The Most Inspiring Product Leaders 2021

We all know that behind every great product, there’s a strong product leader. These product leaders work alongside founders, CEOs, and other executives to craft a company’s vision, understand customer needs, and ruthlessly execute to bring delightful products that deliver business results to the market. The Head of Product role is tough and yet one of the most rewarding and high-impact roles within any company.?

To celebrate the creativity, innovation, and execution skills that these Head of Products have brought to the table, I decided to create a list of The 21 Most Inspiring Product Leaders.?

These leaders are the product minds behind the best-known unicorns and decacorns. They have each built world-class products in their category. I had the opportunity to ask each of these leaders to share some of their experiences and learnings to help the next generation of product leaders and managers. Below, please find the list of the 21 Most Inspiring Product Leaders and the invaluable insights they shared.??

As you can see below, these highly accomplished product leaders are most proud of the teams they’ve built and count that as their biggest success.?

When they were asked about the most underrated skills for product leaders, many of them shared storytelling and sales capabilities. At the end of the day, as a product leader, you are always selling an idea or a vision.???

Their advice for future product leaders is to develop empathy, be customer obsessed, and be able to lay out the product vision for your team.

Let’s take a moment to celebrate these amazing leaders, their teams, and the products they’ve built.

Jorge Mazal, Chief Product Officer, Duolingo:?Jorge Mazal has been at Duolingo since the company had less than $10M revenue; his work has contributed to 1,000% growth of the company's revenue. With the exponential growth of Duolingo and its recent IPO, Mazal has had many celebratory milestones. Some of his favorites, though, have been breaking through $100M in revenue and reaching 500M unique users.?

His biggest contribution to the company:?Mazal counts building a world-class team of product managers, data scientists, and UX researchers who are passionate about Duolingo’s mission and are constantly learning and striving for excellence as his biggest contribution.?

His advice for aspiring product leaders: Mazal encourages product people to 1) know their strengths and leverage them, 2) be humble, be open about their weaknesses, and work on them, and 3) care sincerely about the people they work with and let them know.

Biggest challenge he’s faced in his role and how he’s overcome it: For Mazal, the biggest challenge has been to let go of his creative drive as he grows in his role. He has learned that he needs to focus more on people management versus actual product or design details.?

Most underrated skill that all great product leaders should have: Mazal encourages product leaders to listen in order to learn. In other words, as a product leader, you should withhold judgment even after you believe you've developed great pattern recognition.

Tomer Cohen, Chief Product Officer, LinkedIn: With over 774 million professionals on LinkedIn in more than 200 countries and territories, Tomer Cohen is leading the product behind the world’s largest professional community. During his time at LinkedIn, Cohen has had a significant role in leading the company in several hyper-growth cycles.

His biggest achievement or celebratory moment: Every time LinkedIn helps professionals connect to opportunity, Cohen and his team celebrate. This past year has been a challenging year for many with COVID and its impact on the jobs of millions of people. With several foundational launches, such as #OpenToWork, Cohen’s team has been able to better equip members to help them connect with one another, learn new skills, and find the jobs they want.

His advice for aspiring product leaders: Cohen encourages everyone to 1) focus on what gives them a sense of purpose and meaning, 2) have a growth mindset, and 3) seek a beginner's mindset. What he means by this is cultivating the ability to challenge your own thinking, re-learn things, and even un-learn some things, so that you can continuously evolve your thinking.?

Surojit Chatterjee, Chief Product Officer, Coinbase: As a Chief Product Officer of Coinbase, one of the most cutting edge technologies of our times, and VP of Product at Google, where he transited Google to mobile advertising, Surojit Chatterjee has been at the forefront of product innovation. Under his leadership, Chatterjee’s team of 200 people continues to push the boundaries of what’s possible in cryptocurrency.

His biggest achievement or celebratory moment:?Chatterjee considers his biggest achievements as scaling out product and design teams by 4X, building out an amazing product and design team, and growing year-over-year revenue by over 800%.?

Biggest challenge he’s faced in his role and how he’s overcome it: For Chatterjee, the biggest challenge has been to let go of one in every five people on his team (in a previous company) and to figure out how to retain and motivate the remainder of his team. What he learned from that challenge was that focusing on long-term goals and building a deeper level of trust with the team is key to making sure his team does not fall apart.?

