EMPOWERED

PART IICoaching

Coaching is no longer a specialty; you cannot be a good manager without being a good coach.

—Bill Campbell

Bill made this statement years ago, but one of the major learnings of our industry post‐pandemic, is that coaching is more essential than ever. If you hope to innovate at scale, it is simply not optional. Problems escalate faster, relationships are damaged much more easily, and collaboration is harder.

Which is why you'll notice that the longest part of this book is on coaching. That is no accident.

In the technology industry, we focus so much on the core skills and competencies used by product managers, designers, and engineers, but so little on the skills and competencies of managers and leaders. Yet it is these managers and leaders who are responsible for molding people into effective teams.

The logic is simple: Your company depends on successful products. And successful products come from strong product teams.

Coaching is what turns ordinary people into extraordinary product teams.

If a product team is not effective, we need to look hard at the people on that team and see where we can help them improve as individuals, and especially as a team.

The chapters in this part highlight the most important areas of coaching and development for members of product teams. Unless you've been personally coached by an experienced manager, many of the topics may be new to you. Certainly, if you can speak from experience on these topics, so much the better, but ...