Coaching Product Managers & Designers Part I

Welcome to the Product Bakery again. My name is Christian and I'm here today, as every Monday, with Alex. Hi Alex. Hi Christian. So, as usual, a short reminder to our social media channels, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Feel free to drop by and give us a like and re-share our content in case you find it valuable. Next to that, we would also appreciate if you take a look at our website, product-bakery.com episodes, because there you can drop comments and interact on each episode with us, as well as the speakers. So, Alex, top of the mind topic for today is the topic of coaching. So, I know in your position, you have had many designers under yourself who worked with you, who worked for you, that also needed some advice, and I would be curious to hear how you coach product designers, researchers, and other people. That's an interesting question, and I'm actually wondering if there is such a big difference between coaching, let's say, designers or coaching other functions. So, I think that could be an interesting topic to double-click on in a future episode by looking at more specific coaching for product people. But when it comes to coaching designers, I would like to distinguish a little bit, because I think there is, as you mentioned, I had a team of different designers, so when you coach within your team, I think there is always a little bit like this, like you're still their manager, right? Like you're coaching as a manager, and I think this is something that sometimes in a situation where you want to coach or to mentor people, can be trickier, right? Because when you are really in a coaching mindset and coaching environment, you really need to let loose of being a manager. It's not, okay, this is my team, and you're reporting to me, and I'm like the one at the end assigning the paycheck or not. It's really, okay, we collaborative approach. And the collaboration, which I think anyway, good leadership entails, right? As a good leader, you should not like strictly manage people, but you should work with them. So, I think there is also a big overlap, but I think that's still something that you should keep in mind when coaching people. And then I think a lot of people would say the same, but coaching is also a lot about asking the right questions, asking the right questions and giving feedback. And I'm a very big fan of radical candor, like of also really being very open, transparent when it comes to pointing out the negatives, because you also don't help a fellow designer if you just give them the positive feedback or if you, but it needs to be constructive. So I think it's a little bit, and you interrupt me if I'm going too far in multiple different directions, but this is just like my mind's going. But first of all, I want to figure out where does the designer want to go? What motivates them? What gives them also the energy? What drives them? Because that's super crucial also to find the right motivation. What are the different types of personalities of designers in terms of what motivates them? I think there's many ones, especially within design, because you, you have super ambitious designers, ambitious in a sense that they want to climb a career ladder, that they want to have business success, if I can call it like that. And simultaneously you have designers who really love the visual creative aspect. And that really drives them, like having the possibility to create something beautiful and perfect can also be a very big motivation for designers, like to really be satisfied at the end of the day by looking at the results that they delivered. And then I think the more you also go into the direction of user experience, user research, anthropologists and so on, you also have a lot of people who are motivated by the, let's say by the impact that they are creating, for example, by working for a specific product or working for a specific company. And none of those are exclusive, right? So you might find people in between those lines, but yeah, understanding a little bit this motivation also helps you in terms of then giving better direction and helping them like work towards both their goals and also having the motivation so that you try to build that in. Do you have this small wins, let's say, that keep them motivated? One thing I would like to challenge you on is the point you mentioned at the beginning between the thin line of being a manager or being a coach. I know it's not an easy topic. That's why I have the pleasure to point on you today, but sure, on one point you have to empower people and you need to also make sure that the end result is what the company brings forward. But I believe it's not easy to find the right balance, but on the other hand, I think it's also important to decide if you are either the one who throws deadlines or pushes towards certain goals or the one who gives people enough freedom and also time to develop and to automatically become or to become by themselves the person who delivers. I remember when we worked together, we had this big redesign project of our apps and there was a designer who was missing an important piece. And you told me, Christian, I cannot tell him, I need to let him find it by himself. And I think it took you three days of regularly sitting down with him until he understood it by himself. It costs also sometimes just time and you cannot tell people everything, but there was also the deadline. So I know it's tough, but as far as I remember in this particular example, you decided to be the one who really coaches until the coachee