Leadership

Why psychologically-safe teams matter

According to the Center for Creative Leadership, psychological safety is the belief that you won't be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes. Organizations that actively foster psychological safety are arguably better situated to nurture empowered product teams.

So consider your own team:

Are out-of-the-box ideas and questions genuinely welcomed?

How are concerns or mistakes treated?

Can your team disagree with one another or leadership without fear of retribution?

Learn more about psychological safety at work:

Gallo, Amy. (February 2023). "What is Psychological Safety?" Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2023/02/what-is-psychological-safety

Watch the video below for a quick snack about what I learned about team safety from my child's school:

Why working agreements help build effective teams

What unites your team? Do you have defined, shared values or operating principles?  A "north star" objective or metric?  What do you coalesce around to intrinsically drive your work in pursuit of outcomes?

Many teams are driven by an organization's mission statement and OKRs. Is that enough for your team? I am a big proponent of team-generated agreements that can be connected to the larger organization's mission and goals. I have seen this be effective with my own teams.  It gives the team a sense of ownership, focus, and lays the ground work for resolving conflict. It also helps you be explicit not only about what you do, but also what you don't or won't do.

How do we make space for storming, forming, and norming on team agreements when there are competing priorities?  How do you get buy-in when you have resistors or the team has been established for a while?

Check out resources from the  Scrum Alliance for more information.

Watch the video below for a quick snack about what I learned about socializing shared values with a team from my child's school:

The art of leading without authority 

Leading without authority indicates a situation in which you are responsible for shepherding the work of a number of cross-functional stakeholders toward your desired outcomes without being in a personnel position of authority over any of those stakeholders. When it's challenging, it's very challenging and can be one of the greatest pain points for a product manager. When it's done well, it can be one of the most rewarding parts of being a product manager. 

Leading without authority is where the "soft skills" of product management become a necessity, such as:

Watch the video below for a quick snack about what I learned from working with kids in a local theater production:

The art of shared leadership and collaboration

One of my favorite TED Talks of all time is from Gitte Frederickson: "Great Leadership is a network, not a hierarchy." In it, she speaks of the benefits of networked leadership that taps into the knowledge of everyone in the network. 

As a product manager without a technical background, this approach has been essential to a healthy and productive product team. I've never been one to draw firm boundaries around the scope of my remit and prefer to invite in the expertise of others to inform the product. The engineers are experts in the tech; sales are experts in our prospects needs; client services are experts in our clients; marketers are experts in our markets and channels - it is literally impossible for one to be an expert in all of those things. Some product leaders may be sensitive to there being too many cooks in the kitchen and there are tactics to avoid crowdsourcing your product strategy. But I believe building relationships- while messy and time consuming- helps build trust with your stakeholders and ultimately helps you make better decisions. 

Watch the video below for a quick snack about what I learned from watching the swim team practice: