PTL #10 - Self
“How might we increase self-awareness and understand leadership style?”
Facilitated by Mic, Mul and Nas
What we learnt:
- Experiential Learning Cycle and RSVP Fundamentals of Leadership
- Revisiting on Product Person Canvas and journal for increasing self-awareness
Experiential Learning Cycle and RSVP Model Leadership
One the most important challenge in leadership today is to develop competence in adjusting to a radically altered environment.
According to RSVP Model, there area four key leadership functions required:
- relationship mastery
- strategy mastery
- vision mastery
- performance mastery
Central to achieve such proficiency is the ability to deliberately learn from experience. The Experiential Learning Theory (ELT) by Kolb (1984) provides lens to integrate feeling, perceiving, thinking, and doing for effective experiential learning.
In ELT, the experiential learning space is defined by the attracting and repelling forces of experiencing-thinking and reflecting-doing. Learning proceeds as a recursive cycle and results from the integration of four learning modes: concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation. This basic concepts of learning cycle, learning styles, learning space, learning skills described in ELT can be used for training, coaching, team and leadership development.
Constellation
The cohort also reflected various dimensions of product leadership (Decisions, Trust, Sustainability, Resilience, Mentorship, Ownership, etc) explored in the past 5 months. We found Top 3 key topics that our cohort understood the most are: Relationship building (5 votes), Facilitating conversation (4) and Leadership (4).
We then explored 2 approaches to help further understanding of those topics and apply them in our work:
- What can you do to help yourself?
This is self-work that’s within our control. Product Person Canvas and the learning backlog can be our compass to identify which topics we need to put more focus on.
- What can others do to help you?
When self-work is taken care of, then we can turn to others. Appreciative interview is the manifestation of this — we ask others to help identify the AHAs for us and reduces our blindspot.
Sailboat
Last but not least, the group recap and shared key learning points about product leadership
Attribute of Success being a Product Leader
- Curiosity, Honesty
- Mental resilience, EQ, Empathy
- Facilitative and Listening skills
- Goal and “Knowing when to let go”
Challenge of being a Product Leader
- Building culture
- Courage to take ownership (difficult conversations)
- Ego - Being at peace with things you can’t control, Letting go
- KPI Pressure