138: How to Make an Impact As A Product Leader

How to Make an Impact As A Product Leader

In this episode, how to accelerate your career growth by developing your leadership skills. Practical advice and actionable steps for product managers looking to advance in their careers.

There’s a difference between management and leadership. John C. Maxwell said, “Leadership is not about titles, positions, or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another.” And this is fundamentally how product managers must operate anyway, since normally we have no authority, but we must lead. Developing our leadership skills to influence others and drive their products to success is a baseline requirement.

Among other advice, I talk about the importance of:

* Leading yourself: self-awareness and self-management are critical to becoming an effective leader. Reflect on your strengths and weaknesses, identify areas for improvement, and create a plan to address them.

* Building strong relationships, with your team, stakeholders, and customers is essential for effective leadership. I share a few tips for effective communication, active listening, and building trust.

* Develop your strategic thinking skills to enable you to go beyond day-to-day tasks and focus on – and execute toward – the big picture.

Resources

In the episode I mentioned a few other episodes you might find useful:

* The V.A.L.U.A.B.L.E. Rubric for Writing Better Requirements

* How Product Managers Can Build Psychological Safety In Their Teams

And I shared a few great quotes from various management thinkers.

* John C. Maxwell – “Leadership is not about titles, positions, or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another.”

* Warren Bennis – “Leaders must encourage their organizations to dance to forms of music yet to be heard” and “Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.”

* Peter Drucker – “Leadership is not about being in charge. It’s about taking care of those in your charge.”

* Simon Sinek – “A leader’s job is not to do the work for others, it’s to help others figure out how to do it themselves, to get things done, and to succeed beyond what they thought possible.”

My product manager meetup

* If you’d like to get on the notification list for my free weekly product manager meetup, go to https://secretsofpm.com/meetup.

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How to Make an Impact As A Product Leader

In this episode, how to accelerate your career growth by developing your leadership skills. Practical advice and actionable steps for product managers looking to advance in their careers.

There’s a difference between management and leadership. John C. Maxwell said, “Leadership is not about titles, positions, or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another.” And this is fundamentally how product managers must operate anyway,