How to be the best coach to product people | Petra Wille (Strong Product People)
Lenny interviews Petra Wille, a product leadership coach and author of Strong Product People. They discuss how to become a better coach for PMs, the importance of storytelling for leaders, and the value of finding and engaging with a PM community.
Deep Dive Analysis
15 Topic Outline
Petra Wille's Background and Coaching Focus
Challenges for Non-Product Leaders Managing PMs
Purpose of the Book 'Strong Product People'
Five Ingredients for Coaching Product Managers
Starting Coaching with a Development Plan
Defining a Competent PM and Assessment Tools
Petra's PM Wheel Framework Explained
General Tips for Coaching Product Teams
Practical Tips for Improving Storytelling Skills
Strategies for Becoming a Better Public Speaker
Importance of Storytelling and Public Speaking for Career
Value of Product Communities of Practice
Benefits of Community for Retention and Growth
Characteristics of a Valuable Product Community
Advice for Running a Successful Community
5 Key Concepts
Eight-legged Creature Metaphor
This metaphor illustrates the extensive and diverse skill set required for a product person, suggesting that a simple T-shaped profile is insufficient. It encompasses understanding problems, finding solutions, delivering, discovering, analyzing data, iterating, teamwork, personal growth, and agile principles.
PM Wheel Framework
A structured assessment tool created by Petra Wille that categorizes a PM's responsibilities into eight buckets: understanding problems, finding solutions, planning, delivery, listening & learning, iterating, teamwork, personal growth, and agile. Each bucket includes framing questions to provide a comprehensive view of a PM's current capabilities.
Continuous Discovery Habits
A product development methodology or book, mentioned as a resource one of Petra's coachees dedicated a year to studying. It emphasizes integrating continuous learning and discovery of customer and business value into the product development process.
Eisenhower Matrix
A time management tool for prioritizing tasks based on urgency and importance. It's suggested as a practical technique for product managers to improve their task prioritization, especially if they haven't encountered such frameworks before.
Product Evangelizing
A technique where a product leader actively communicates and promotes the product vision, strategy, and team's goals across the entire company. This helps to motivate and align colleagues, fostering a shared understanding and excitement for the product's direction.
8 Questions Answered
Petra Wille primarily coaches individuals who lead product people, such as CPOs, product directors, or product team leads, concentrating on the people development aspect of their managerial role.
Non-product leaders often lack fundamental product management practices and empathy for the daily struggles of product people, which hinders their ability to effectively guide their teams' growth or recommend relevant resources.
A clear definition of what constitutes a competent product person in their specific context provides product leaders with a crucial compass for coaching, helping them identify desirable personality traits for hiring and specific skills for development.
For a significant update, such as explaining a team's goals for the next three to four months, a product manager should plan for approximately two weeks of dedicated work, spending about one to two hours per day, to tailor the story for various audiences and formats.
A key strategy is to begin by speaking to small, friendly audiences, such as your immediate team or local community meetups, and then progressively increase the size of the audience over time.
Strong storytelling and public speaking skills are vital for career advancement in product management because they are essential for effective team alignment, inspiring action towards shared goals, and successfully evangelizing the product vision.
Product communities foster employee retention by supporting learning and growth, reduce the people development workload for product leads, and offer a cost-effective platform for PMs to learn from and share knowledge with peers.
A valuable product community facilitates networking, offers new learning opportunities, encourages members to contribute and share knowledge, and is characterized by active, engaging, and supportive individuals.
28 Actionable Insights
1. Define ‘Good PM’
Create a clear, reflected definition of what a good product person looks like in your specific context, detailing both personality traits and necessary skills, to serve as a compass for development.
2. Pinpoint PM’s Current State
Gain a clear understanding of where each Product Manager currently stands in their career, skills, and overall situation, effectively ‘putting a pin on the map’ for their present state.
3. Envision Next Challenge
Develop a vision for each PM’s future growth and identify their ’next bigger challenge’ – a specific opportunity that would help them learn a new skill or gain know-how. Review and list these challenges quarterly.
4. Align on Vision
Share your vision for a PM’s growth and next challenges with them, conducting an alignment session to ensure mutual understanding and open their thinking to new possibilities for their career.
5. Develop a Plan
Help Product Managers create their own development plan by suggesting small, actionable steps they can take to improve specific skills, such as reading a book, giving a presentation, or reflecting on their prioritization methods.
6. Consistent Follow-Up
Regularly follow up on personal development plans with small nudges, asking PMs how they prefer to be reminded and assisted, ensuring continuous progress without overwhelming their daily job.
7. Start with Development Plan
If you’re new to coaching, begin by helping PMs create a development plan based on what they want to learn or improve, even if you haven’t fully defined a ‘good PM’ compass yet.
8. Use Existing Assessments
Leverage established PM assessment frameworks (like PM Daisy, Marty Cagan’s, or the PM Wheel) as templates, then customize them to fit the specific needs and context of your organization.
9. Prioritize Personality Traits
When hiring Product Managers, prioritize personality traits like curiosity and empathy, as these are often difficult to develop within a corporate environment and are crucial for long-term success.
10. Create a Question List
Compile a go-to list of effective coaching questions to use in one-on-one meetings, especially when unprepared, to facilitate meaningful conversations and gain insights into your team’s well-being and needs.
