Fast-track to product leadership

Hi, my name is Lynne Levy, and it is great to have you here. The title of today's webinar is The Inspired Product Leader: Fast Track to Product Leadership and Love What You Do. Now let's first talk about who this webinar is for. This webinar is for both individual contributors and leaders in both product management and UX. In the next 45 minutes, you are going to learn how to create product management leadership opportunities, both inside and outside your organization, how to earn a seat at that strategy table, even if you're working remote, how to feel valued and respected without having to change jobs or companies, and how to work past the fear of the future. So you can find your dream product management career with confidence. And how to get a restful night's sleep without waking up in the middle of the night with that sense of anxiety or panic. And lastly, how to reduce stress and increase your confidence so you can become an amazing product management leader. So my promise to you is a strategy to step into inspired, courageous product leadership and earn the respect and salary you deserve. Now, even if you're not motivated by money, salary should matter to you. It's a reflection of the value the organization thinks you add. So I want you to respect yourself, respect your value, Set that goal to command a premium salary. This is life-changing stuff. It's not easy, but there are things you can absolutely do to accelerate your career and earn the salary you deserve. And we'll get to those in a minute. First, let me just check in with you for a moment. Does this sound like you? Are you worried you're going to lose your job? Given the chaos in the world right now? Do you lie awake at night frustrated with your career? Do you feel stuck and unsure what to do? And are you ready to step into leadership, but your boss and others tell you, quote unquote, "You're not ready"? At the end of each day, are you just emotionally wiped out from the stress and anxiety and barely communicate with your family? And given the competitiveness of the world of product management, are you concerned and worried about how you're going to move out of your boring tactical product management job? And do you dread the thought of staying stuck? Since your teams are underperforming, your products are underperforming. You're spending your time on tactical issues. You don't have the time to focus on strategic work. You are so wrapped up in the weeds, you don't have the time to make those strategic decisions. And frankly, you also don't have the energy. The challenge is you're not adding measurable value consistently to your organization and your team. So are you concerned about your future? As a product manager and leader. So the real problem is that you haven't made the shifts. All those other, other items are just symptoms. What I can tell you is once you make these shifts, you're going to become a courageous product leader driving massive innovations. You will no longer fear the future. You'll get the products and position you want need and deserve. And you'll be filled with any energy and inspiration, and you'll love work again. You'll have a seat at that leadership strategy table, and you'll be invited to present your innovations to top leadership, and you will be in control of your career again. So there are 5 shifts you need to become an inspired product manager and leader. To be valued and recognized, and love being a product manager again, even when things are chaotic and uncertain. This is the time when we need inspired product leaders. And I am going to walk you through exactly how to start making these shifts today. So before we go too much further, let me take 2 seconds to introduce myself so you know who I am and why you should listen to me. So again, my name is Lynne Levy and I'm a product coach and mentor. I'm a former product leader, including being, being a director at a billion-dollar company. And I have led many, many complicated multi-team successful innovations in the B2B tech space. Over the past 6 years, I have helped product managers and leaders step into inspired leadership, build thriving teams, create market-leading innovations, and see their careers accelerate. Okay, so let's get back to the shifts. So here is how I discovered the shifts. I was working in the world of tech, learning all of the key skills to be a product manager: problem solving, you know, customer-facing empathy, strategy, business, and tech. I was also working with many different stakeholders. Each had a different need, challenge, and issue. And of course, everybody needed their problem solved immediately. Now, when I first started to work in product management, I had a lot of different products. They were all moving forward, but I wasn't getting that what I call shiny red innovation. Now, I had a mentor named Jim, and he taught me how to become an amazing product manager and leader. At the same time, I also paused and looked around. Who are the product leaders who are succeeding? Who's getting promoted? Who's getting those coveted products that everybody wants? Who are the product managers that top leadership is consulting with? And what do they have in common? As it turns out, what Jim told me was exactly what I saw from the successful product