Leadership self care is needed

Welcome product peeps. We're back and after the last short introduction of our comeback. Today, the first episode. So Christian, one thing that you mentioned last time was actually that you shifted a little bit, you're doing less coaching, you're doing a little bit more in the area of like becoming a psychotherapist. At the same time, you also mentioned that when it comes to the coaching, you started to focus more on actual leadership coaching and product leadership coaching instead of individual contributors. What's the difference? Like how, how do you approach it differently to talk to leaders compared to an individual contributor? Yeah. Hi, Alex. Sorry, right. I mean, that's the German attitude. I love it. First of all, again, I'm now shifting a little bit to more a therapy approach. First of all, for myself, because I'm just interested into psychology. Yeah, the training is great. I'm learning a lot. There's also a lot of self experience involved, which is like a great opportunity to do a big step in terms of personal development. So, and while I started the training, which is now running for almost a year, I realized while I was coaching people, I started asking different questions. So, and you know, I don't know how to explain it, but I'm just giving my best right now. You know, when you talk to ICs, to individual contributors, you think a product coach is helping you a lot to understand terminologies, tools, you know, agile and all that kind of stuff. And it is true to a certain point. So there is this factor of training, so to say, but in most of the time, it's more about communication and interaction between people. I think that's pretty obvious, right? We are talking to each other every day. There's a lot of communication going on, and there's also a lot of miscommunication going on. And I realized that by focusing on the needs people have, and the problems people have, the personal problems, actually, you do solve automatically, once you are able to identify those problems and start working on them, the subject matter topics as well. And it was actually a big game changer for me, because I realized communication and empathy and listening skills are so important, first of all, for myself as a coach and therapist, but also for the other people that I want and need to change my coaching style. So and with that being said, I realized also that, you know, once a product person, like, let's say, a mid level product manager starts, you know, becoming more skilled in what they're doing, but at the same time getting frustrated with the leadership and not knowing how to solve those leadership issues, which they actually can, because it's not their problem, they start becoming frustrated and changing jobs. And if you're good in what you're doing, and you cannot evolve, you move on. It's just that like, most businesses work the same, right? You have these challenges everywhere. I mean, I do feel like a lot of people try to change, hoping that it improves. But I feel like the improvement starts with yourself, and you're only absolutely as good as the change that you can introduce to a company. Exactly. That's also a big problem, because somehow coaching the people and making them better makes them also leave somehow. Not always, for sure. But in some cases that happens. So I asked myself, okay, how can that be avoided? And I just realized by coaching, and I was also very grateful because a couple of leaders reached out to me six months ago. And, you know, working with them and helping them to become good coaches, too, is a huge game changer, because that involves automatically that the employees have more space to grow. There's a better communication going on in both directions, which means both parties can share their needs and their plans and their creativity. So which leads to a better working together environment, so to say. But I'm also happy to hear how you approach it. Yeah, but I mean, I think what you're saying makes a lot of sense, right? Because at the end, leadership, there is different forms of leadership. And we've moved away from the classical micromanagement, task execution, task execution, more towards our, I would say, more human approach, where coaching and mentoring is actually the center of leadership, right? I mean, that's, that's the only way. So I feel like, yes, that's maybe also something that some people in management positions are lacking. We're trying to understand exactly these things, right? Like, how do I, first of all, listen? How do I also make sure that they understand or they are able to kind of reflect? How do I ask the right questions to get them to the right answers, instead of simply just like giving them the task and waiting for execution, right? Yeah. And before you start understanding other people, it's very important to understand yourself and to understand your role as a leader. And what I'm realizing is that many people don't do that. When I hear that leaders are busy, busy with operational tasks, busy with doing things that actually should be taken over by the employees, you know, I think that's, that's the way to start. And that's the way to go to look at, to, yeah, you know, help them to identify that they have to shift their focus and also how they think about their roles. Because most important as a leader is that you know what you can expect from your people. That's super, super important. Maybe, I mean, you've definitely spent more time analyzing this than I did. I think I'm speaking more from a, from a very pragmatic position or from my personal experience. So feel free to disagree. But I always feel like I mean, ideally, and I'm not there yet, but if I do my job right, I can probably be somewhere on a beach with my legs up. Because at the end, that's, that's like, that's what in the end, I do see as like my function, right? I need to hire the right people, make sure they get the right information, make sure they know that the business well enough, they know how the information needs to flow and so on, help them build the right relationships internally. So that ideally, I don't need to be involved in any of these decisions, or only in very few of them. Yeah, so I see two or let's say three big things a leader should do. Number one is, especially in product management or product design is strategy. Number two is coaching and mentoring. And then depending on the company size, and depending on the growth, it's hiring. Yeah. And everything you said falls into these categories that you just mentioned. So, and everything else is usually not part of it. Especially when it comes to operational work, sitting in meetings, you shouldn't sit in where you waste your time, where you could send your employees or not. So we would need to make a deep dive with some leaders who maybe volunteer. But you know, this is the way to approach it. So it's about time management, structure, priorities, and first of all, self care. Most of the people, most of the leaders have this, I call it helper syndrome. So they try to help everyone, but they're not helping themselves. And that's a big problem. Also, from a psychological standpoint. Fair enough. I