How can product leaders build trust and psychological safety within their teams to foster innovation and excellence? In this episode of the Product Divergence series with Ubiety Technologies Fmr. CPO Nacho Andrade, LinkSquares SVP of Product & Engineering Andrew Leverone discusses strategies for team building and leadership through vulnerability, empathy, and collaboration. Andrew shares insights on balancing product and engineering perspectives, understanding customer needs, and scaling teams through transparency and a bottoms-up approach. He also emphasizes the importance of embracing an agile mindset, frequent communication, and empowering team members to drive the business forward together through open dialogue.
Subscribe to the Product Talk podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and catch every conversation with leading product executives. Episodes in the 2024 Product Divergence Series drop on Wednesdays.
Show Notes
- Staying close to the team through frequent communication is important for understanding problems and opportunities.
- A bottoms-up approach and involving the team in decision-making helps avoid surprises and ensures alignment.
- Psychological safety and trust are foundational for collaboration, innovation, and excellence.
- Vulnerability and honesty from leaders helps build trust within teams.
- Empathy and understanding different roles fosters healthy conflict and working towards shared goals.
- Early-stage customer interactions provide valuable insights through in-person conversations.
- Data becomes more important at scale, but weak signals are all that’s available early on.
- Networking, community involvement, and coffee chats can lead to career opportunities.
- Ambition, motivation, and taking risks are signs of a driven employee.
- Self-awareness and focusing on strengths aids career navigation and fulfillment.
- Saying “no” is important for prioritization even if it’s difficult.
- An agile mindset means adapting quickly to changing needs internally and externally.
- Product management is not well understood and education could help collaboration.
- Getting into the weeds with customers through tools like Gong fosters personalization.
- Involving the team in big changes and decisions prevents surprises.
- Team building and leadership requires coming to the table with questions, not answers.
- Understanding different perspectives builds empathy across roles.
- Data should support, not drive decisions, especially early on.
- Vanity metrics distract from the business outcomes that matter most.
- Gratitude and appreciation motivate further learning and sharing.
About the speaker
About the host
Nacho is an Evangelist for all things product, advocating for innovation, diversity, and building amazing products. Nacho has spent over 10 years in product roles ranging from startups to enterprise in industries like education, healthcare, finance and gaming.