Most underrated skill that all great product leaders should have: Chatterjee believes the ability to admit when you are wrong is important. He also encourages product people to have basic coding skills because it gives you incredible empathy for the people who are actually building the product on a day-to-day basis.?

Annie Pearl, Chief Product Officer, Calendly: Annie Pearl is a product management veteran, with years of experience as CPO of Glassdoor, Product Leader at Box, and currently as CPO of Calendly.?

Her advice for aspiring product leaders: Pearl believes that your number one job as a product leader is to create clarity around where your product is going -- product vision -- and how you're going to get there -- product strategy. Without that clarity, product teams will struggle with prioritization, they will make product decisions in silos, and they will only solve the problems right in front of them.?

Most underrated skill that all great product leaders should have: Pearl mentioned that storytelling is an underrated skill for product leaders. She said that all great product leaders have the unique ability to paint a picture of the world they want to create. Great product leaders leverage this skillset to hire great product managers, inspire those product managers to deliver amazing product experiences, and help the rest of the company, customers, and market understand where their product is going.

Ben Foster, Chief Product Officer, WHOOP: With over 200 people in his organization across various functions such as product, design, UX research, data, product operations, research and clinical, Ben Foster and his team have a significant impact on delivering exceptional experiences and relevant data to WHOOP users. In addition to being the CPO of WHOOP, Foster also published Build What Matters.?

?His biggest achievement or celebratory moment:?Among many other milestones, scaling his team by 500% in less than one year and somehow managing to keep the wheels on is one of the biggest achievements for Foster.??

His biggest contribution to the company:?Apart from the team assembled, Foster is most proud of the product vision because it aligns all of the teams to a common goal and is grounded in what defines success for members.

His advice for aspiring product leaders: Foster encourages product leaders to recognize that product management is about problem solving, but product leadership is about defining the problems to be solved (or opportunities to be explored).?

Biggest challenge he’s faced in his role and how he’s overcome it: WHOOP has experienced such rapid growth that Foster had to reinvent his own role several times in less than a year. This meant that the product leaders on his team needed to do the same. They’ve now codified this dynamic as company value: "we move at an uncomfortable pace."?

Most underrated skill that all great product leaders should have: The most underrated skill for product leaders is sales. Foster says that as a product leader, if you categorized your time spent in a given week, it might not be immediately obvious, but in reality, you are constantly in sales mode -- selling your vision or convincing people to join your teams.?

Kelvin Kwong, Chief Product Officer, Big Health: Kelvin Kwong joined Big Health in the early days, when the company had a handful of people focused on product and design. Over the last few years, Kwong has been a part of growing the company to over 100 people and launched multiple new products.

His biggest achievement or celebratory moment:?Kwong’s biggest achievement is conceptualizing, developing, and launching their new product, Daylight, which has now helped individuals around the world with their worry and anxiety.

His biggest contribution to the company:?Kwong considers building and growing an incredibly talented product development organization as his biggest contribution to the company.?

His advice for aspiring product leaders: Kwong encourages aspiring product leaders to continue developing their strengths. Just like building a product, it can be very attractive to focus on improving areas that are weak. However, as you progress in your career and build a foundation of skills, Kwong advises doubling down on your strengths. The areas that you "spike" in are the ones that will take you from good to great.

Biggest challenge he’s faced in his role and how he’s overcome it: Kwong says that the most exciting and challenging aspect of his role today is the rapidly evolving mental health space. While healthcare traditionally moves slowly, mental health has evolved incredibly rapidly. This makes planning difficult and providing a sense of stability for the team even more challenging. In order to navigate this, Kwong, more than anything, learned how to manage his own psychology to give stability and clear direction to his team.??

Most underrated skill that all great product leaders should have: Literature reviews top Kwong’s list. He argues that this applies to folks who are building products at all levels. As individuals who are seeking to understand and predict the behavior of users, Kwong believes that academic research is heavily underutilized.?

Naveen Gavini, SVP of Products, Pinterest: Naveen Gavini has had a significant impact on creating Pinterest, one of the most engaged products, creative designs, and beloved consumer brands in the world. Gavini joined Pinterest when the company had about 10 people and was at the pre-revenue stage. Today, Pinterest has over $2.4B revenue, 450M monthly active users, and a $37B+ market cap.?Gavini leads a team of over 200 people in various functions including product management, design, UX research, product marketing, project management, and product operations.?