mean, probably something I would fall under as well. Well, you know, I mean, as a leader, it's your role and your job to protect your team and to make them feel well. Right. But there is a certain line that you should not overstep. And you know, when you start realizing after work, you're getting stressed, you're getting pissed, you cannot calm down, you're still thinking about work. These are the first red flags and signs that you should take more care of yourself. Because if you can't sleep, because you are worried that your employees are not doing their work, or you need to micromanage them, or thousands of other examples, it's a sign that change is needed. And I'm pretty sure a lot of people would have that sign or can can relate to what you're just saying. I mean, I would probably too. Luckily, I have a very good sleep. I know that. It's probably not because of my amazing self care skills. But it's more related to the fact that the second I hit a bed, I sleep. And any alarm has a hard time to get me out. That's actually a product idea that we should discuss at one point on how to solve that. But like, I mean, if I would have that problem, and if I identify for myself that I am not taking enough care of myself, how would I go about this? Well, call Alexa Punt. That doesn't work. Joke has not needed. People ask me, I try to kind of tell them how it works for me. But there it's, I think it's just a personality thing. What I like is the reality check. The reality check in terms of facing the truth and asking yourself by going through your task. I mean, just open your calendar and ask yourself, do I really have to go to that meeting? Look at Slack and ask yourself, do I really have to do that task or whatever is requested by you from whomever? I'm being honest to yourself. That doesn't mean that you immediately have to change it or to fix it. But the first step is to raise the awareness. What am I doing here? What's going on? I can't tell you the complete solution because it's an individual case. But first of all, raise the awareness on what is going on and be honest to yourself about it. And that's very hard, actually, because the truth hurts sometimes. It's like self coaching, asking yourself the right questions. Kind of, yeah. Maybe we should do an extra episode about that. The questions you need to ask yourself. But I'm just wondering because your team has grown a lot, up to 15 people. How do you manage to manage them and lead them? Well, so first of all, one thing that has always been very important to me and that is kind of, it's not really a philosophy because it's kind of best practice. I always try to have enough time for a team. I would kill any other meeting just to make sure that I have regular touchpoints with everyone that is at least in my direct reporting line. I've also been in different roles with a lot of different reports and so on and so forth. I've been seeing a lot of different and I've been trying a lot of different ways. And already the second you start like, oh, yeah, let's have like biweekly, triweekly touchpoints. That's where things usually go sideways. Because I feel like then there is so much time between one and the other touchpoints that you are not able to talk about things whenever they're relevant, you're not able to give people the right amount of attention and so on and so forth. So I really try to have these regular, even if it's short touchpoints, every week with everyone and make sure to have additional time to kind of see, okay, whenever we need to kind of take something into a longer conversation or whenever we need to kind of work through something, right? Because sometimes that's also the case. And I think that's only possible by making sure that the organization doesn't grow to an extent where you have too many direct reports, because your attention span can only be as big. And I think the magic number for me has always been somewhere around five to six people reporting to you, where then it starts like getting complicated. And I think this is where you need to start delegating also some of the reports where you need to have like managers in place, where your work becomes more working with the managers to setting them up for success to giving them the tools to work like with their people. And they can have a smaller team and run that autonomously or with only the guidance that they need, right? So it's not always possible, it's not always easy to scale the organization and to put these levels in with the speed of hiring, especially I mean, again, 15 people in a year, from one to 15. It's different when you already have like managers in place and you have a team of 50 and you add 15 on top, that's easier. But from one to 15 means also like finding the right cadence of like, okay, when do I need to hire the manager? When do I need to hire the senior? When do I need to hire the junior? If you ask me now, if I look back at the last year, I probably should have hired managers earlier. Because I got to a point where there have been too many people. And I could see that I couldn't like really give them also the feedback that they maybe wanted to have at one point, because I didn't know enough about what's happening or what their issues are, or I didn't have enough conversations. So yeah, I think that's, that's the summary of one year of team building. Yeah. And I love it. And I think, as you said, at the beginning, it's super important for you to spend time with your team on a regular basis. And there's one important thing that you do, while you're having this one on one chats with your people, and that's building trust. And building trust is essential for a good relationship for a good work relationship, and also to engage with people and to help them grow and make them want to grow. And, I mean, let's be honest, I think the good thing of how the market develops is that everyone wants to grow it. I haven't seen in a while someone who was like, happy being stuck in a specific position. And I'm sure there are people and it's probably also connected to the way we try to hire and the way we generally try to find people who have a growth mentality. But most people that I've seen actually want to grow. And I think the them wanting to grow also means that you need to kind of have enough time to be able to focus on working with them on their growth. And I think this is probably where this coaching mindset for a manager comes in. Because I feel like the best way to help someone is to actually see them struggle or see them in a specific situation where they have a problem and help them walk through that situation. So they can have the learnings and that's how they grow and that's how they improve. Exactly. But you need to have a pretty strong framework also around this to give them the right steps. And maybe we can focus in the next episodes how to build such a framework for yourself in your work environment as a leader. I'm currently working on that. So yeah, so I think you are the best person to share that. Absolutely. But I feel like we can wrap it up for today. If you have any questions on leadership, on coaching, again, feel free to shoot them our way and talk to you soon. Bye bye.