Being a Product Leader, the most crucial task is to build and have a world-class high-performing team. Not only improving teamwork and productivity but also capable of empowering the team with the ability to meet shifting market demands as well as organizational success, effective team building is one of the central elements.
In this article here, we will learn what the key approaches and best practices of Product Leaders are in order to build an extraordinary solid cohesive, innovative team.
Building Trusting Relationships and Developing the Building Blocks of Team Building
The initial building block in building a team as a Product Leader is building trusting relationships with each and every team member. Trust is an extremely crucial component in creative and high-paced environments like product development where choices cannot be entirely in the discretion of leaders. Trust is when all parties feel that they are in their own self-interest, they are taken into consideration by the other side. Trust is the element that with the passage of time, reliability is achieved by making a promise and honoring it. Understanding the Stages of Team Development
Tuckman’s Five Stages
Psychologist Bruce Tuckman derived five stages in team development: Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, and Adjourning. Leaders realizing these stages and embracing the team orientation in the leadership style will be able to better anticipate events. Successful Product Leader should triumph over these phases.
Setting Clear Expectations and Development Objectives: Clear role and responsibility statements should be employed in a bid to attain clarity that is crucial to performance management and ending role conflict. Structure of seniority underpins the provision of expectations at varying seniorities that serve as the springboard for a promotion. Consistency in the maintenance of the same structure maintains the team players on the same path and also aligns with company vision. As a Product Leader, the creation of these must occur so that they enable team building to take place. Having Strategic Conversations and Alignment of Stakeholders
Strategic Alignment: Engaging the team in strategic conversation and stakeholder alignment is most important for product success. It encompasses customer journey mapping, understanding market dynamics, and communicating the product vision to the team to the highest degree possible. Senior leadership top alignment gives direction to the project with openness and ownership kept with the development team. A Product Leader should be able to facilitate these conversations.
Developing Soft Skills: Influence, negotiation, and communication are the most applicable soft skills in product leadership. The leaders must promote these skills in their teams and create a learning opportunity for acquiring these skills through training and on-job exposure. A Product Leader with a focus on these skills can improve the team’s performance by a significant margin.
Conclusion
Building a high-performing product team is a continuous process involving commitment, planning, and a thorough understanding of group dynamics. By building trust relationships, having knowledge of stages in team development, developing positive expectations, strategic conversations, soft skills development, building resilience and recognition, a Product Leader can build a high-performing team with innovation and success.
