Effective Product Manager Coaching & Development

May 1

Background

At the beginning of my post on the importance of self-awareness, I said “no one is ready for their first product management job.”

I think this is true for several reasons:

Until very recently there were no product management degree or certification programs at universities or in graduate programs that actually teach you specific things you’ll do in the job like discovery, research, working in an agile environment, etc
The job requires you to be strong in multiple dimensions - it’s very rare for someone, especially early in their career, to already be strong in so many different areas
Most product managers (and team leaders) don’t have a comprehensive framework to outline all of the necessary skills at the right level of specificity

This all sets up a challenging situation for managers of product teams. All of your people probably need to be working on a few things to improve and move up but it’s hard to keep the (literally) 20 or 30 attributes in your head every review cycle. What’s more, is that if your company does have a standardized review process, it is probably focused on generic attributes that are true of all employees. They ask you to rate people on things like communications and integrity, which are of course important, but seem bland and disconnected from everything going on in a product manager’s day to day.

I think this also leads to managers being hesitant to hire people without prior product experience into entry level jobs. Everyone is busy and no one thinks they have the time to take a really high-potential person that has worked in similar but non-product fields and make them awesome at the role. Sure it’s a time investment, but it’s even more daunting if you are lacking and organized way to assess them and close the gaps. With this framework you should feel comfortable taking more chances. There are over 100K IC product manager job postings on LinkedIn right now - the only way those are getting filled is by bringing more people into the profession.

Find a Comprehensive Framework to Start With

If you want to be able to help your team improve, you need to make sure you’re covering all of the bases. The first thing you should do is find a product manager profile that you like and that appears to cover everything you think is important. I’m biased, as I came up with the one below, but there are others out there you can use if you want. The important thing is to have broad coverage.

I started this blog in large part because I felt like the product manager measuring bar that was used by most for hiring and coaching was too narrow. Specifically I think most prior frameworks have a few issues:

Hard skills are over-emphasized - the stuff that’s obvious on a resume gets too much weight, particularly in hiring decisions
Soft Skills - Lots of people have written about some of these and there is a lot of general agreement, however I feel like ownership and attention to detail don’t get talked about enough
Judgment and decision making - the entire job is making good decisions and most PMs never get instruction, resources, or coaching on how to remove bias and improve decision quality, which seems nuts saying it out loud

For all of these reasons I came up with my own framework that is built on the Product Leaders profile of an excellent product manager.

DOWNLOAD a free copy of the Product Manager Coaching & Development template.

Filling It Out For the First Time

Using this for the first time is always a bit onerous for everyone, but it’s really not that bad once you get going. I generally have the PM fill this out as a self-assessment first to have them get used to the format and think really hard about their abilities before you try to use it for anything. It’s a lot of material and takes some internalizing. I’d also encourage the PM to share it with peers directly or ask some “how do you think I am in this dimension?” while they are filling it out. The manager should fill out their own copy separately and then the two of you can compare answers during the first session.

In terms of actually filling it out, there are only three possible ratings for each row:

BELOW EXPECTATIONS - The PM is performing below where they need to be on this dimension for their current level
MEETS EXPECTATIONS - They are doing perfectly fine
EXCEEDS EXPECTATIONS - They are doing better than you would expect for someone at that level

There are several books written and research papers on the pluses and minuses of three vs five vs seven point rating scales, the precise wording of each level, using descriptions vs numbers etc. I’m sure someone can find flaws in this approach. Having used a similar format for years that had 5 levels I can tell you it was too much granularity and you’d get lost debating “why a 4 and not a 5?” Rating people with numbers seems to freak people out unnecessarily, so I don’t do that anymore. The main thing people need to get used to is that this is like the grade curve in graduate school - it’s centered on a B+, not a C. If you had a PM that was marked “Meets Expectations” on every rating, you’d be thrilled and you’d be happy to hire four more people just like them. The assessment assumes the bar is high and they should be in the job in the first place, so it’s not necessary to have multiple levels of “not doing well” or “exceeding.”

