482: People-first product leadership for higher performing teams – with Diana Stepner

How product managers can empower their teams Today we are talking about how product leaders can create more effective teams by using a people-first leadership approach. Joining us is Diana Stepner, Head of Product for Education at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Her approach to product leadership empowers individuals, fosters collaboration, and connects with people in an authentic way. She is also a product leadership instructor on Maven and has held leadership and advisor product positions. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:09] What does people-first product leadership mean? Launching people is just as important as launching products. When people feel supported, their product efforts shine. When I was defining my leadership style, a colleague referred to me as a servant leader. I appreciated the notion, but I didn’t really like the phrase. I’m not an attendant to my team; I lead my team. Instead, I wanted to acknowledge that I like putting people first, and that’s what I expect for my team. That’s where the phrase people-first product leadership came from. [3:33] What are the key capabilities that leaders need if they’re going to adopt a people-first product leadership approach? * Positive leadership character: Show traits such as integrity, responsibility, forgiveness, and compassion. * Creating psychological safety: Establish an environment where team members feel safe to take risks, speak up, share their ideas, ask questions, be honest, and make mistakes. * Promoting a learning culture: Provide the opportunity to continually learn and improve as a team. That enables individuals to adapt to changes and strive for excellence. That’s really important in product management, because things don’t stay the same. We always have new technologies and new competitors, and product management continues to evolve. A learning culture ensures we’re staying up to speed on all the areas that impact our product. [5:37] Tell us more about the aspects of positive leadership character. * Developing people: This takes integrity and responsibility. Focus on developing people, not just products. Help people gain skills, confidence, and knowledge, so the team can work better together. * Self-awareness and emotional intelligence: This takes compassion and forgiveness. Help individuals build their self-awareness and emotional intelligence. Understand your own emotions and understand and appreciate the emotions of others. Express empathy. I use an exercise called an Emotions Wheel that helps people identify their emotions. * Active listening: Develop a listening style that encourages people to be engaged and creates an environment that’s not competitive. Show that you’re being attentive to, comprehending, and internalizing what’s being discussed. Be able to summarize and move forward together. [9:22] Tell us more about psychological safety. * Empathy and understanding: Create an environment where people feel comfortable to tackle the unknowns. * Experimentation: Encourage your team to experiment, try different ways to approach problems, innovate, and learn from failures. * Sharing mistakes: Build a culture where people feel comfortable openly discussing and learning from mistakes. [14:28] Tell us more about how the Emotions Wheel can help create psychological safety. The Emotions Wheel is an exercise I do at the start of my people-first product leadership course on Maven. It’s a great icebreaker. People put a dot on the Emotions Wheel next to the emotion they’re feeling. It helps everybody understand what others are feeling and gives an indication to me as the teacher of how to best incorporate individuals into the session. At the end of the day, we ask participants how they’re feeling no...