Product Mastery Now for Product Managers, Leaders, and Innovators
Chad McAllister, PhD
300 episodes
1 week ago
Welcome to Product Mastery Now, where you learn the 7 knowledge areas for product mastery. We teach the product management practices that elevate your influence and create products your customers love as you move toward product mastery. To learn about all seven areas and assess your strengths in product mastery, go to my website -- https://productmasterynow.com -- and click the Podcast button at the top of the page. Hosted by Chad McAllister, product management professor and practitioner.
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Welcome to Product Mastery Now, where you learn the 7 knowledge areas for product mastery. We teach the product management practices that elevate your influence and create products your customers love as you move toward product mastery. To learn about all seven areas and assess your strengths in product mastery, go to my website -- https://productmasterynow.com -- and click the Podcast button at the top of the page. Hosted by Chad McAllister, product management professor and practitioner.
562: What every product leader should know about communication and relationship building – with Uma Subramanian
Product Mastery Now for Product Managers, Leaders, and Innovators
18 minutes 25 seconds
4 weeks ago
562: What every product leader should know about communication and relationship building – with Uma Subramanian
A leadership framework that gives product managers influence
Watch on YouTube
TLDR
In this episode, Uma Subramanian shares her insights and proven framework for transitioning from individual contributor to effective leader in tech and product management roles. Drawing from her extensive experience at Microsoft and Turing, Uma explains the identity shift required for leadership, introduces her SOAR framework (Strategic Impact, Outstanding Communication, Authority/Personal Brand, Relationship Mastery), and provides actionable tips for developing each pillar. Listeners will learn how to think beyond their immediate role, communicate their impact, build a compelling personal brand, and master the art of building relationships—all key to becoming sought-after leaders.
Introduction
Today we’re exploring a challenging transition in product management —the shift from individual contributor to someone who multiplies the success of others. I know the first time I became responsible for a team, I was a fish out of water. I knew what made me successful in my previous role, but I didn’t know how to be successful leading others. I had not learned that yet. How do you lead when no one actually taught you how to lead? In this discussion, we’re going to give you a proven framework and helpful tools for successfully making this transition.
Our guest is Uma Subramanian, and she understands this transformation very well. She spent 20 years at Microsoft evolving from programmer to leading global teams. Then she became Head of Developer Success at Turing, where she built a developer community from zero to 37,000 members in just five months while driving NPS scores to world-class levels of 92. She’s a certified executive coach with Maxwell Leadership, trained in positive psychology, and now helps tech professionals worldwide make this same leadership leap through her company, Limitless Leaders. Uma understands both the technical and human sides of this challenge.
Summary of Concepts Discussed for Product Managers
The Leadership Identity Shift:Uma and host Chad discuss how moving into leadership isn’t just a role change but an identity change. Success as an individual often doesn’t translate directly; leaders must learn to orchestrate success with others.
Uma’s SOAR Framework for Leadership:
* S – Strategic Impact: Thinking beyond your job description to create greater value for your organization, being proactive, and bringing others along.
* O – Outstanding Communication: Communicating your value effectively, using storytelling to persuade, and making sure your impact is recognized.
* A – Authority & Personal Brand: Defining what you want to be known for, aligning others’ perceptions with your authentic self, and standing out in your niche.
* R – Relationship Mastery: Building genuine relationships at all levels, creating an ecosystem of support, and focusing on people as much as tasks.
Encouraging Teams to Rally Around Strategic Goals:Product leaders elevate impact company-wide, often going beyond their assigned responsibilities. This approach can lead to friction, such as when Uma developed engineering tools without first looping in the appropriate teams. Through these experiences, Uma learned that encouraging teams to align with strategic goals requires proactive communication and collaboration. She highlights the value of involving the appropriate teams early on as well as partnering across teams to solve problems together.
Product Mastery Now for Product Managers, Leaders, and Innovators
Welcome to Product Mastery Now, where you learn the 7 knowledge areas for product mastery. We teach the product management practices that elevate your influence and create products your customers love as you move toward product mastery. To learn about all seven areas and assess your strengths in product mastery, go to my website -- https://productmasterynow.com -- and click the Podcast button at the top of the page. Hosted by Chad McAllister, product management professor and practitioner.
