KEY SKILLS AND ATTRIBUTES OF A PRODUCT LEADER

KEY SKILLS AND ATTRIBUTES
OF A PRODUCT LEADER

With product leadership still in its nascent phase, product leaders have a major role to play within their organisations in defining what this collaboration should look like and setting a strategic course to help make it happen. Through helping to create this strategic vision, the product leader can help the business promote a culture of customer-centricity and foster an environment for enterprise-wide innovation.

Watch now: Barriers to embedding product leadership and the risks of mismatched priorities

A strategic visionary

One of the key attributes of a product leader is the ability to influence and shift mindsets. While traditional product managers tend to focus on the specific technical details of what they are developing, it is the role of a successful product leader to zoom out from that targeted focus and take a more holistic view of product development within the organisation. They must be visionary and strategically minded. This visionary mindset requires product leaders to work to a different time horizon. While product managers tend to look at the next 12-18 months, product leaders look beyond 2 years and should be giving thought to changing customer trends and business needs, and what product means for the business in the long term.

A communicator

It is one thing to think strategically, it is another to be able to communicate that strategy clearly and concisely in a way that influences others and builds support and buy-in from people across the organisation, including at the most senior levels. Almost nine in ten (89%) of our respondents think the ability to influence others, including senior decision-makers, is a vital prerequisite for product leadership. Any good product leader must possess excellent communication skills. Larger product teams are a relatively new phenomenon, often involving a cross-section of skills and backgrounds, including those with a technology engineering, design or research background. So, being able to communicate clearly with all parties is central to leading a successful product team.

A champion of product across the business

Like leaders in any business role, product leaders must ultimately possess the charisma and ability to inspire those in their team. Beyond this, they should also be recognised as a leader within the wider business, working collaboratively with the C-suite and other business heads to align on the overall company strategy and ensure that the product strategy complements it. Our findings reveal that 60% of business leaders feel that the CEO is ultimately responsible for owning the customer relationship. While this may not be unexpected, 55% also point to the importance of the CEO’s vision and buy-in to the product leadership strategy. In fact, around half (51%) of businesses surveyed said that product is a standing board agenda item, with all C-suite contributing to the discussion. Another half (49%) said the CEO helps to cascade product strategy down through the organisation, emphasising the vital role of the C-suite, and the CEO in particular, in delivering an enterprise-wide understanding of product.

A technical operator

There are many product leaders today who have not held product management roles previously. However, our survey findings suggest that business leaders consider some technical background in product, or at least an understanding, as important. 89% agree that a product leader should have the technical skills needed to understand a product-led approach, and almost half (49%) view technical product knowledge as a required skill to be a product leader.

^{As a product leader you must have a strategic outlook. You must think: where is the business going? You have to consider what is changing from a talent perspective in the market. Ways of working are now different. So you have to consider what that means from a technology perspective. It is thinking about all of those outside factors and putting that into a vision. If I think about it from a product perspective, looking forward and roadmaps and vision, it is all about strategy and leading teams with the ultimate view to build up capacity to deliver great product outcomes.}

^{CARLA HARDING}^{, PRODUCT DIRECTOR – ENABLING FUNCTIONS , TESCO}