managers. There were 5 things they were all doing. Now, I immediately changed my focus and I started to get fabulous raises, promotions, and be assigned those innovative products with lots of visibility. And then a few years later, I started to coach product managers on how to do the exact same thing. My clients' careers accelerated. And I have coached product managers who go from junior product managers who are unsure of themselves to directors and group product managers. And the thing is, when you look at top leadership in the world of product, as long as they were making these shifts, it didn't matter if they were an introvert or an extrovert, where they lived, whether they lived out in Silicon Valley or on the East Coast. When they made these shifts, they were able to transform their product management career. And if you make these shifts, you can do it too. So let's go ahead and dive in. The first shift is what I call leading with authenticity and inspiration. Now there's a myth out there that you need to have direct reports to lead. I absolutely disagree with this. A boss, yes, a boss has a title, but a leader has the people. This is one of my favorite quotes from Simon Sinek. The reality is ego-centered toxic leadership does not work. So leadership is not about having people report to you from a hierarchy perspective. Leadership is about winning the hearts and minds of your team. Now just think about it. Are you, as a product manager, a boss or a leader? Do you direct your teams or do you influence them? Do you make one-sided decisions because you're the product manager, or does your team get somewhat engaged? The good news is you absolutely have the power to become a leader. So the first thing you need to do is commit to the mastery of leadership with integrity and inspiration. And here's the reality. To safeguard your job and actually grow your job, you need to step into leadership. And the good news is leadership can be learned. There's actually a huge amount of science behind it. So the first thing to do to step into leadership is I want you to leverage your network. Reach out to people you trust. Connect with them. Former leaders, thought leaders, colleagues, and get their advice on how they handled moving up into leadership. All right, the second thing I want you to do is to treat others as they want to be treated. For example, understand the strengths of the folks on your cross-functional team or your engineering team and leverage those strengths. I want you to listen, communicate, with your key stakeholders and meet people where they are, whether it comes to stress that they're under, flexibility with remote work, or again, what people need. And then I want you to model what inspired product leadership looks like. Now is the time. Now is the time when we need courageous leadership. And to do this, you want to be continually telling stories. Stories of the customer, stories of failure. I want you to get in there and show them what leadership looks like. And I also want you to be vulnerable. Talk about your past mistakes. Talk about how you've iterated. Talk about how you've fallen down. All right, so just to summarize, the first shift is leading with inspiration. And to do this, you need to leverage your network. You need to treat others as they want to be treated, and you need to model leadership. And I challenge you to step into leadership. Don't wait for permission. Don't wait for somebody to say it's okay. I want you to start leading right now, even if it's a bit, a bit scary. Okay. Our second shift is advocate for yourself. Here is the reality. To advance your career, you need to let people know how awesome you are. I know it's a little uncomfortable, but it's one of those things that you need to be doing on a continuous basis. Now, I hear this all the time. If I just keep working hard, somebody will notice me. The challenge is hope is not a career strategy. You'll be able to confidently communicate your value You're going to master the art of evangelizing your work. You'll become a thought leader. And you'll be confident and authentic in asking for raises. And your anxiety and stress will decline. And you'll build a brand for yourself inside and outside the organization. So if you don't make this shift, If you don't evangelize your excellence, you will get overlooked. The hard truth is doing amazing work does not matter unless you take action and let people know about it. So what do you do? So the first thing you do is you celebrate the wins for yourself and your team. You want to make your excellence visible to everybody. From the frontline employees to the C-suite. Now, I recommend you use marketing strategies and KPIs, customer retention, revenue, NPS scores. You want to use the key strategic KPIs when talking about your products and what your products have accomplished. You want to celebrate and evangelize yourself through the product. So you want to celebrate the new release, the new customer, the new capabilities. You want to celebrate every single win of the product and the metrics it's driving. And this is an ongoing process. You need to be authentic and public, and again, do it through the wins of your product. And the result is you're going to get the new shiny red-carved products and you'll get that promotion. You'll