The job profile of a product leader is akin to a CEO of a company.
A product leader is ultimately responsible for the success and failure of a product, and by extension, the company itself. This raises the question of what makes a true product leader.
We find out the traits of a model product leader and the product team in this book.

The Product Leader

Common characteristics of Successful Product Teams: <ul><li>Lifelong learning.</li><li>Strong communication.</li><li>Empathy.</li><li>Diversity.</li><li>Business savvy.</li><li>Cross-functional representation.</li><li>Collocation.</li><li>Autonomy.</li><li>Interdependence.</li><li>Accountability.</li></ul>

A Successful Product Team

Experienced product people with strong soft skills are low in supply in most markets. One can derive the characteristics of good product leaders from the high level traits of a successful team. One key aspect in this respect is a product leader’s ability to align team members around a shared goal or vision.

How To Identify Product Leaders

Having a deep interest in learning, enthusiastically accepting new challenges, encouraging others to speak up, and listening to their perspectives are all actions driven by curiosity.

Curiosity

The primary focus has to be on the problems faced by customers. Instead of features, one can opt to provide themes, based on what the customer wants and what problem is solved.
Themes are a promise to solve problems not to build features. Once you’ve truly understood customer problems, you can start prioritising. Prioritisation is best done through the lens of the core product management principles: first, is it valuable; second, is it usable and third, is it feasible?

Focusing On Customer Problems

The kind of leader that needs constant recognition and praise is not likely to be the best person for this job. 
The top product leaders hardly ever get recognition for their hard work and dedication. Furthermore, they tend to turn any limelight they receive back on their teams.

The Team First Approach

This might be controversial, but when you consider what product leaders do each day, it’s no surprise that selling is one of the things to look out for in product leaders. 
To be clear, this is not the type of selling associated with business development; rather, it’s not the type that works to change minds and get buy-in from others.

Every Job Is A Sales Job

Product leaders are typically comfortably wearing the hats of marketer, manager, technologist, customer advocate, and facilitator, to name a few. 
This doesn’t mean they are experts at each of these roles; rather, they are comfortable working across all areas as the role evolves or as the product demands.

Wearing Multiple Hats

The ability to share information in a clear, concise manner is a necessary and desirable skill for a product leader. 
Whether they’re talking, listening, writing, planning, sharing, or facilitating, the goal is always to be understood.

Clear Communication Ability

More and more organisations are moving away from a traditional top-down approach, whereby senior management determines ‘upstream’ what people ‘downstream’ should be doing. 
Companies like Spotify have been very successful in creating autonomous and cross-functional teams. The success of this approach doesn’t only come from the cross-functional and collaborative nature of Spotify teams; people within these teams are also very close to the customer. The People in the company are the product.

Employees Are Paramount

Successful product teams do NOT require hard skills, such as engineering, design or even specific product management expertise. 
In contrast, with product managers, the focus is much more on soft skills.

Product management and product leadership are people-first roles. Teams are made up of individuals who each bring their own personalities, perspective, and opinions. Understanding what makes people tick makes it easier to get the best out of them and identify when there is a problem.
Being an empathic product leader doesn’t mean you have to be all things to all people but you’re able to engage emphatically with others, even if they don’t have a lot in common with them.

Playing Well With Others

<ul>
<li>Equanimity.</li>
<li>Working with ease under pressures and deadlines.</li>
<li>Having an understanding that shipping products is a race against time.</li>
<li>Displaying grace even under fire.</li>
</ul>

Other Traits of A PL

Best Practices to Align Stakeholders, Guide Development Teams, and Create Value Together

books

Books

teamwork

Teamwork

product

Product & Design

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

communication

Communication

Leading in Product Management 

Product Leaders and Product Teams: Management Basics

In today’s lightning-fast technology world, good product management is critical to maintaining a competitive advantage. Yet, managing human beings and navigating complex product roadmaps is no easy task, and it’s rare to find a product leader who can steward a digital product from concept to launch without a couple of major hiccups. Why do some product leaders succeed while others don’t? This insightful book presents interviews with nearly 100 leading product managers from all over the world. Authors Richard Banfield, Martin Eriksson, and Nate Walkingshaw draw on decades of experience in product design and development to capture the approaches, styles, insights, and techniques of successful product managers. If you want to understand what drives good product leaders, this book is an irreplaceable resource. In three parts, Product Leadership helps you explore: Themes and patterns of successful teams and their leaders, and ways to attain those characteristics Best approaches for guiding your product team through the startup, emerging, and enterprise stages of a company’s evolution Strategies and tactics for working with customers, agencies, partners, and external stakeholders

In today’s lightning-fast technology world, good product management is critical to maintaining a competitive advantage. Yet, managing human beings and navigating complex product roadmaps is no easy task, and it’s rare to find a product leader who can steward a digital product from concept to launch without a couple of major hiccups. Why do some product leaders succeed while others don’t?This insightful book presents interviews with nearly 100 leading product managers from all over the world. Authors Richard Banfield, Martin Eriksson, and Nate Walkingshaw draw on decades of experience in product design and development to capture the approaches, styles, insights, and techniques of successful product managers. If you want to understand what drives good product leaders, this book is an irreplaceable resource.In three parts, Product Leadership helps you explore:<ul><li>Themes and patterns of successful teams and their leaders, and ways to attain those characteristics</li><li>Best approaches for guiding your product team through the startup, emerging, and enterprise stages of a company’s evolution</li><li>Strategies and tactics for working with customers, agencies, partners, and external stakeholders</li></ul>

The Product Leader

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