Leadership Essentials: Product Leadership & Dual-Track Career Paths
Is there a Leadership dilemma lurking behind our Product Career Paths?
I recently worked with a client to create a dual-track Product Management career path that included a focus on Emotional Intelligence and Leadership skills - like self-awareness, empathy, self-compassion, and giving and receiving feedback - as well as functional/product skills like business acumen, customer experience and innovation.
It was a great project that allowed me to put my core beliefs about the importance of human skills into action as a fundamental piece of how this Product organisation thinks about, motivates and incentivises its team members.
While working on the dual-track structure, I was also coaching Product team members on a variety of topics, including how to better understand the career options that lay ahead for them - both individual contributors (IC) and people management - how to identify the path they were drawn to, and how to build their human and functional skills to help them get there.
Through our work together, many of product people identified IC as a path that they were more interested in pursuing, yet there was a real hesitancy from many in the group to actually say it out loud and commit to it.
The choice seemed to bring up internal tensions and feelings that IC was a selfish move to make, one that they had to justify to themselves, colleagues and me. There was also a concern that by becoming an IC they put at risk their future career progression, at this company or another.
This wasn’t the first time I had heard concerns with the IC path and it made me wonder if there’s a bigger trend to consider … are we as a Product community placing more emphasis and energy behind those that choose the people management path than those that are pulled towards IC roles?
Are we, perhaps inadvertently, making those that decide to be managers out to be the “leaders” while IC is just … well, an IC? Have we tied the idea of “leadership” and “success” to a title or even area of a career ladder?
In my view, a Product Director isn't more essential or more of a leader than a Principal Product Manager. It’s not about the title. Product Leadership is about the behaviours and mindset and learnings you bring to your organisation. It's how you communicate, collaborate, inspire and motivate. How you challenge the status quo. How you bring curiosity into your organisation’s practices. That could be as an IC or people manager.
You can have a huge impact on an organisation and colleagues - as mentors, role models, teachers, subject matter experts, etc. - as individual contributors if that is what moves you.
Keeping in mind the last few years that we’ve all experienced, I think we, as a community, need to remember:
People are happier when they're doing what they enjoy.
From all reports of the “great resignation” over the past two years, we know that people of all disciplines want to find what feeds them - emotionally, intellectually and even spiritually. And, there's less fear in moving away from what doesn't align with our values to something that does.
What can we as managers, leaders and coaches do?
Realise that it's time to support our product people with more career options.
Product organisations should be offering a dual-track career path (at a minimum) and stand behind it with equal support and opportunity. The greater our promotion and acceptance of the IC role, the less likely a product person will hesitate to take a role that really speaks to them. And won’t we all be happier for that!
How to get started on a dual-track career path for your organisation?
Read more about dual and multi-track career paths, and what they look like in terms of titles, and responsibilities:
It’s time to fight for a Dual Product Management Career Path by Ken Norton
Dual Career Tracks for Product Managers by Clement Kao
The Trident Model of Career Development by Pat Kua
Learn more about how EQ and human skills can become an integral part of your dual-track career path. As a coach and advisor, I can share best practices to bring these essential skills into your Product practice, and work closely with your teams to explore what’s best for them. Get in touch.
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