end up making more money, and you'll have a career path, and you'll be moving into leadership. So you need to advocate for yourself. The next shift is what I call the secret weapon. It's actually my favorite shift. It's about building an environment of innovation on your team. So the old way of work is that work is a contract. You know, the old mindset was that you work for an organization, the organization gave you salary and benefits in exchange for your time. It was a simple value exchange. This comes from the days of the Industrial Revolution. And this is really where that heavy hierarchy comes from and micromanagement comes from. And the result of this type of environment is information hoarding. Layers and layers of hierarchy and decisions. Management by fear. You're not allowed to, you're not allowed to challenge the boss. You're told, not asked. And questions are discouraged. In this type of culture, zero innovation happens. So the new way of work is that work is a relationship. The way we innovate is when we treat people as human beings. The attributes that drive innovation are the same attributes that people look for in their personal friendships and relationships: feeling valued and cared for, a sense of trust and appreciation. So what if we treated our colleagues, or if leadership treated us, the same way we treat friends and family? What if we designed practices to build rather than break relationships? The reality is human connections are critical to innovate and lead. Now, the good news is you, as a product manager and product leader, have both direct and indirect teams, whether it's your engineering team or your cross-functional team, which means in this environment, you can set the tone. You can set the culture. And you can have that lens be work is a relationship where people are treated as valued human beings, respected and appreciated. And you will find when you set this tone, holy cow, innovation is going to grow. And when you get this right, you're going to accelerate the performance of your products. You're going to end up driving high-impact innovation even in times of uncertainty. And you're going to earn the respect of leadership. And when you don't use the lens of work as a relationship, you'll end up with limited innovation, chaos, and thrashing. And it really puts your career at risk. Because the way to innovate is to create an environment where people feel respected, feel that they have a voice, and feel appreciated. And trust is the baseline. So first, what you need to do is create what we call psychological safety. In other words, an environment within your direct and indirect teams where each person can bring all of their ideas to the table without any worry of being ostracized. You need to be transparent and inclusive. You need to ensure people have a voice and that stakeholders understand not only what is needed, but the context, the greater context into the product's goals and vision. And you need to use tools that drive trust, the right tools that are actionable, practical, and based on the realities of product management. Lastly, you want to shift your mindset. We really believe that engaged, valued employees can build amazing innovations. And the good news is, like I said, whether you're a direct manager or an influencer, you can start to do this today with your teams. So I want you to use empathy, not just with your clients, but with your colleagues as well. We want work and our meetings and our teams to be like the family dinner table. Again, this could be just your cross-functional team or meeting with your engineers or your direct people who report to you, where people can laugh, argue, and be themselves. And this is the magic. This is where you'll earn a seat at that product strategy table. You'll end up with that promotion. You'll become a thought leader. And you will be the leader others want to follow. So let's talk about Kathy, who went from being a junior product manager to a director. So when we first met, she was, she was a junior IC. Her organization was undergoing so much change, including new leadership. And I remember the first conversation, she was unsure, Lynne, am I even doing product management? We worked together. She iterated, she evolved how she led her indirect teams. We focused on human skills and connecting. She's now a director of product management. Her salary increased over 35%, and her CEO calls her into his office to collaborate every single week. Okay, so at this point, you need to commit to leading with inspiration. You need to tell others you're a rock star. And you need to embrace the reality that work is a relationship. All right, the next shift is you want to treat your career like a product. And when you get this right, you'll be continually learning and growing. You'll live on purpose with purpose. You'll do what you love and love what you do. And work will not feel like work. And to do this, you have to understand what are your core values. And you need alignment between those core values, your priorities, your strengths, your passions, and who you want to be and what's important to you. You need alignment with all of these things in the job that you're in and as part of your career journey. And the way to do this is to iterate, to experiment, to try things