For each section (e.g. Hard Skills), give an overall rating. This is not mathematical, or an average. This is also partially why I moved away from number scales as people were always tempted to do actual math. You are trying to summarize for the whole section “are they where they need to be or not?” If they are REALLY doing poorly in one dimension such that it may be a reason for them to leave the organization, maybe the whole section is “Below Expectations” despite other scores being OK. You are trying to convey information and make a point of where they need to focus and impact individual vectors have on your overall assessment of their performance. Finally give an overall assessment with the same logic - based on the composite of dimensions and the relative severity of each, are they at, below, or above where they should be?

Using The Framework for Coaching & Development

The first time you sit down with your employee to talk through this you should be comparing their self-assessment with your assessment. Talk through any major discrepancies first and why you two had such different answers. Getting that baseline of definitions and perception is key to this working in the future. Between the two of you pick 2-3 of the most important things for the person to work on in the coming quarter. There’s no right answer as to what to pick, but generally you want to focus on the biggest gaps first and work on less severe issues later. Highlight those couple of rows and document together what you think needs to change to get a higher rating and some ideas for what to do to close the gaps. This can be formal training, specific projects, relationships that need investment, work quality, whatever. The important thing is that you both brainstorm and write down the quality bar and ideas.

Assuming you have a product manager that mostly meets expectations and maybe has a few exceeds, then you should shape the conversation around “what is required to move up?” While they may not yet be assessed on certain dimensions at their level, they can see which “new” skills are required at the next level up. Additionally each dimension is assessed “at the current level.” You may be meeting expectations of Ownership at a Senior Product Manager level, but when you get promoted to Director, you may start as Below Expectations and need to do some work to demonstrate ownership across a bigger span of responsibility. Pick 2 or 3 behaviors that they should start working on to demonstrate they are ready to move up.

In terms of timing I did this quarterly with all of my direct reports. If you’re going to do it, I would not go longer than six months, and honestly monthly feels like too much overhead. What is helpful is to check back in on the 2-3 development topics from the last cycle in 1 on 1 conversations at least once per month so that you make sure progress is being made before you do the formal chat. You should of course follow best practices for providing timely feedback and praise when you hear about it, and don’t wait for some periodic review cycle to bring things up.

It’s also key to try to document examples you hear about throughout the quarter to help you with the next assessment. I would just pop the document open once a week and go through quickly and jot down things as I heard them (good and bad) next to each row so I could confidently come up with ratings at the next cycle. When it comes time to do this for the second time around I’d start with whatever scores you gave last time, and unless you have specific examples to back up a change, stick with them. Otherwise you’re introducing recency bias among a few others.

Most importantly, remember to approach the use of this framework and the conversations you have with it as coaching and development (hence the name), not reviews, performance management, etc. This framework exists to take people that were good enough to hire, so probably pretty strong players, and take them to the next level in an organized way. While not specifically intended to help you weed out people that aren’t making the cut, it will do that. The key is not to make that what this is all about. This is about investing in your team and helping them grow in a clear, predictable, and comprehensive way.

Why This Works

As I mentioned I used a similar framework for many years with my team, and overall I felt it made coaching and development conversations much more effective and actionable. Here’s a few examples:

It gave people a clear picture of what I expected from product managers, and if you don’t write it down, you won’t see how complicated it really is
Junior people can see exactly what they need to do to move up even without having explicit conversations about it
It made hard conversations more useful - because it’s so specific, I’ve found that delivering hard news can actually go over better than expected because people feel like they know exactly what they need to fix and it doesn’t seem a like a randomly plucked example of something that went wrong recently

This also works because in the end, you as the manager have to put a lot of time in, especially the first go-around. If you have more than 3 direct reports, doing a thoughtful job on this once per quarter can be a big load. If you are going to use it, do it right. If you try to breeze through this without examples to back things up it’s going to be a waste of everyone’s time and your employee will likely freak out because it will seem like you are just making everything up (because you are). As a manager you are measured by the success and effectiveness of your people - it’s worth the investment, every quarter. Doing this well will also make the time investment apparent to your employees. They can see you putting in the effort to help them improve while will of course help morale. As for me personally, I’ve worked the hardest when I knew I had a manager that not only had my back but was also pushing me to be my best.

DOWNLOAD a free copy of the Product Manager Coaching & Development template.