Promotion to a manager

As you think about your career in product or design, you see two options: further growth as an individual contributor or a transition to management. Many people choose the management route: the individual contributor path tends to be shorter and does not promise the same level of visibility. As a result, competition for management positions tends to be high. While the field is so competitive, you can maximize your chances of promotion by purposefully demonstrating relevant competencies, such as your understanding of the business, leadership skills, and the ability to run large-scale projects.

Being a leader means thinking about your product in the context of the business and helping others do the same, and it requires that you understand the business better than anyone else.

• What problems does our product solve?

• Who are your customers?

• Who are your competitors?

• How is your product different?

• What industry trends are relevant to your business?

• Who sells your product and how? When do your sellers win, and when do they lose?

• What are the biggest threats and opportunities for your product?

Understanding the answers to these questions will not only help you make wise roadmap decisions; it will also allow you competently represent your product in leadership and analyst discussions and help other team members be effective at their jobs. Luckily, you definitely have coworkers who would be happy to share their knowledge. Ask your peers, your manager, and that guy who has been in the company for 15 years. Save any materials they share with you and add your own research. Knowing the business will be tremendously helpful in positioning yourself for a promotion.

Apart from business acumen, another critical competency you will need to demonstrate is leadership skills. Even though you are not a manager yet, start acting as a leader, and promotion will follow. One of the ways to do it is by helping strengthen the team. For example, you can propose and implement improvements for some of the team processes (e.g., competitive analysis, release management, design reviews, etc.). Another way to act as a leader is by helping your manager with some of their responsibilities. For instance, delivering some presentations in cross-functional forums, managing a specific client relationship, or keeping the team on track with critical deliverables—there can be many options, so ask your manager what would be the most helpful. Finally, another way to be recognized as a leader is by becoming an expert that other team members want to reach out to for help and advice. So if you already have unique expertise, make sure others on the team know about it and feel welcome to leverage it. In short, demonstrating your leadership skills will position you perfectly for the manager role.

One final way to secure your promotion is to choose impactful projects that let your skill set shine. You can be a fantastic PM or a kick-ass designer, but it won't get you the role you want unless others see your impact. So, given an opportunity, choose the projects of high visibility and the highest impact on the business. In addition, make sure that what you work on allows you to demonstrate your best skills; choose projects that require innovation, strategic thinking, and creativity. One added benefit of impactful products is that they tend to grow, opening up opportunities to form a team under you. Thus, be purposeful in choosing your products.

To summarize, although there is a lot of competition for management roles, you can increase your chances for that promotion by acquiring and demonstrating relevant skills. First, understanding the business will allow you to make wiser product decisions and help your team do the same. Second, acting as a leader by strengthening the team will demonstrate your abilities to perform in a management role. Finally, choosing impactful large-scale projects will ensure that your talent will get recognized.

How to make sure I get value out of coaching?

Of course, coaching is not magic, and it won't turn you into a CPO overnight. As with any learning experience, coaching can be challenging and, at times, frustrating. Here are a few things to remember to ensure you get value from your coaching engagement.

Want something!

Coaching starts with a desire to change something, so knowing what you want is an essential first step. The entire coaching engagement will revolve around your goals, and the coach's job will be to help you attain them. As noted before, these goals do not have to be ambitious by some abstract corporate standards, but they have to have meaning to you. Also, it is okay if your goals are not fully fleshed out — the coach will help you crystallize them. Still, having an idea about what you want to change is what makes coaching more than a casual conversation.

Make time

Coaching sessions need to happen at least twice a month; otherwise, you may lose momentum between them. Therefore, it is important to plan your coaching engagement when you can fulfill this time commitment for at least three months (standard duration of a coaching "sprint"). Some work will also happen in between sessions (more on that below), and it is critical to make time for that too. Try not to turn coaching into another regular call with no agenda, no conclusions, and no consequences — there are enough of those already.

Get ready to explore

Coaching works through reflection: reflection on your goals, reflection on strategies to achieve them, reflection on learning from recent events, etc. This process requires concentration and active thinking, and while the coach will facilitate the process, they cannot do the work for you. Thus, you should be ready for intellectually demanding sessions with no ready-to-use answers.

Prepare to be frustrated with your coach.

You should pick a coach that you like and respect. A trusting and respectful relationship is critical to being able to collaborate, explore, share doubts and celebrate wins. Yet, there will come a time when your coach pisses you off. They will ask a question that is uncomfortable to answer, challenge you to do something outside of your comfort zone, or blurt out an intuition you disagree with. As annoying as they might be, these moments are the most conducive to growth: not only do they make you stretch yourself, but they also invite you to explore your reactions to these situations. So, prepare to be frustrated with your coach from time to time.

Prepare to work in between sessions.

As interesting as coaching conversations may be, real change happens offline. Coaching is action-oriented: at the end of every session, you and your coach will decide on the next step toward your goals. That next step can be practical (like having a conversation with your manager or setting up a research initiative) or reflective (thinking through an inquiry). These small steps taken every week bring results in coaching, and it is critical to dedicate time to them. You and your coach can always negotiate to make them manageable, but you cannot negotiate your way out of action.

To conclude, although coaching cannot make you into an executive overnight, it can advance your career— if you prepare to make it work. To set yourself up for productive work, start by envisioning your goals. Next, clear a few hours a month in your calendar to meet with your coach. Be ready to think and explore during the sessions and to be pissed at your coach from time to time. Finally, prepare to work in between sessions because that is when real change happens.

Coaching is not about climbing career ladder

A common misconception about coaching is that it is for high-achievers who want to climb the career ladder. People imagine a coach as a nagging parent who would ask them why they did not do their "homework" and push them to achieve abstract career goals. I hear clients say apologetically, "You know, I don't really plan to become a CPO, so I don't know if coaching is right for me." If this understanding of coaching were correct, I would not be in this profession.

Luckily, that's not the case. Coaching does not have to focus on formal career growth. Coaching pursues changes that are meaningful for you: reducing your stress level, learning to build consensus among team members, becoming a better communicator, strengthening your product strategy skills, changing careers altogether, etc. — the list is endless. The coach does not choose the agenda; the client does.