makes the progress he has to make. And it drifts a little bit down to different leadership styles. And as I mentioned, I think to me, good leadership entails that you help your team grow. And I think it also comes down to how do you learn? I think most of the things that I learned in the past were things that I learned simply by doing and by failing and by making my own mistakes, because I never had like someone who told me, OK, you need to do it like this, or I wasn't like blindly following people telling me you need to do it like this. And I think this is crucial also for your development, right? If you want people on your team to grow, you can't just tell them what they need to do. You need to work with them. And I think you need to ask the right question so that they figure it out on their own and so that you can still give them the room also to make their own mistakes. Because only like this, you manage to develop them and to help them grow. So I think, yeah, of course, there might be different scenarios. And obviously, like there is also points where you just like need to then make a final decision because especially like in a leadership position, sometimes that's also what you're responsible for. I, to some extent, need to give a direction and a vision. Otherwise, I probably would be in the wrong position. So sometimes I obviously also need to make sure that we are heading in the right direction. But I think it's still important to give the space and the people and to listen to them and to help them figure out things on their own. And sometimes you, or the best part is when then you even get more out of it because they manage to go even further than what you just thought of. And we covered now, first of all, understanding whom you're talking to. And also if you are either be the manager or the coach. One last thing I would like to touch up on is, let's say you are working with someone who is not producing the outcomes or not developing into the direction that he or she should do. How do you deal with that? Back to being candid, right? Straight on honesty helps and works. And it's also important for people to improve, right? And obviously you don't want to say, oh, the work you produced sucks or this is bad. I think you also there, you need to make it actionable, right? And because sometimes it's not enough to just be candid and tell someone what they are doing wrong. Yeah, exactly. And I think it's super important to then really point out what it was like, what was wrong. And then ideally back to the asking aspect, ask them, okay, how do you think, could you fix this next time? Let's say someone wants to get buy-in into a concept for a specific idea they have. And they're really passionate about, and they create this super long, extensive presentation. And they're convinced that they managed to win everyone over. They walk into the room, they start presenting. You see that slide 16, attention of the room goes down. Slide 20, the product manager and the developer behind start already poking around in the idea because there is just so much content that everything becomes like a target at that extent, right? Then okay, designer comes out, I can say, okay, this presentation sucked, right? Okay. Let me do it differently. Or I can be like, okay, did you notice that because of the amount of content that you shared, you lost people's attention. And that's more than that. You showed so many details that you increased also the target for them to like really put a stick in, I don't know, to pick around and find the right thing. And that doesn't work. And back again, the goal was to get the content across and not getting a final sign of a fully fledged idea or UI. I would say, okay, let's sit down and think how you can improve this presentation or how you could fix this next time. And obviously I could say, you show too many slides, you show too much detail, keep it short. You just want to get the concept across. So try to also don't lose people in the details. Boom. Okay. I could do that. But that doesn't really help so much than like really going, leaving it open and working with the people. Sometimes it's just required to go into the nitty gritty details for a simple topic and ask many times until you hit the root cause instead of just trying to fix symptoms. One very last question before we close this session. What was the biggest mistake you've done back then that you want to share with other leaders that they should eventually avoid in the future or not do? I think a mistake that I made a lot and that I still keep making. Like when I started to understand this concept of, okay, you need to ask questions in order to help people like figure it out on their own and grow. Initially I still was struggling also with how do I ask the right questions that are not leading. And this is still something where sometimes I'm like looking back and I'm like, oh Jesus Christ. I completed it the opposite by, because by asking it the way I asked that, I was completely telling them between the lines what I want them to do. And I think this is something that can just backfire because it means that you are pushing your intentions on people while framing it like coaching. And yeah, I think that's bad. Maybe you are not the right person for this job. Oh, that was a leading question, sorry, Alex. That was no question. You need a question. That's okay. Did you ever try to put a question mark at the end of a question? That's a leading question. True. Fair point. Okay, Alex. It was a nice chat. Thank you very much. Talking to you soon. Talking to you soon, Christian. Bye.