Speaker unverified: evaluation

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…A lot of times people just want you to like help them execute. They're just like, come on, we know what we're doing. Let's just just help us ship this thing. And it's going to be great. And a lot of people come in right now. Let's just rethink it all. Let's take a step back. OK, last area that I want to spend some time on is around career and career growth as a product manager and product leader. And luckily, he wrote a book called Cracking the PM Career. If you just had to boil down the best advice from the book to like one suggestion to a PM, let's say starting off in their career and then maybe a career like mid career, what would that be? I'll start with one piece of suggestion for people at any stage of their career, which is to have a conversation with your manager and say, I would really like at some point in the future to grow into whatever this goal is, whether it's to become a people manager, become a senior PM, become a director, whatever this next step of what you want is. So I would really love to become a people manager someday. What do you suggest that I work on now so that I'll be ready when the opportunity comes up? The reason I love this template, it's just a really easy way to start off this conversation of saying like, here's my goal. Like, by the way, like I do want to get promoted. I do want to grow. I want to become a senior PM. I want, you know, whatever that next step is. I'm framing it in the future so that it's not threatening. It's not like going to put my manager on the defensive and be like, you're not ready to be a manager yet. Let me, I don't have to prove why you're not ready for that promotion yet, which is not the mindset you want your manager in. And then it kind of brings them onto your side. Can you help me out here? Like let's you and me work together to get me this promotion. Like you and me work together to get me ready there. It brings them in onto your side. And so now they'll be in the mindset of trying to help you. It will target the feedback that you get on what you need to do to get that promotion. Because so much of the time, I think the reason that success as a PM is hard is because you get a gazillion pieces of feedback. They're all true. It's all like, yeah, you know, in that meeting, you said a lot of filler words, but that's not the thing that's actually holding you back from the next promotion, or it's not the thing that you actually need to improve at to get to that next step. And so being able to focus the feedback you get on what you're trying to achieve is makes a huge difference and will really help make sure that you get that feedback and at any company either your manager is going to be the person who decides if you get that promotion what they say is just true like whatever they think you're missing is what you're missing or there's going to be a committee and if there's a committee your manager's feedback matters a lot and also if they've been at the company a while they'll sort of know what they look for If you have a new manager at a big company that uses promotion by committee at any big company, make friends with your manager's peers. Find someone who's been at the company a while, who's gotten someone promoted and ask them that same question. Get them onto your side to like get you the experience and the improvements you need to get that promotion. Amazing advice. I found that to be super helpful myself. And you're saying that applies to every role, right? New PMs, mid PMs, everybody.…

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