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

To listen to the interview, search for Product Mastery Now on your favorite podcast player.

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 Educations 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?

1. Positive leadership character: Show traits such as integrity, responsibility, forgiveness, and compassion.
2. 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.
3. 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.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.

1. Empathy and understanding: Create an environment where people feel comfortable to tackle the unknowns.
2. Experimentation: Encourage your team to experiment, try different ways to approach problems, innovate, and learn from failures.
3. 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 now. That helps them acknowledge that new things can be scary and helps them look back at what they learned, the friends they made, and how their emotions were affected.

Another exercise I use is called a Read Me. It’s a document where you outline how you work most effectively and how others can best work with you. It’s a good way to break the ice and a reference point for new team members or to refer back to when you haven’t talked to someone in a bit.

[17:28] Tell us more about promoting a learning culture.

The main characteristic of a learning culture is empowerment through experimentation. Systematically encourage experimentation. Know the hypothesis, why you’re experimenting, and the desired outcome. Share successes and failures so the rest of the team learns too.

[19:04] How do you introduce empowerment through experimentation to the team?

I introduce the concept of experimentation by letting people know that I’m going to make mistakes. It’s often unexpected for a product leader to admit they’re going to make mistakes. The team is stronger when they feel comfortable sharing the knowledge that we’re all human and we’re all going to make mistakes. If they hear that from the leader and see it in practice, that helps the team feel more comfortable that they can make mistakes too. I create a space where we can learn from each other and revise our thinking, rather than always following my way.

[22:42] What can a product manager who is not yet a product leader do to help create a climate of people-centered product leadership?

Create a product management community of practice. Start by reaching out to someone else who wants to promote learning or create psychological safety. Then each of you can reach out to another person. You need about 33% of the desired people to be involved in your community of practice to start to see change. Depending on the size of your company, that could be a really small number of people. Start to identify ways you can influence each other and have that permeate out to the individuals you work with. If you mirror the characteristics you want to have reflected back on you, that will permeate out to others because they will feel supported and encouraged. You’ll begin to notice those people who are champions of they way you’re conducting your meetings or doing user research. You can identify those individuals who can be part of your community of practice.

Action Guide: Put the information Diana shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide .

Useful links:

• Check out Diana’s course on Maven
• Connect with Diana on LinkedIn
• Sign up for Diana’s newsletter
• Visit Diana’s website
• Listen to episode 474 : Emotionally fit leadership for product managers – with Dr. Emily Anhalt

Innovation Quote

“Where there are no politics or people vying for a bigger slice of the pie, magic happens. When things are done collaboratively and equally, everyone roots for each other, and the only winner is the team.” – Jared Hecht

To listen to the interview, search for Product Mastery Now on your favorite podcast player.