“I am in a new product lead role and I am stopping a launch because there is no strategy. The team resents me and senior leadership supports me. I’m having to manage upwards to get the support to take the team on the journey towards accelerated product strategizing but I am creating enemies. I am burning out.”
I got this message as part of a Facebook discussion on the role of the product leader. What can I say, product leadership is a tough role to play. You need to lead everyone within extreme uncertainty, and you need everyone to agree in order to be able to make the impact you and the company want to make. No wonder people are creating enemies along the way and burning out.
Trust plays such an important role in our ability to lead cross-company, but trust isn’t easy to build. It often feels like a constant struggle. Here are the ways I found most effective in building trust, even when it’s already (loud and) clear that trust is lacking.
Understand and Overshare Your Thought Process
People will follow you because they trust you, and they will trust you because they understand you. They need to understand where you are taking them and why, before they can even consider if they agree with you or not.
The thought process and your own considerations are something that is easy to leave in the dark. It’s not always clear even to you why exactly you think X is the right direction. In the example above, you might have a strong gut feeling that says that you shouldn’t make this big effort until you have a strategy, but when you ask yourself why exactly, the answer might not be 100% clear.
To build trust, you must be able to articulate your thoughts in a way that helps others understand them. It’s not easy, but you should ask yourself “why” enough times to get to a clear logical explanation on the actual risk you are trying to avoid here. This helps in two ways: first, it helps you explain yourself better to the team and it will be easier for them to follow your leadership, and second, it allows you to crystalize the things that are truly important for you, which means other things are not as important. This opens a door for creative solutions that can take into consideration everyone’s constraints.
Note that your explanation needs to be as detailed as possible. In the example above, it’s not enough to say that you are afraid that you will need to redo the whole thing once the strategy changes. Understand with yourself first what are the riskiest parts that would need to be redone from scratch, and why it is important to avoid them. One way to get to the bottom of it is to ask yourself what is the worst-case scenario, and then ask yourself what exactly in it is so bad. It will allow you to separate the wheat from the chaff and have a more complete explanation that demonstrates your rational thinking behind your guidance.
Once you have that logical explanation in mind, share it with everyone, time and again. Start every meeting on the topic with the background and how you see it. There is no amount that would make this too much. It can only help everyone align. Even if you sound to yourself like a broken record, keep repeating it until others start saying the same things back to you. That’s when you know that the message has truly sunk. Of course, this should be a discussion, and if people give you input that contradicts how you were thinking on things you should update your story accordingly.
Let Them Consider It Themselves
Last year, when COVID just started, my father turned 70. We had to cancel our planned trip abroad and were since looking for alternatives for a full family celebration. We decided to do it sometime during the High Holidays of this year, in Israel and not abroad this time. My mother took it upon herself to find a place for the entire family. We considered a few possible dates, but didn’t really save the date for any of them. Suddenly, on a Monday afternoon, as I was just about to enter a consulting session with a customer, she sent the entire family a message saying that she wants to book a certain place and she needs an answer right away. Now, I love traveling with my family, and my mother usually plans great trips, but having to decide on the spot with little to no information made me nervous. I assure you there are no trust issues between me and my mother, but she is not me, and her considerations – although trying to represent me as much as she can – don’t and can’t take everything that’s important for me into account. Even if I went eventually with her initial suggestion (and I did), I needed to consider it and discuss it to feel comfortable with the decision.
The same goes for you as a product leader. Even if your decision is the right one, and even if everyone eventually would follow it wholeheartedly, you need to give them time to process it. Let them think it through, ask for their thoughts, answer any questions or concerns that they have, and then ask again if we can move forward with it. Not only will it go much smoother this way, but it will also tell them that you care about their needs, and that’s the foundation of long-term trust anyway.
Share Your Confusion
Sometimes, as part of this process, you’ll get contradicting messages from your peers, your team, or your boss. Remember that you don’t have to figure it all out on your own. The best way to deal with it is to surface it as part of the discussion. It looks like this: “wait, I am confused. We always say that we want to move fast, even if it means that we don’t necessarily deliver a perfect solution. But now you are telling me that you want us to stop and think of the ideal solution even if it means much slower delivery. Can you share some more context on what is it that you want here? Let’s make sure we are aligned before we move forward with this”.
You see, they don’t even get that they are sending you contradicting messages if you don’t tell them. Trying to balance these contradicting messages on your own brings you back to the point above regarding letting them consider it. When they hear that there is actually a conflict, they can think about it and fine-tune their guidance or what’s important to them. But they wouldn’t even know that there is a problem if you don’t surface it.
As in any relationship, trust is built mainly on communication. Ask any of the CPO Bootcamp graduates, and you’ll hear that this is a topic that comes up frequently in the coaching sessions as a major challenge. Make sure you communicate openly and frequently, on the essence and not just on the actions. Next week we’ll talk about how to get even deeper into the root causes of the mistrust, and solve it right there.
