#65 The New Product Leader Dilemma (Part 2): Navigating Politics Without Losing Your Soul
You can play the game without becoming the villain you used to roll your eyes at
Welcome back 👋 and we’re at Part 2 of a 3-part series on the top 3 challenges that new Product Leaders face and what makes the transition from Individual Contributors feel like a Herculean task sometimes:
They struggle to make the shift from being the executor to enabler
They struggle to navigate people and politics - today’s issue! ✍️
They struggle with the mental load of being a leader - coming soon!
This means resisting the urge to fix everything, micromanage, or rely on old habits as an individual contributor. And instead, putting our energy into making sure that:
The team has clarity, alignment, and focus.
Communication flows efficiently without unnecessary overhead.
Team members feel supported in their growth and decision-making.
Ok so we’ve got a strategy for our team, we’ve put into place communication and processes that work, and team members feel empowered!
In an ideal world, our teams would be fully independent and can achieve their goals on their own.
But the reality is actually the opposite:
Dependencies exist and often create competing goals and constraints
What your team needs help with might come at a cost to others
Leadership priorities don’t always align with what’s best for your team.
And this is where POLITICS comes in.
Politics can feel gross. I get it.
I used to work in an industry back in the Philippines where if we needed to get buy-in from the teams we depended on, we’d buy them gifts or treat them to expensive lunches. 😅 So I didn’t exactly have a healthy view of politics in the beginning too.
These days, I hear a lot from many of the Product folks I talk to that they want to look for a new job because they want to be in a place with no politics.
That place does not exist.
So avoiding it is impossible. And not wanting to engage in it only makes the job harder.
Because the more Senior you become, the more the job involves the need to navigate relationships and align more and more complex stakeholders to make sure that the team can move forward in an environment of uncertainty.
At its core, politics is really about
The relationships we build in the organization
The trust and confidence these relationships hold in us
And the influence we have as a result.
Often, people mistake attaching a “Senior”, “Lead” or even “Chief” in their titles grant them automatically influence.
Sure you may have gained some level of authority with the title change. But authority is limited. It doesn’t translate sideways or upwards where getting buy-in tends to be critical.
So if politics is so simple at its core and so important, why do some people still avoid it like the plague?
🔥 If you don’t know how to navigate it, it’s easy to get burned out by it. It takes a lot of time and effort to “people”. The common complaint is constantly being pulled into meetings and never-ending push and pull to get an alignment.
How this looks like in real life: A Product Director trying to create a new process but constantly facing resistance from their peers. It takes many weeks and some escalations to get an agreement.
🔥 If your approach to politics is not working, the lack of results can feel frustrating. There is no one-size-fits-all all approach to corporate politics. It’s highly dependent on you, the person, your values, your style. And until you find that combination that hits the spot, seeing your peers constantly get the buy-ins and opportunities you’re gunning for can feel demotivating.
How this looks like in real life: A Head of Product gets backing from leadership all the time when it comes to organization-wide priorities even if what they’re proposing doesn’t seem to have the highest potential for impact.
🔥 If your perception of the people who are good at politics is clouded, it can feel like a shady game to play. The people who might be raising your hackles might be the same people who are great at politics and who get the results you’re looking for. Turning you off from politics completely.
But if we go back to the core of what corporate politics is, it isn’t the problem. It’s how people choose to engage with it. And sometimes, our perception of the people who engage with it.
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⚙️ If corporate politics is burning you out and this is blocking you and your team from achieving your goals, I offer 1:1 coaching support to new and aspiring product leaders and this is one of the most common struggles people work on with me. Would you like to explore how we can work on this together? Let’s chat.
Strategies for Change
Instead of avoiding politics, the solution is to get good at it. Corporate politics doesn’t have to mean selling your soul to the devil.
Let me share 4 mindset/behavior shifts that helped me and my clients expand our influence:
1️⃣ Shifting the mindset from “wanting to win” to “aligning interests”.
Influence isn’t about having the last word. It’s about creating alignment, building bridges, and finding paths forward that benefit the broader organization.
True story: After an acquisition, our department merged with the acquired company's equivalent department. The result? Multiple teams doing the same things.
My tech partner in crime and I and our counterparts from the other department were put together to figure out what to do with the duplicate products in our departments.
We had a deadline but no real guidance on what the outcome should be. Just "figure it out".
Both sides were worried about the potential consequence for our teams.
We couldn't agree on what to do. We all had a case for why our product should stay and the other should be deprecated.
We all had the motivation to be right. And we were all suspicious of one another.
But we were also getting nowhere.
I wish I could tell you that how we got to a solution was a stroke of genius on my part. But it was mostly because I was really frustrated and I needed to let my feelings out.
So in one of our meetings, instead of arguing again about which case was stronger, I just asked my counterparts if we can talk about:
- What did we really want to achieve
- What were we really concerned about
Just a conversation about our feelings and fears.
And that hour of vulnerability unlocked everything for us.
We found our common ground, we started speaking the same language.
And we "figured it out".
Only to be told after we presented our case to our leadership that we shouldn't do anything anymore because we were changing directions and we'd be told more soon (that soon was 1 year later lol). 😂 In a complex environment, even with aligned goals, every department has its own concerns, constraints, and contexts that can seem to contradict each other.
And having blinders on a single solution can put everybody, including ourselves, in defense mode.
