My Product Leadership

As a product leader, I have a clear expectation of how my product organization should work and collaborate to achieve results.

Here's my product leader DNA:

• I have three pillars of leadership: I build trust through strong relationships and accountability, foster a proactive coaching environment, and provide hands-on support while facilitating clear and inclusive strategy development." (Learn more here)
• I put learning and growing first and am a coaching leader: I have been coaching my directs, other people in my organization and product people from other organization since 2020. See my coaching profile. I also help product managers on Reddit. Also see my book recommendations (Spoiler: No Marty Cagan)
• My leadership approach is validated by the positive feedback from my peers, mentors and mentees, highlighting my adaptability, coaching abilities, and commitment to fostering strong collaborations, which you can explore in more detail here.
• I care a lot about the "how" of collaboration and have a list of questions to align on these requirements
• I prioritize people management and lateral leadership: only a good product team can reach big goals, not the leader and not one product manager alone. How do I do it? Have async Kanban boards to help directs to move topics, over-offer hel and have weekly one-on-one with everyone you lead – and come prepared. See this article about how I do that.
• I know when and how to lead async and sync: I hop on a call to make blurry things clear and give direction. I take things async when it is about details. I make sure that my directs have time and headspace to work deeply. Here is my guideline for async leadership.
• I excel at product management by shaping great collaborations. And to make them great, the most important thing is to set clear expectations. A simple document that you draft together and revise regularly can be enough.
• I am very technical (I have been programming and part-time freelance for 10+ years, see my technical articles)
• I ask a lot of open-ended questions when working on a problem
• I have the mindset of hypothesis → rapid test → learn.
• I also expect these three traits from a good product manager.
• Instant, constructive and bite-sized feedback is what I give and take with gratitude (see 1 and 2 on how I do it)
• I am a self-made person (quit school, freelanced on the side, learned to code by myself).
• I am a lateral leader who leads with trusting early and much (fundraising, Head of Product leadership).
• I am a "let's do it! Together!"-type shaper who can do coding, business, and UX (built NGO, shaped Ed for full industry alone).
• I have always inspired and empowered the people I worked with (volunteering, NGO, hired and grew diverse Product Managers).
• I drive product with bold, informed decisions that are based on solid data and qualitative insights.
• I grew quickly within the formal product management ladder (Regular PM to Head of Product with 6 teams and millions of users within 3,5 years) because I have been translating and leading between business, technology and user experience for nearly 20 years in various positions (even without the formal title).