11. Invest in Story Crafting
Dedicate significant time to creating compelling stories, as great storytellers invest heavily in preparation and practice. For a 3-4 month plan, this could mean 1-2 hours a day for two weeks.
12. Use Evocative Language
Craft stories using language that appeals to both the heart and mind, avoiding excessive business jargon. Focus on natural words that describe feelings, senses, and how a product improves lives to engage your audience deeply.
13. Practice Public Speaking
Improve public speaking skills by starting with small, friendly audiences like your team or local community meetups, gradually increasing audience size over time to build confidence.
14. Seek Diverse Feedback
After speaking, actively seek feedback from both peers and strangers. Peers can offer harsher, more specific critique, while strangers can identify gaps in your storytelling or presentation clarity due to their unfamiliarity.
15. Manage Nerves
To combat public speaking nerves, try physical techniques like the ‘Superman pose’ or gently tapping your chest. Additionally, identify friendly faces in the front row to focus on for comfort and encouragement.
16. Start Drafting Immediately
Avoid staring at a blank page; begin drafting your story or talking about it to see how it lands. Changing a story is easier than changing a prototype, so iterate early and often.
17. Test and Tweak
Actively test your story by talking about it to various audiences, observing their reactions, and then refining it based on how well it resonates and lands with them.
18. Use Proven Structures
Utilize established story structures, such as the ‘hero’s journey,’ to frame your narrative. Decide whether to center the story around the team (as heroes) or the user (whose life improves) to best achieve your goal.
19. Prepare Multiple Formats
Have your story ready in various formats: spoken, written (for asynchronous communication), and visual (e.g., whiteboard drawings, emotional slides) to effectively convey core points to different audiences.
20. Prepare Multiple Lengths
Develop your story in three distinct lengths: a 75-second elevator pitch, a 6-minute version for quick updates, and an 80-minute version for comprehensive presentations like company all-hands meetings.
21. Join or Start a Community
Actively seek out or initiate a product community of practice, either internally or externally, to foster continuous learning and personal development, especially when direct management support is limited.
22. Look for Networking
Prioritize communities that offer strong networking opportunities, allowing you to meet interesting people and build valuable professional connections.
23. Seek Learning
Engage with communities that consistently provide new insights and ’nuggets’ of information that make your work easier or introduce you to concepts you wouldn’t discover otherwise.
24. Contribute and Share
Actively contribute to the community by sharing your learnings, moderating discussions, or organizing rituals, as giving back enhances your own clarity of thought and benefits others.
25. Prioritize Enjoyment & Trust
Choose communities where you genuinely enjoy the people, find them kind and lovely, and where there’s a high level of activity and mutual trust, making it a pleasant and productive environment.
26. Distribute Leadership
Ensure community leadership and responsibilities are distributed among multiple individuals, as relying on one or two people is unsustainable and can lead to burnout.
27. Focus on Signal, Not Engagement
When evaluating a community’s success, prioritize ‘signal versus noise’ rather than just engagement metrics, ensuring the content is high-quality and valuable to members.
28. Use One Methodology Deeply
Instead of consuming vast amounts of content, dedicate a significant period (e.g., a whole year) to deeply studying and applying one specific methodology or book to truly master its concepts.
5 Key Quotes
Getting promoted is way harder if you're not good in telling stories and running the team behind the shared goal and all these kinds of things.
Petra Wille
It's not a role, it's a career being in product.
Petra Wille
Consistency beats intensity.
Petra Wille
Nobody wants to read your sh*t.
Lenny Rachitsky
It's not sustainable if the whole community is on the shoulders of one, two, three people.
Petra Wille
3 Protocols
Five-Ingredient Coaching Method for Product Managers
Petra Wille- Have a solid definition of what a good product person looks like in your context, reflecting on personality traits, skills, and know-how.
- Understand where each PM currently is in their career and life, and envision their future growth, including identifying their 'next bigger challenge.'
- Share your vision for their growth with them and align on their aspirations, encouraging and bringing out their best.
- Help them create a development plan, curating steps to improve in specific areas like prioritization or user interviewing.
- Follow up consistently with small nudges and reminders, asking how they want to be supported in their personal development, acknowledging their day job.
Public Speaking Improvement Strategy
Petra Wille- Start by speaking in front of really small and super friendly audiences (e.g., your team, local product community meetups).
- Grow the audience over time as you gain confidence.
- Always make sure to get feedback from both strangers (for spotting gaps in storytelling) and peers (for potentially harsher, more direct critique).
- Before a talk, use physical techniques like the 'Superman pose' or softly tapping your thymus to manage nervousness and boost energy.
- Find people you like and respect in the front row, whose sparkling eyes can help you feel more comfortable.
Storytelling Preparation Strategy
Petra Wille- Don't sit in front of a blank page for too long; start drafting something and begin talking about it to test how it lands.
- Use a proven story structure, such as the hero's journey, deciding whether to center the team or the user as the hero.
- Have the story ready in various formats: spoken, written, and an illustration (e.g., whiteboard drawing, emotional slides) to make core points visible.
- Prepare the story in three different lengths: a super short 75-second elevator pitch, a 6-minute version for quick updates, and an 80-minute version for comprehensive presentations like company all-hands (noting that 80 minutes is stated as the length of an average TED talk).