Leadership Toolkit: 2 Resources and 1 Action For New Product and Technical Leaders
I love learning about leadership, especially when it’s related to product and technology companies.
Unfortunately, when I first got interested in product leadership, I had a hard time figuring out where to start. Sure there are lots of resources on the subject, but the challenge is knowing which pieces are going to produce the most gold in the early days of upskilling yourself.
Books like No Rules Rules sound amazing, and there is a universal feeling that this particular book unlocks a lot of terrific leadership ideas, but unless you’re growing an incredibly well-funded company many of the concepts in this book simply aren’t relevant.
So, if you are trying to learn more about product and technical leadership, here is my take on the best way to get started:
Read This Book: The Managers Path by Camille Fournier will give you a lay of the land, and is a helpful way to get your bearings. This is the go-to resource for any level, with chapters on how to be a better individual contributor, how to recognize great leadership (because you may not be exposed to it) and super practical advice on how to be a better leader.
Listen To This Podcast: If you really want to start going down the rabbit hole on leadership for technical roles, listen to Modern CTO by Joel Beasley. Joel interviews amazing leaders across a variety of industries, all of whom share anecdotes relevant to all technical roles.
Do This Thing: My #1 tip if you’re moving into leadership is to act as well as learn. The most insightful thing you can do in your early days as a leader is to meet with your team, ask them directly for the blockers that are stopping them from doing their best work, find commonalities and develop strategies for unblocking your team. This is what the phrase “10x” literally refers to — multiplying those around you.
These 2 resources and 1 action point will exponentially accelerate your learning process.