of features. You’re trying to figure out how these features fit into the overall scheme of things and how they align with your company’s overall vision for its products, services, or business as well as determining what impact these features will have on other products in your product lines or even other parts of your company (such as marketing).
And finally, you’re responsible for communicating this vision and strategy out to everyone who needs to know it so they can understand how their work fits into this bigger picture.
The third area of focus is leadership. This includes leading your team members by providing them with guidance on how best to accomplish their responsibilities in an efficient manner so that their work adds value and doesn’t detract from the overall product experience.
You’re also responsible for managing their performance so that you can ensure that everyone is doing what needs to be done when it needs to be done at a high level
