I’m writing about leadership, coaching and product topics. Why do I care? I enjoy creating spaces where people can show up authentically, have a sense of belonging, find the beauty in themselves, their teams and the work they do and also experience their time with me as joyful, open and trusting. Being in those kind of inclusive spaces – in coaching, in teams and in building products – is how we all want to relate to each other and how we bring the strongest version of ourselves forward. I have not always had the luxury to move in those spaces, so I made it a point all my life to create those spaces with and for the humans I engage with. I hope you’ll enjoy reading my thoughts on how this relates to leadership, coaching and product work.
Leadership starts with leading yourself. Leadership ultimately is about co-creating something with a group of people who want to shape the world around them in an agreed upon direction. The role of leaders in that space is about creating the space for collaboration, positively influencing and empowering the relationships in the space, and making sure…
When I took my first product role, the main thing I was interested in learning was about specific product skills. How to build a roadmap, what Scrum is, how to write user stories and requirements, what a product vision or strategy is, specific technical domain knowledge like how an API functions and how you might…
I started the year with this question in mind because I remember how tired, stressed and overwhelming it often felt to face the demands of my leadership (or product) role, and at the same time also wanting to be present, joyful and available to my partner, my friends, my family and my dance community. I…
I keep looking at these two topics – leadership and product work – as I have deep roots with both of them. When I look back into my most recent corporate role, I believe that a large part of the success of the teams I was working with, was rooted in me leading that entire…
This actually should not come as a surprise to anybody. If you had to define what hinders you to do focused and challenging work, you’d likely mention things like feeling tired, stressed, hungry, cold or too hot, sad, pressured, angry, anxious or in pain. When thinking of states of being, that are conducive to deep…
I remember well, when me and my technical Co-Lead did some work on values at the beginning of our working relationship. We got our results from a survey on personal values, and he was totally surprised to see that I ranked very low on valuing “power”. He had, up until that point, been convinced, that…