Why "leaning into your strengths as a PM" is a trap

I'm a huge fan of several authors John Max was a good one. Leadership. They're really insightful thoughts. Mm. Yeah. And his advice consists. Which I think a lot of people have largely adopted. Right. We live in a pretty much a feel-good society. We don't want to think about negatives or think about ourselves negative in any kind of way. I think socially this makes a lot of sense. And I actually think it's good advice.

In certain context. Right? I just actually shared a post from a fellow product leader who I've actually interviewed for one of my previous books. And his name's Bart. And Bart posted a pretty funny meme about product managers, you know, always saying it depends, it depends, it depends. and how product management has adopted it depends as the de facto response to most questions that we get because it's true.

In most cases, the answer to any question is it depends on a number of other variables. And this advice is no different. The advice to lean into your strengths makes sense in the here and now. If you're going to give a presentation, you don't want to do something that plays to your weaknesses, because then that'll make the presentation less effective. If you are trying to accomplish a goal, doing something that utilizes skills that are your weakness is probably not a smart way to go.

So in the short term, leaning into your strengths makes a ton of sense. However,

Leaning into your strengths as a long-term strategy and a cop-out for never addressing your weaknesses is just that. A cop out. I'll give you an example.

I have not ever been a technical person. Some people who've worked with me in different contexts would laugh and be like, No, you're actually better than most. I've I've heard that, that's not just me saying that. My thing is I study a lot. But I I didn't grow up in a technologically advanced area. I grew up in rural South Louisiana, where there was no technology. It was oil and gas, right? Uh tech jobs were not really a thing where I grew up.

and when I fur got my first tech job I was not technical whatsoever. I in one of my interview questions for this contract role, I got kind of a silly throwaway question about like what does CPU stand for? And I was close. I said computer processing unit. And it was of course central processing unit and I'd you know, they basically said close enough.

So that that just shows you when I started in in my tech career, not even as a PM. I was doing software partnerships. Um, so it wasn't even like a super technical role. I had very limited technical chops, right? Uh but I studied my tail off because I didn't want to come across as a fraudulent individual representing a very large brand uh when I was contracting for Intel.

And so I I put my head down, I read a bunch of white papers, I studied, asked a ton of questions, and I learned. And within a couple of years, my team members looked at me as one of the more technical members of the team. um who could at least articulate technical concepts in a way that made sense. And so I turned a liability into a string.

Where I could have leaned into my strengths and other areas that I that I was strong in, I realized my gaps and over time turned those weaknesses into an asset and transform them into something that was no longer a weakness. As I got into product management I did the same thing. I spent the first several years of product management focusing on the core aspects of the job and and leaning into things that I was comfortable with.

Right. I did software partnerships. I did sales. I was comfortable talking to people. I was comfortable leveraging business acumen to talk about customer and business value. I I had good project management skills. I had led large-scale projects at companies over a thousand people, right? That influenced hundreds of people. I could lean into those skills.

What I couldn't do was go toe to toe with engineers and understand anything they were talking about. And so in the first several years I just kinda had to take things at face value. which in many cases became a disadvantage for me. And I realized that. And so I don't know, five years into my product management career, four or five years, I found a program on how to become a more technical product manager and what the right type of technical chops were. Not learning how to code.

not, you know, doing X, Y, and Z thing that you think is technical, but understanding technical concepts enough to do my job better and have more effective conversations with in software engineers. And so um it was a monetary investment, it was a time investment, but it paid dividends. And then as my career advanced, I learned more and more from developers and developed more technical jobs.

started learning how to do no code uh development on the side, which helped bring concepts into more of a reality as I was doing kind of abstracted versions of what my software engineering partners were doing. And it made it made me much more comfortable in having technical conversations.

And even, you know, finger in the wind estimations of like, oh, this is generally more of a hard thing to do. This is generally an easier thing to do. And having confidence in those types of conversations, right? So

In the short term, leaning into your strengths makes a lot of sense, right? But that should not be a lazy cop-out for not developing your skills to become more well-rounded, to fill your gaps. That's going to hold you back in your career. So yeah, I've I've heard many debates about there's different types of product managers. There's technical product managers, there's product managers focused on the business, some focused on customers.

And you're not gonna be great unless you be can become good or sufficient at all three. Right. You have to be able to develop your core skill set around customer business and technology to become great. And even further, you need to develop financial acumen, understand sales processes, how your business operates. what go to market strategy looks like. You need to understand those cross-functional paradigms and competencies to become a true partner.

And really that's where product leaders excel is when they can look across the business and help align and coordinate things strategically at a higher level. And so that's not gonna happen overnight. That's not gonna you're not gonna get that promotion just because you write great user stories and you work well with developers, right? The the skill sets at a product leadership level um require you to up level and broaden your abilities and your competencies.

and your communication and your collaboration and your influence, right? There's a lot of hard and soft skills that go into that upward trajectory that that most of us want. So don't let the common advice of leaning into your strengths allow you to get complacent in your personal and professional development. And try to identify your gaps. If you don't know what they are, ask people around you. Because they probably see them.

just like you would a roadmap for your product, create a roadmap for your own development and watch how your career grows. Thanks for joining me for another lesson in product management. I'm your host John Fonneau. And until next time, have a great 2025.