His biggest contribution to the company:?Gavini counts as his biggest contribution to this day the development of the Pinterest mobile app, which within the first week of launch, had more traffic than their website. Today, 80% of Pinterest’s usage is on their mobile platform.`

His advice for aspiring product leaders: Gavini says that when you're in a leadership role for product management, your role transforms from just building the product to also building the organization that builds the product. He encourages aspiring product leaders to look for opportunities where they can improve their team and how it operates.

Biggest challenge he’s faced in his role and how he’s overcome it: Gavini has traveled a unique career path. He was formally trained as an engineer, then began leading engineering teams, then design teams, and now product management teams. He’s been surprised how frequently people over-index on functional expertise. He overcame not being an expert in some of the fields he manages by surrounding himself with a strong team and immersing himself deep into learning about what “great” looks like in each area.

Most underrated skill that all great product leaders should have: Gavini feels that great product leaders should have a customer-centric mindset and deeply understand the customer’s needs. He says that you need to understand how people use your product, the environment in which they use it, their needs, and the emotional impact your product has on them.?

Tim Roberts, Former EVP & Head of Product, Fitbit: Tim Roberts was one of the first dozen people at Fitbit, joining James Park and Eric Friedman to build Fitbit as a category creator in wearables. His vision and execution helped grow the company from under $10M to over $2B in revenue. I personally had the pleasure of working with Tim and learning from him the craft of product management, obsession with users, and care for design.?

His biggest achievement or celebratory moment:?Roberts’ biggest celebratory moment was seeing President Obama wearing a Fitbit.

His advice for aspiring product leaders: Roberts thinks that great product management is all in the details. He encourages aspiring product leaders to always pay attention to the details.

Biggest challenge he’s faced in his role and how he’s overcome it: Roberts’ biggest challenge involved managing a reduction in the workforce for a team that he cared deeply about. For Roberts, the only way through it was to be as honest and raw as possible.??

Most underrated skill that all great product leaders should have: Roberts believes that the ability to be quiet is an underrated skill. He finds that it's always best to lead from behind and enable others’ success.

Saman Rahmanian, Chief Product Officer & Co-Founder, Ro:?Saman Rahmanian is one of the co-founders of Ro, focused on leveraging technology to empower patients and providers with the tools to make healthcare accessible. In under four years, he helped the company go from zero to unicorn status. Rahmanian is leading a team of over 200 people, consisting of engineering, product, data, design, product operations, and QA teams.???

His biggest achievement or celebratory moment:?Rahmanian’s biggest achievement has been developing Ro's platform to remove complexities for patients and help them get the care they need when they need it, whether online or in their homes. The power of this was clear when Rahmanian and his team were able to launch a first of its kind, in-home vaccination program for COVID-19.

His biggest contribution to the company:?Similar to many other leaders, Rahmanian is most proud of the team he’s built. “You have to apply a product mentality to hiring – your most important product is your organization,” he says.?

Biggest challenge he’s faced in his role and how he’s overcome it: Unlearning has been Rahmanian’s biggest challenge. He spent the first 10 years of his career in advertising working as an art director, but the leadership qualities that served him well in advertising did not translate to product.?

Most underrated skill that all great product leaders should have: Rahmanian named empathy as the most underrated skill for PMs. Another key skill that he called out is the ability to build strong, authentic relationships across the organization in order to collaborate, influence, and execute.?

Eric Schuchman, Head of Product, Gusto: Eric Schuchman has served as a senior product leader at Gusto for the past six years. During this time, he has helped build Gusto into a best-in-SaaS business. Revenue has grown by well over 1,000%, and the company is now valued at $9.4B.

His advice for aspiring product leaders: Schuchman advises PMs or aspiring product leaders to take the time to learn about their customers and business even outside of the scope of their team’s focus. Understanding your organization’s big picture and helping the executives navigate strategy not only ensures that your specific team's work is aligned with that of the company, but it also shows your ability to lead at a higher level.

Biggest challenge he’s faced in his role and how he’s overcome it: As a product leader in a SaaS startup that serves more than 200,000 customers, Schuchman’s job fundamentally changes every year. His biggest challenge is ensuring that he learns, grows, and hones his skills faster than his role evolves.

Most underrated skill that all great product leaders should have: Schuchman believes that empathy for your customers and teams is a key skill. Product people need to get work done through many other functions. Showing empathy is the only way to make hard trade-offs while still having the support of the broader team.

