Coaching Product Managers & Designers Part II

Welcome everyone to this Monday episode of the Product Bakery. If you're listening to us for some time now, you should know that we are trying this format of short Monday episodes, just me and Christian talking, brainstorming around what's currently really top of our minds. To always get the latest episodes, you can of course subscribe us on all the podcast platforms or follow our social media channels and use the website if you want to leave some comments or interact with any of our speakers. But with that said and keeping the intro a little bit shorter than usual, Christian, how are you? Very good. How about you? That's amazing. I need a motivated Christian today. Christian, last Monday you asked me about coaching and I already mentioned last time that I would be interested in understanding okay, from the things that I shared around working with designers and especially like also different personality types of designers, you are actively coaching people in different companies. So also even beyond the manager coaching his direct reports, but like really going in specifically to coach people. So why don't you tell me like what your thoughts are after the last episodes in terms of what the major differences are in the way you coach? Great question. To summarize what we discussed last time, as a leader and as a supervisor, coaching might be a little bit different, especially when you have to find the balance between defining goals, targets, and push towards something versus empowering people and also coaching them. I am not in that position because I'm purely focused on coaching. So people who work with me do this on a voluntarily base. I don't know if that's the right word, but they want to get coaching. So there is no supervisor talk or anything else involved when I work with them. They pay for it. They pay for it. They even pay for it sometimes. Or the companies pay for it. But yeah, there's also money involved. Absolutely. That's crazy. Yeah, which is also very good because I can be even more candid maybe than other people because I have absolutely no stake into what's going on inside the company. I'm not involved in any politics. And that's also what I'm saying right at the beginning. I'm not doing this to hurt anybody. I'm not doing this because I have any stake in what's going on inside. I'm just sharing my outside perspective. Yeah, I think that's a super interesting one. And I think that indeed makes a very big difference also in the way you can say things. In the times where I was working as an employee, I did also internal coaching and mentoring. And you can be in a similar position inside a company if you coach or mentor people in other teams. So just as a small side note, it makes sometimes things also easier. Yeah, fair enough. And when people call you or when people ask for coaching, what are like usually the main use cases or what are the reasons for someone to call a coach? Yeah, I think it starts from, I want to apply from a job to, I want to get a raise, want to be promoted, want some support while I just started a new job. I'm working with a couple of product leads slash VP products who just started, who just made a transition into this new role and who want to have some sparing partner or someone who challenged them in their new position. So it depends. But most of the time, product people want to just make the next level and master what they are doing or getting better in what they are doing. And how can I imagine this to look like? Do they come with a specific goal and you just work around that? Or how does goal setting for you generally look like? We need to maybe distinguish between the acquisition part and the coaching part. Yeah. Because when people call me, it's usually more than just the request that you find on email. There is usually more behind. I need to be careful with what I'm saying, but to anonymize it a little bit. For example, I recently got approached by a product manager and she wanted to get some more support in HR practices to work more structured. And once we started talking, we realized, okay, that it's not only the HR practices, there's also a lot of strategic stuff that is not done yet, which she also got asked to do and which somehow was not taken care of enough, not only from her side, also from leadership. And you realize, okay, you need to dig deeper. And you first of all, need to understand what the people really want and what problems they have. And from that moment on, you can start defining goals and also talk about what the outcome of a coaching will be. But that's the first step, understanding what people really want and especially need. And the second part is then once you get started, you need to bear in mind, that's my approach because I'm also taking personal coaching. I think I mentioned it once. If I'm the one who gets the benefit out of it, I am the one who has to do the work. That means I'm going to reach out. I'm going to define what I want and what I need in the first place, and then also get challenged on my idea. We always define a couple of frames. So let's say someone says she wants to be better in product strategy, or the next person said he wants to be better in working in an agile environment or working with scrum. Or the next person says, I want to start a new position and I want to set up a team. That's usually the frame. And then what I'm always doing is I'm trying to make it as practical as possible. So we do not talk about theory. We talk about real world projects they're working on. I'm sometimes a bit more structured than I used to be in the past. So what I always do is we have a working document where we write down topics, action items, and also questions. And that's what we