What Happens in a Coaching Session?

My client coaching engagements are customized, and I draw upon 20+ years of Product Development experience, both as Product Builder and a Product Leader, to bring out the best in you. I don’t run my clients through a specific program or offer a certificate. What we do together is driven by your coaching goals and the specific circumstances (company, product type, role, growth stage and other environmental factors) you’re in as a Product Manager or Product Leader.

First, we’ll take a snapshot and establish context.

This involves me understanding your place in the organization, your business model, the products you work on, your immediate team, key stakeholders, and context around your organization’s structure and leadership.

Next, we’ll establish obvious areas for growth.

These are the things that likely brought you to consider Product Coaching. We’ll weave them into relevant sessions until you feel like you’ve achieved competency or mastery.

If you’re a Product Manager, this could look like improving specific competencies, such as Product Discovery techniques or Product Optimization techniques. We’ll quickly establish these through a competencies assessment.

If you’re a Product Leader, this could be how you develop and evangelize Product Vision and Strategy, getting buy-in with the C-Suite, or how you coach your own team to optimize their performance.

It will always include getting to the root of what keeps you up at night.

Sometimes planning to address these obvious areas for growth can result in templates, frameworks or tools I’ll direct you to for immediate applicability, articles or books that you should read for more context, or homework to share some of your work products with me so we can review them in future sessions. Given where you are in your career, your company, and your goals, we’ll decide which areas are critical to spend time on and also, what you can punt on for now.

As we get into our coaching relationship, I will begin to identify not-as-obvious-to-you areas for growth.

Often, this shows up as needing to create an additional focus on people dynamics. This isn’t just about building your relationships and identifying and managing silent threats to your success, but also understanding how your organization’s structure sets up natural tensions. We’ll use this information as we come up with the specifics in our collaborative problem-solving.

A common issue Product People face is how you’re positioning the Product function, either as a Product Manager or a Product Leader, and this includes the language you use through all communication channels.

Another common example is neglecting to correlate your work to the company’s growth or cost reduction goals (and communicating this effectively, to the right people).

As you become aware of these growth opportunities, we’ll create plans to address them so they will have an immediate impact on your work.

When appropriate, we will review and collaborate on your work products.

This isn’t writing user stories or necessarily spending much time with the Product itself. We can hold working sessions to collaborate on any of the following:

• Overall vision, strategy, and roadmaps and communication plans around them

• Presenting qualitative and quantitative user research at the right level

• Prepping for board updates

• Creating or strengthening business cases

• Team topology

These are a few examples, and not an exhaustive list of the types of collaboration or scenario planning we can discuss. My role here will be as a partner, and I’ll bring my knowledge of how all of the other functions in your organization may respond to your work.

This is how I coach.

Coaching progress is not necessarily linear. We will jump around among topics, because everything intersects in Product, but we will narrow down our focus to 2 topics per session at most.

I'll provide hot takes and strongly held opinions that you’ll have to vet through your own lens. It may feel cathartic, because you’ll feel seen, but it’s not therapy. I will insert mentorship; I can’t help myself. I care about your growth as a Product professional beyond the specific circumstances you’re in at the moment.

The goal is to end each session with you feeling more grounded and confident in your work, with a plan for what to do next. It’s an opportunity to be vulnerable, strengthen your thinking, and feel re-energized about your work. Product is hard, but it’s worth it. Personally, the only thing I’ve found more rewarding than shipping great products is coaching great Product People.

Interested in coaching? Schedule time with me.