How to Overcome 6 Key Product Leadership Challenges
Leading stakeholders and development teams is difficult: it necessitates product managers and product owners overcoming six leadership challenges ranging from a lack of transactional power to guiding self-organizing teams. Here we discuss the six challenges and offer practical tips for overcoming them.
No Transactional Power
Unlike a line manager, you usually don’t manage the development team and stakeholders as the person in charge of the product, and the individuals don’t report to you. As a result, you lack transactional power. To overcome this challenge, the following tips will help you:
- Empathise with the individuals and make an effort to understand their perspectives, needs, and interest
- Speak and act with integrity: Say what is true and make your actions match your words
- Show people that you value their ideas and concerns and involve them in product decisions
- Get to know people and allow them to get to know you
- Strengthen your expertise. The more knowledgeable you are, the more likely it is that people will trust and follow you
Dual Role
- You are a leader and contributor. This sets you apart from a line manager and project manager
- As a product leader, you also contribute to getting the product out of the door
- To be a successful leader and contributor, carefully manage your time and adopt a sustainable pace
- Do not take on tasks that are not part of your role
Leadership at Multiple Levels
- Guiding the development team and stakeholders towards product success requires leadership at three levels: vision, strategy, and tactics
- A shared product vision and validated product strategy are more important to guide and aligning people than beautifully crafted user stories
- Acquire the skills that you might lack and deepen the existing ones and do not neglect the product discovery and strategy work
Leading a Large and Heterogeneous Group
- It takes a while for a group of people to get to know each other, build trust, and be able to effectively collaborate
- Every time a team changes, team performance tends to dip
- Keep the stakeholders and development team stable to increase your ability to constructively deal with disagreements and resolve conflicts
Agile Process Constraints
- While an agile process offers great benefits for product people, it constrains how you can lead the development team
- Let the individual help the team to learn how to effectively work together and make realistic commitments
- View the team as an equal partner
- Participate in sprint retrospectives to help improve the collaboration and the process
Limited Influence on Group Selection
- You might know who would be best suited to work as a stakeholder or team member, but you are typically not in a position to hand-pick people
- Clearly communicate the roles you need to fill and the skills people will require and let the individuals decide if they want to be on the team
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