walk through. And one of the most important questions that I'm always asking is because we talked last time about asking good questions. One of my closing questions is always, what are you going to do by when? So to make it really as actionable as possible, because it's nice when you talk about a topic and you have some enlightening moments, but if you don't write them down and if you don't take action afterwards, then coaching becomes useless. Yeah. And let's be honest, like practically speaking, even in my personal life, I have things like doctor appointments that I don't plan for months simply because every time I think of them, I'm like, oh yeah, I need to do this. And then in the mess of all the things that you have to do, you forget about this. And I think, yeah, the same happens obviously like also with these tasks that help you. And that's also what I see in leadership meetings where a big team is deciding on something, but they're not asking who, they're not asking what, and they're not asking by when. And this is just my big tip to everyone who is the leadership position. If you have one-on-one coachings or bigger groups, make people accountable. And you're not pushing. You ask someone, hey, who can take that on? And then someone volunteers and you ask the person, by when do you think you can do that? And then they will say, oh, I can do it by end of next week. And then if you don't like that, you can say, hey, we maybe need this earlier. And then they say, okay, I can make it by end of next week. But the commitment comes from them, but you're not pushing something onto people. So it's like a little bit psychologic reverse thinking. But I think that's the most effective way I'm working with. And I'm realizing when you ask people at the end or during a coaching session, what are your next steps? And by when do you plan to take them? You can hold people accountable and also train them to hold themselves accountable. Yeah. And it leaves them again with doing things on their own, learning things by doing things and only having this guiding hand to some extent. And then we have also the topic touched last time that I want to pick up today is this notion of asking good questions. And what makes a good question a good question? And I think a good question is especially a good question when it comes in the right time. And it's also asked in the right tense. So something that I've learned from a coaching book, it's a while ago, you can ask a question and jump between different times. For example, you could say with the knowledge we have today, what could we have done better in the past? Or you can say with the knowledge from the past, what can we do better tomorrow? Or in case this is going to happen tomorrow, what can we do in two weeks? So you see already, you can jump between the tenses. And this is something you need to learn and you need to understand as a coach or as someone who asks questions to make sure you guide people into the right direction, because different situations require different sort of questions. When would you, for example, use future based questions versus past based questions? Let's say we are at the moment facing a situation where we want to go to market with a new product. So I think it's more important to look into the future. On the other hand, let's say we have had an incident. So production was down. Let's say you're a payment company, transactions weren't going through. Then we should take a look into the past, first of all, to understand the root causes better. And then also go beyond and take a look at what we can improve in the future. So you're already seeing it's not only one question that you need to ask. I think in the end, we're always looking at improving in the future, right? So whatever kind of question you ask, I almost feel like even if I ask future questions, I want people to start about past experiences and to still think about them. But yeah, there is a lot of different variations also. Yeah. So first of all, you need to understand or you need to help people understand the root cause. This is one thing. And with future based questions, you bring people away from the problem because you have maybe seen as many times when shit hits the fan, everyone is talking about the problem and no one really focuses on the solution. And sometimes it's simply not helpful to discuss for hours the problem. So you can help people shift their focus from maybe a negative, toxic, I'm pissed off mindset to more, okay, what can we do better now? It sounds really like a motivational coaching thing, but it's reality. Whether you are a leader, a supervisor, a manager, a coach, the best way to be outcome driven is to look into the future. And also you can better remove the emotions. This is where coaching questions and research questions are very different at its core. And the difference between coaching and therapy is that coaching is always outcome driven. You can be in therapy for a year, for two years. It maybe never ends. For sure it should ideally. But with coaching, you are always working towards goals. I already feel my phone buzzing with some therapists complaining about this. Okay, let's see. You can forward them to me. All right, Christian, thank you so much. I think it was a good addition and another perspective and level to the whole coaching conversation. Let us know, do you have any questions on coaching? Do you need coaching? Or what is the topic that's currently most important to you in your career? Just drop us an email or a message on whatever channel you want and we're happy to take you down in the future. And regarding your doctor's appointment, Alex, take it. It's really time for your prostate exam. Yes. Bye tomorrow. I don't even say bye to this. Bye! you