Sumner Paine, SVP of Product, Tonal: Sumner Paine joined Tonal as an early employee when the company was in stealth mode and literally trying to make just a couple of Tonals for beta testing. Tonal is now valued at over $1.6B, with investors such as tennis star Serena Williams and Golden State Warriors’ Stephen Curry.?

His biggest achievement or celebratory moment:?In May 2021, the Tonal community celebrated hitting the milestone of surpassing 10 billion pounds lifted. This was an incredibly meaningful milestone for Paine, who joined Tonal before any product, userbase, or revenue.??

His biggest contribution to the company:?Paine has two things that he considers his biggest contributions to Tonal so far: 1) the team that he’s built, which continues to raise the bar with every new hire, and 2) instilling a focus on “experience” rather than just building features, functionality, and products.

His advice for aspiring product leaders: Paine advises aspiring product leaders to know their customers better than anyone else in the company, but also remember that it’s your job to manage the product for the business. Other advice Paine offers is that product is incredibly fulfilling and incredibly hard. It’s different at every company, and everybody has an opinion. Despite the dogma, there is no right or wrong. What’s most important is giving customers an amazing experience that helps your company realize its strategy.

Biggest challenge he’s faced in his role and how he’s overcome it: Paine learned the hard way that it’s absolutely critical for the whole team to be aligned. When there are differences of opinion, it’s important to get those out on the table and resolve them. A practice of “disagree and commit,” with an emphasis on commitment, is essential for high-functioning teams.

Most underrated skill that all great product leaders should have: Paine believes that great product leaders are able to balance a sincere recognition and appreciation of progress while remaining deeply motivated to pursue all that remains toward the product vision.?

Nupur Srivastava, Chief Product Officer, Grand Rounds Health: Nupur Srivastava has been in product leadership at Grand Rounds for seven years, helping build a great solution and company in digital health. With a team of product managers, general managers, designers, UX researchers, and program managers, she and her team helped grow Grand Rounds from a second opinion product to a full primary care delivery system.

Her biggest contribution to the company: Srivastava is the proudest of the team that she has helped recruit, grow, and build over the years. She counts as her biggest contribution that her team consists of a passionate, smart, low ego, and talented group of individuals who are hungry to change healthcare for the better.

Her advice for aspiring product leaders: Srivastava says that finding a way to clearly articulate your product vision to your team is critical. As a product leader, you should spend time communicating the vision early and often. This helps the rest of the team and organization understand the "why" behind their work, and it gives everyone a larger sense of purpose.

Biggest challenge she’s faced in her role and how she’s overcome it: Being part of a company that is growing so fast has taught Srivastava the importance of communication. Some of her challenges and lessons learned over the years have been trying to figure out how to adapt the quantity and specifics of her communication to the team as they rapidly grow.

Most underrated skill that all great product leaders should have: Srivastava believes that experience building customer and user empathy is the most underrated skill. Interestingly, in healthcare, the customer and the user are usually not the same person, and it is important to understand the needs of both stakeholders so that you can drive to the optimal roadmap.

Justin Chang, VP of Product, ClassPass: When Justin Chang started at ClassPass, the company had about 20 people and was in pursuit of product–market fit. Today, ClassPass is in 30 countries and has 35K+ fitness and wellness partners on the platform. ClassPass members have booked more than 100 million hours of classes.

His biggest achievement or celebratory moment:?Chang counted achieving product–market fit and then later landing their business model fit as his most celebratory moments.

His advice for aspiring product leaders: Chang encourages aspiring product leaders to vary their leadership style based on the person and context. There's no one-size-fits-all leadership style. Chang generally prefers a coaching leadership style where he equips his team with all the strategic context and empowers them to succeed. However, there are times when product leaders need to be more directive (e.g., wartime vs. peacetime) and adjust their leadership style to create the most leverage and impact for the team.

Itamar Orgad, VP of Product, Houzz: With years of experience in consumer products, Itamar Orgad is leading a large team at Houzz that has launched successful products, such as Houzz Pro, a reimagined experience to help remodeling and design professionals grow and manage their business through a suite of marketing, project, and client management tools.?

His biggest contribution to the company:?Orgad considers the acquisition and integration of Ivy, a business management software for design firms, as one of his biggest contributions at Houzz.?

