Taking the coach approach for being a product leader. What are good frameworks of getting my ego to step aside while empowering others to speak up and increasing their involvement?
Getting ego to step aside is fully internal. Practice actually listening. Simplest trick: be quiet. Not only don’t interrupt, but practice being comfortable not reacting or speaking immediately.
I find that making brainstorming (using this loosely in place or “collaborative idea generation and subsequent decision making”) informed and low stakes goes a long way. A lot of teams leaders will find the quietest person in the room and stump them with “well, what do you think?” and pat themselves on the back. Get way ahead of this by sharing memos (“here are our top strategic themes for the upcoming cycle”) and giving people time to generate ideas (“take some time to think of ideas to execute on these”) ahead of a working session. Make it completely acceptable to throw silly ideas on the table - anything goes here - but pre-define how ideas will be judged and selected.
Taking the coach approach for being a product leader. What are good frameworks of getting my ego to step aside while empowering others to speak up and increasing their involvement?
Getting ego to step aside is fully internal. Practice actually listening. Simplest trick: be quiet. Not only don’t interrupt, but practice being comfortable not reacting or speaking immediately.
I find that making brainstorming (using this loosely in place or “collaborative idea generation and subsequent decision making”) informed and low stakes goes a long way. A lot of teams leaders will find the quietest person in the room and stump them with “well, what do you think?” and pat themselves on the back. Get way ahead of this by sharing memos (“here are our top strategic themes for the upcoming cycle”) and giving people time to generate ideas (“take some time to think of ideas to execute on these”) ahead of a working session. Make it completely acceptable to throw silly ideas on the table - anything goes here - but pre-define how ideas will be judged and selected.