Main Takeaways: - Build psychological safety within a team: learn how to create a shared understanding within a team you lead so that team members are comfortable raising important issues or concerns - How to facilitate constructive conflict so that obstacles and risks are identified early and often, enabling you to create opportunities to clear or address those obstacles - When and how to practice communication techniques for the regularly scheduled meetings that are critical to team progress

1. www.productschool.com
How Product Managers Can Lead a
Team by fmr Pivotal Sr PM

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6. How Product
Managers Can Lead
a Team
Christine Luc
Senior Product Manager

7. About me
I'm a product manager specializing in new
product development for startups and
billion-dollar companies with an emphasis on
applying human-centered design principles in
order to help solve complex problems for
people and businesses.

8. Domains
Video
Marketing
Comparison
Shopping
Contractor
Hiring
Skincare
Sales
School
Communication
Nurse
Scheduling
IT
Operations
Organization
Management
I’ve been in teams in
a number of different
product areas.
I’ve experienced good
teams and bad teams
in a designer,
marketer, and
product manager
context.
Trust me, I’ve seen
things.

9. Agenda*
- Why Communication Matters
- How Communication Looks in Bad Teams
and Good Teams
- Team Meetings
- Constructive Feedback
- Mediating Conflict

10. * Cultivation of leadership
skills is a lifelong practice.

11. Communication Audiences
● Team
○ Anyone building the product with you
● Organization
● Partners / Stakeholders
● Customers
● Prospects
Today we will be
covering
communication
within your core
team.

12. Why
Communication
Skills Matter
1. Product managers do not build
everything themselves
2. When more than one human being is
involved, communication is the
preferred way to interact with them
3. Mind reading hasn’t been invented yet
Photo by RF._.studio from Pexels

13. Bad Communication, Bad Team
● Team members viewed as
competition
● Lack of constructive
feedback
● “Sense of foreboding”
● No channels for upward
feedback
● Proper credit is not given to
individuals
● Lack of guidance or
direction
● Fear of information sharing
● Everybody is stressed
Poor communication
can result in a “bad”
team.
What are some
signals you’re on a
bad team?
I surveyed 9 working
professionals and
here’s what they said.

14. Good Team Communication
● High levels of collaboration
● Team successes are
celebrated
● Knowledge is shared
● People feel safe to speak up
● Guidance from good
leadership
● Recognition of good
performance
● Safe space for feedback
What are some
signals you’re on a
good team?
I surveyed 9 working
professionals and
here’s what they said.
Good
communication is
fundamental to
creating good teams.

15. How does a PM benefit?
● Engineers and designers
can feel empowered to
communicate problems
with a feature or strategy
early on
● Roadblocks can be
identified and cleared
sooner
● Team members can focus
on product work rather
than being preoccupied
with frustration from a bad
team
● Reduces day-to-day stress
coming from within the
team itself

16. Seek first to understand,
then to be understood.
- Steven Covey

17. Active Listening
“Active listening is the
ability to focus completely on
a speaker, understand their
message, comprehend the
information and respond
thoughtfully.”
Photo by Edmond Dantès from Pexels

18. Get to know your team
Who are they?
What matters to them in their work and their
work environment?
Ask.
How can you start to
understand your
team?
Get to know them.

19. Team Norms or 1-on-1s
Discuss the following:
● How communication happens
● What collaboration looks like
● Roles and responsibilities
● Giving and receiving feedback

20. How to Lead Team Meetings
Have an agenda
● Stick to the agenda
● Share it out in advance
● Review it to begin
Put off-topic ideas in
a parking lot
● Jot down topics that aren’t
part of the agenda and
request to discuss them in a
separate session

21. Giving Constructive Feedback
Use a feedback framework
● Situation, Behavior, Impact (SBI)
● Observations, Feelings, Needs, Actions (OFNA)
● Actionable, Specific, Kind (ASK)
● Etc

22. Feedback Framework in Action
Example: Situation, Behavior, Impact (SBI)
Situation: We are encountering an increase in critical bugs reported
by our customers.
Behavior: I’m observing that opportunities to discuss how to resolve
this are being ignored.
Impact: There is no clear path forward and I need your expertise in
order to identify next steps.

23. Giving Constructive Feedback
Practice giving the feedback before giving it
● Jot down what you want to communicate if there’s a risk to the
relationship if the feedback is poorly phrased
● Consider running it by an outside neutral party (like a peer or
friend)

24. How to Handle Conflict
● Start with a shared goal
● Seek to understand
○ Assume positive intent
● Use a feedback framework

25. Thanks!

26. www.productschool.com
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and
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