Biggest challenge he’s faced in his role and how he’s overcome it: Orgad says that as you grow in your career and increase in both scope and team size, your managerial responsibilities as well as your inbox start piling up. One of the challenges he faces is ensuring that he doesn’t lose sight of his top priority, which is to enable his teams to create massive value for customers. To overcome this challenge, Orgad starts each day by asking himself a simple question: “How am I going to help my team create value for our customers today?” If the answer is not clear, he knows it’s time to review his activities and calendar and to refocus.

Most underrated skill that all great product leaders should have: Orgad believes that all product leaders would greatly benefit from deepening their knowledge in behavioral science, specifically understanding the rational and non-rational factors that influence human thinking, biases, and decision-making processes. A few of his recommended reads on the topic include: Thinking, Fast and Slow; Predictably Irrational; and Hooked - How To Build Habit Forming Products.

Kalyan Nanduru, SVP of Product, Guild Education: With years of experience building and leading products at Google and Microsoft, Kalyan Nanduru brings a wealth of knowledge and leadership to Guild Education, where he’s rapidly scaling his team and building great products that change how employers invest in their workforce education for a better future. ?

His biggest achievement or celebratory moment:?Nanduru mentioned that launching new customers, closing Series E funding, and having Guild being recognized as one of the best companies for women to advance at as some of the biggest moments of celebration for him at Guild.?

His biggest contribution to the company:?He considers co-creating the corporate strategy as well as setting up the processes that enable product organization to meet company objectives as his biggest contributions.?

His advice for aspiring product leaders: Nanduru encourages aspiring product leaders to 1) focus on vision and strategy, 2) hire great people, empower them, and hold them accountable, and 3) champion a culture rooted in diversity, innovation, and teamwork.?

Biggest challenge he’s faced in his role and how he’s overcome it: Product is inherently a people-centric job. Good product leaders are constantly in touch with their customers, stakeholders, and teams, whether it is identifying problems to solve, whiteboarding ideas, or celebrating wins. Nanduru acknowledges that remote work makes that job very hard, especially if you are starting a new role or inheriting a new team. His solution to the problem includes making extra effort to communicate, building trust, and mastering the tools and techniques of effective remote collaboration.

Tatyana Mamut, SVP of New Products, Pendo: Tatyana Mamut is a seasoned product leader with a wealth of experience in well-respected companies such as Nextdoor, Salesforce, and Amazon prior to her most recent role at Pendo. Mamut also acts as an advisor to various startups.??

Her biggest achievement or celebratory moment:? Mamut’s biggest achievement was announcing a new vision for how digital adoption platforms will transform work through organizational insight.?

Her advice for aspiring product leaders: Mamut says that where the rubber hits the road in customer obsession is where you spend your time and effort. To be truly customer obsessed, you should spend more time and energy building the things that make customers happy than you spend trying to make your bosses happy. When one seems to conflict with the other, choose the customer.?

Biggest challenge she’s faced in her role and how she’s overcome it: Not having a traditional engineering background has been a challenge for Mamut in highly technical environments like IoT Cloud at Salesforce and Honeycode at AWS. Mamut overcame that challenge by figuring out what she didn't know and building relationships with the right engineering leaders and allies to help clarify the technical details.

Yuhki Yamashita, VP of Product, Figma:?With impeccable experience leading products at Uber, Google, and Figma, Yuhki Yamashita is now leading Figma, one of the most loved products among professionals.?

His biggest achievement or celebratory moment:?Yamashita has had many big moments to celebrate at Figma; the most recent one was the launch of FigJam, their new brainstorming product. Being in a position to build a second product for a company has been a blessing, but it has also required developing a whole new set of muscles.

His advice for aspiring product leaders: Yamashita says that as a product leader, it is important to cultivate the ability to determine what “zoom level” you want to engage for any given problem. Sometimes, you need to be close to the details to understand why the execution isn’t quite there; other times, you need to zoom all the way out because there’s a misalignment in the problem a team is trying to solve.?

Biggest challenge he’s faced in his role and how he’s overcome it: Yamashita counted all that happened in 2020 as one of his biggest challenges. Fundamentally rethinking the way we all work, from our rituals to our processes, has been a big shift and made the Figma team have a lot of hard, honest conversations.

Most underrated skill that all great product leaders should have: Yamashita believes that great storytelling is an underrated skill. He thinks that so much can be accomplished with great storytelling, from rallying the team to selling a vision to customers. The world of product is always messy, but a strong narrative can bring clarity to the ambiguity.?