out. I want you to get out of your comfort zone, talk to people, learn, take on those stretch projects, and be comfortable being uncomfortable. So let's talk about one of my clients, Mike. When he came to us, he was just bored. He was working in just an incredibly toxic culture, and he was spending his days in Jira doing boring tactical work. Now, we work with Mike and we work through to understand his values, what he really wanted. And what he realized is that he needed a job where he could be himself and do what he loved. And for him, that's that front-end part of product management where you're doing the customer work. And once we started to explore, it's amazing. His stress immediately started to go down. And today he's a brand new job, a 50% salary increase, all within 10 weeks. He's redefined himself and he's also started a side business with a community in LA. He's a lead product manager focused on the customer experience and strategy. So now let's talk about the last shift, which is investing in a mentor. Everyone should have a mentor. They bring accountability and new ideas. This is a complex process with a lot of moving parts. Working with a mentor will speed up the process. And hopefully you have new ideas of how to do this just from today. They will not only speed up the process, but they've been through it. So you'll learn from their mistakes. Now you want to make sure you have somebody who has a deep business sense with an understanding of the realities of being in product management. You need an unbiased advocate outside your company. Again, there are so many different moving parts to leveling up and loving what you do in the world of product. And this is the time to step into your greatness. The world needs your brilliance. And to do this, you need to work with somebody who's been through it, who knows what works and what does not work. And if you don't invest in a mentor, you run the risk of staying stuck. I mean, the reality is time marches on and you're losing opportunities for leadership. And it also puts your career at risk for every year you are stuck doing the same thing. So let's go, let's do a quick summary of what you need in order to fast-track into product leadership and love what you do. You need to lead with inspiration. You need to advocate for yourself. You need to treat work as a relationship. And you need to treat your career like a product. And then finally, you need to invest in a mentor. And these shifts alone will enable you to discover your dream product management position while moving into leadership, even in times of rapid change and chaos. So the problem is not going to go away, and in fact, it may get worse, but it can be solved. I've done it. My clients have done it. You deserve to be an amazing product manager and leader. You deserve to start leading and building new innovations and going to work happy and loving what you do. So you now have a choice. You can continue to work hours and hours hoping that eventually somebody will recognize your work. You can continue to micromanage your products hoping that eventually you'll get that great product to work on. You can continue to be full of anxiety and stress, worried about whether you're going to get laid off. The stress is exhausting. You're drowning in tactical work. And you're missing moments that matter with your family. Waiting will make it worse. Waiting will mean others will get that promotion. The world of tech is constantly changing. The other choice you have is you can become an inspired product manager and leader, creating innovations that matter. You can have your leadership reach out to you for ideas. You can have others look to you for guidance and inspiration. You can have that title and salary you deserve. And you can make a difference in your organization. You can start to do what you love and love what you do. And you'll end up in a career journey where you're happy, where you feel valued, where you're learning and growing. Are you ready to be an inspired product leader? So how can I help? So my team and I have set aside some time in the next week to speak to you personally about how you can take all these ideas and apply them today. Whatever your biggest challenges are, we'll build a strategy to address them. On the session, we'll work with you to create a step-by-step game plan to allow you to move into leadership and secure your career, even in times of uncertainty. And the cost? It's absolutely free. Now, this is for product managers who are ready to start making a change. You need to be ready to do the work required to step into leadership. If this is you, I want you to book a session now. Now, why are we doing this? We love to give back. We don't want anybody to suffer in a product career doing tactical work, working 24/7 and going nowhere. Plus, we know you may need our help and support to transform your career. If so, we can talk about it and see if it's a good fit for both of us. Thank you so much for your time today. I would love to have a conversation with you to help you build a strategy to do what you love, love what you do, and move into leadership in the world of product. Schedule a free breakthrough session at lynnelevy.com/apply. Again, that's Lynne Levy, Lynne with an E, www.lynnelevy.com/apply. Thank you so much.