But when we keep the focus on what really matters, the objectives, the problems to solve, and the humans involved… the conversation shifts. Most of the time, it even opens up opportunities for better and stronger solutions.
Try: Instead of “We need to do this” try “How can we achieve this goal together?”
2️⃣ EARN people’s trust by being trustworthy
In this part, I defer to Rachel Botsman who’s always been my reference for any topic related to Trust.
We can’t make people trust us. It’s a belief that we can’t control.
But we can be trustworthy. This is within our control and shaped by our behaviors and motivations.
She further shared these 4 traits that can make us more worthy of someone’s trust:
What do these traits mean?
Competence - Can we do the job we say we can? Do we have the skills, knowledge, and resources? Are we honest about the things we say we can and cannot do?
Reliability - Can we be depended on to keep our commitments? Do we set clear and correct expectations? Are we consistent in our behaviors?
Integrity - Do we mean what we say and do we say what we mean? Are we honest about our intentions? Are our words and actions cohesive?
Empathy - Do we genuinely care about other people’s interests aside from our own? Do we stop to consider how our actions, decisions, and behavior impact others?
While we cannot control nor predict if people will trust us in the end, our capability and character can have a huge influence on how people perceive us.
Think: Do you want to be right or do you want to do the right thing?
3️⃣ Align with the leader you aspire to be.
How we show up matters. What trips most people up is that they see how others navigate politics in ways they don’t respect and they assume they have to play the same game to succeed.
And then they find themselves in complete misalignment with their values.
But gaining influence doesn’t have to mean manipulation or behaving in ways that feel wrong.
Defining the kind of leader we want to be and letting that guide our approach to politics is what makes things authentic and sustainable.
Our values as a leader will shape the way we communicate our intentions and the way we respond to setbacks
If you're a leader who values collaboration, then your approach to politics will be guided by that. You’ll be inclusive of other people’s opinion and will be open to co-creation of solutions that lead to the same goals you’ve set out to have.
If you’re a leader who values openness and transparency, you’ll seek to understand other people’s concerns behind their pushback. So you can adjust accordingly if needed (or not). While at the same time being able to distance yourself from the outcomes and not take things personally.
When our actions align with our values, we can gain influence without compromising who we are.
Try: Define what kind of leader do you want to be?
4️⃣ Get to know people and seek to give first. Seriously.
It surprises me how seldom new leaders know people outside of their own teams/departments when they begin their leadership life. Making their area of influence really small just because people they have to work with don’t know anything about them.
🔗 Read: This has been shared as one of the top reasons some PMs get passed over for promotions.So this point is last in this list; but definitely not the least.
If you want to be a leader, start getting to know people outside of your immediate environment.
If you’re a new leader, start a listening tour ASAP.
Why? So you can have a grasp of what other teams are doing, what their goals are, and what they’re struggling with.
Don’t know how to approach people? Come from a place of curiosity.
In the oldie but still a goodie book, “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie he shared that people respond well to a genuine interest in them. So taking the time to understand their context helps to earn their trust over time.
And a bonus tip from Sarah Heal, Founder and CEO of Information Leadership which I love.
Giving is a great way to start gaining influence because it builds reciprocity and establishes us as a leader who really cares about delivering value vs winning. This can shift the relationship we have with our peers from being transactional to meaningful.
To be aware of: Expanding influence is extremely important to get things done and deliver something of value however just be mindful of the overhead and the dependency this can create. Read this post for tips co-written with
.
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💡 IMPORTANT:
Building relationships and earning trust to expand one’s influence TAKES TIME! Like all good and sustainable things do. This doesn’t happen overnight.
As Joy Adamson, Product Leader and Coach shared.
So the best time to start building these relationships and earning the trust that you need from your most important connections? Yesterday.
The second best time? Today.
This also calls out the need for patience. Meaningful changes like this need it.
TL;DR: Come to the dark side, it’s bright and shiny
Corporate politics doesn’t have to be that shady thing where you bribe people with expensive lunches to get what you want (though it can happen).
It's really just about building relationships, earning trust, so you can gain influence.
So instead of running away from politics, get good at it by:
Shifting your mindset from "wanting to win" to "aligning interests"
Earning trust by being trustworthy
Aligning with your values as the leader you want to be
Getting to know people outside your team before you desperately need their help (prevention > cure, folks!)
Politics is unavoidable in any organization with more than one person. But it doesn't have to mean we need to resort to shady tactics to get ahead.
It's simply how things get done when your team depends on others, which is basically always in the Product life.
The sooner we accept this, the sooner we can stop fighting it and start using it to help our teams succeed.
Because gaining influence through relationships takes time. And the best time to start doing this was yesterday. The 2nd best time? Today.
📌 Coaching Bulletin Board:
📌 1:1 Coaching for the new and aspiring Product, UX, and Tech Leaders! I’d love to help you define your strategies to set yourself and your team up for success. Book a free call and let’s discuss how we can work together.
📌 The Network with a Purpose program is live and running! Meltem and I designed this program to help ambitious professionals find AND create opportunities for themselves to achieve their career goals through building relationships in the industry. Apply to join.
📌 Magical Audios is giving away a free guided self-hypnosis for healing burnout. Click here to start listening.
If you got to this part of this newsletter, thanks for staying with me until the end. And thank you for your topic contributions!
❤️
Kax
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