Conrad Wai, SVP of Product, Hinge Health: Conrad Wai is leading product, data, and growth at one of the fastest-growing companies in America. Hinge Health has grown more than 1,000% during his tenure and recently raised $300M at a $3B valuation, one of the largest rounds of digital health funding. His team has a critical role in delivering intuitive and engaging end-to-end Digital MSK solutions for all back and joint pain care.?

His biggest contribution to the company:?Wai considers building a smart, passionate, humble, and collaborative team, as well as expanding from a single product to multiple lines of business, as his biggest contributions.?

Biggest challenge he’s faced in his role and how he’s overcome it: Wai says that if you're fortunate enough to be going through hyper growth, you can go from feeling on top of things to underwater very quickly. You double the size of your product team in a few months, and every process you've put together breaks. You take over leadership of other functions, and all of a sudden, you're leading 200 people who work in roles you've never held. To overcome this, Wai learned to get much more comfortable letting others lead and drive, be more attuned to his own emotions and how he is projecting himself, and ruthlessly prioritize.

Michael Ahiakpor, Chief Product Officer, Tubi: Michael Ahiakpor has had an incredible journey at Tubi, where he joined as employee #5 and helped figure out the product–market fit and scaling the product to tens of millions of users per month. Tubi was acquired by Fox Corporation at $440M.?

His advice for aspiring product leaders: Ahiakpor advises aspiring product leaders to learn to hire people that are different from them. For example, if you're extremely UX focused, hire data-focused people to create balance.?

Biggest challenge he’s faced in his role and how he’s overcome it: Creating a company culture that fosters more organic and enthusiastic cross-team collaboration has been Ahiakpor’s biggest challenge. He says that working to align disparate teams around shared goals, as well as making sure to extend the empathy the team has for their viewers to their co-workers, is the path towards unity and cohesion.

Most underrated skill that all great product leaders should have: Ahiakpor believes that the ability to build things on your own is an underrated skill. This includes UI mocks, prototypes, and even writing code. He thinks that this helps product leaders build more empathy with engineering, design, and other teams and helps you become the kind of product leader that is more likely to be on the founding team of a company.

Amar Kendale, Chief Product Officer, Livongo: Amar Kendale was among the first employees at Livongo. Through his vision, his focus on delivering value to the members, and his analytical and commercial mindset, he succeeded in expanding Livongo’s offering to multiple product lines and scaled it to over $18B value.??

His advice for aspiring product leaders: Kendale encourages product leaders to learn the business. Don’t just focus on the tech stack, user research insights, or data, but rather aim to understand the motivations of buyers, the intricacies of the value chain, and the alignment of incentives across the market ecosystem.?

Biggest challenge he’s faced in his role and how he’s overcome it: Shifting misaligned incentives into alignment has been a persistent challenge in the healthcare system. Livongo overcame this by making the hard decision of focusing on only one or two stakeholders at a time (in Livongo’s case, members and payers).

Most underrated skill that all great product leaders should have: First-principles thinking is an underrated skill. Kendale says that asking all of the repeated whys (instead of defaulting to shortcuts and hacks for the sake of speed) is so often a false economy -- because you wind up pattern matching against a subtly but importantly different problem space.

Ayse Kulahci, VP of Product Growth & GM, Zillow: Ayse Kulahci is a well-respected product leader. She has held various product leadership roles at companies such as Beats, Apple, and Fitbit prior to her most recent role leading product growth at Zillow, the largest online real estate marketplace, and as general manager for the Trulia brand.

Her biggest contribution to the company:?During her time at Zillow, Kulahci’s team had so many remarkable achievements. What she’s proudest of is the growth and development of her team, and the impact they’ve had. She finds it incredibly rewarding to help team members grow into effective leaders in their own right.?

Her advice for aspiring product leaders: Kulahci advises product leaders to challenge the status quo—with grace. Product leaders should always be learning and iterating, not only within the product, but also in their approach.?

Most underrated skill that all great product leaders should have: Kulahci highlighted timely candor as a critical skill for leaders. She’s a fan of Radical Candor by Kim Scott. Guidance and feedback that’s both kind and clear, specific, sincere and timely, help our teams, both those we coach directly and those we work with cross-functionally, grow and do their best work together.