Essential Coaching Skills for Product Leaders
2024 course dates to be announced soon.
A virtual course of five, two-hour sessions
Taught live by Kate Leto, an Executive Coach with 25 years of product experience
Learning in small cohorts of 8-10 Product Leaders
Testimonial from course participant:
“Practical, actionable, challenging.”
“I liked that it was a mix of theory and hands-on work. We were able to practice the use of the methodologies and tools discussed to get a first-hand experience of them, with the opportunity to ask questions and share experiences with the group.”—Sophie Pesenti, Group Product Manager, Decathlon Digital
“The role of the leader is becoming that of a coach.” —Harvard Business Review
Waitlist
To be added to the waitlist and be the first to be notified of new dates and availability please fill out the form below and click “Sign up.'“
Discover the key to developing yourself and your team
Landing a product leadership role is a cause for celebration, but it also means it's time to go into learning mode—you'll need a whole new set of skills to succeed in this new role.
Be prepared to spend much less time doing product work, and more time developing your team, building influential relationships with executives (who are now your peers), communicating decisions with clarity and building an empowered culture while you’re at it.
It’s a transformation in how you work, and it’s not fast or easy. You may feel like you've been given the title and responsibility of a leader, but don't yet have the experience or support you need to be successful.
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That’s where coaching comes in
Research shows that organisations with leaders who take a coaching approach build sustainable, long-term skills that empower them to make changes in their organisation on a micro and meta scale. Benefits of developing your coaching skills include:
Developing engaged and empowered team members who act with autonomy and resilience.
Increasing retention rates on your teams, leading to higher performance overall.
Guiding your team behaviour to promote increased agility, adaptive thinking, and a growth mindset.
Creating and maintaining a learning culture based on continuous improvement in your organisation.
Boosting and improving your own personal performance, confidence and communication skills.
As an accredited executive coach and a product veteran with more than 25 years’ experience, I’ve curated some of the most powerful coaching principles and tools that I’ve used in hundreds of hours of coaching product leaders. Now I’ve developed a five-week program to introduce them to you.
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What you’ll learn
Become an effective coaching leader in your product organisation. At the end of the course, you’ll have the building blocks to create an intentional coaching practice within your team, including:
You’ll be able to use the most influential professional coaching frameworks that will change how you:
Conduct 1:1s
Give and receive feedback
Structure difficult conversations
Build influential stakeholder relationships
Develop team members to meet their greatest potential
Manage tension and conflict
You'll be confident saying less and asking more so your team members develop a greater sense of accountability and trust. We’ll focus on the coaching superpowers of active listening and asking powerful questions
You’ll be able to help your team members get unstuck by shifting their perspective from problem to solution.
You’ll be able to confidently shift between a coaching mindset and more directive leadership style so that your team is getting the kind of leadership they need from you at all times.
You’ll be able to help those around you identify and challenge their own limiting beliefs that might be holding them back from doing their best work.
You’ll be able to reduce burnout in your team and leadership fatigue in yourself.
What you will not learn
Please note, in this course we will not be focused on specific product management competencies and skills. For example, we will not cover things like: how to write a strategy or story, how to manage portfolios, build out OKRs or create a roadmap for your organisation.
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Who is this course for?
This course is for you if you're new to a leadership role or if you're a more established leader and you know you'd like to add coaching techniques to your toolkit.
You might be a product leader who manages other product people or teams. Your title might be:
Head of Product
Director
VP
CPO
Titles are not everything, though! If you don’t hold one of these and you’re still interested in the course, you’re very welcome to apply.
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How will we work?
When
Dates for Q2 and Q3 2024 TBD
What
Coaching is often considered a mix of art and science, and from my experience the best way to discover your personal approach to coaching is through practice. In each two-hour session, we'll spend some time talking about frameworks and theory, but the bulk of the session is dedicated to practising your coaching skills in a safe space.
There’ll be an optional 60-minute office hour available twice during the course as an opportunity to talk through any questions or challenges that you’re having as you apply what you’re learning
A dedicated Slack group for our cohort to continue the learning outside of our weekly sessions and to give everyone a chance to learn from each other. (Access to the Slack group will continue after the course ends).
Access to two optional follow-up group sessions after the course completes to check-in on challenges and progress.
Expect pre-work for each session that includes practising the techniques that we’re learning together. Budget 30-60 minutes per week for that. And also self-reflection prompts to journal about between sessions.
Cost is $2150
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About me
After a successful career as a product leader, consultant, trainer and advisor, I took my first coaching course in 2017—not to become a coach, but much like you, to learn essential coaching skills that I could add to my leadership tool box.
Since that first course, I was hooked! I started putting my new skills into use in working with product organisations of all shapes and sizes all over the globe and I learned a lot about myself along the way.
What really moved me was having the opportunity to help people get out of their own way and discover how they can reach their full potential—and the best way for me to do that was by going deeper into coaching and becoming certified through the Berkeley Executive Coaching Institute.
I’ve coached leaders and executives from start-ups to scale ups and global corporations in verticals that range from financial services and pharmaceutical to aviation and retail. I also regularly write and speak about product leadership for global audiences at events like Mind the Product, Industry and Leading the Product.
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I’ve worked with:
