From product manager to leadership coach: 3 career-changing lessons on my journey (Diana Stepner)

Diana Stepner shares three pivotal lessons from her journey transitioning from Product Manager to Leadership Coach. She discusses the importance of making your manager shine, navigating team dynamics, and why building trust is essential for career growth. Diana also reflects on why the characteristics that earned her praise early on in a company consistently turned into points of negative feedback.

Diana opens up about:

1. Why the same attributes that earned her praise could also create detractors

2. The challenges of being both overqualified and underqualified

3. Learning how to balance self-driven success with the importance of recognizing and celebrating her team and managers

Things to listen for:

(00:00) Intro

(03:22) Growing up in Silicon Valley and early exposure to the tech world

(06:43) Transitioning from communications to product leadership

(12:12) Struggling with being overqualified or underqualified

(15:05) Learning how to make your manager shine

(21:08) Thanks to our sponsor of this episode, Navattic

(25:18) Handling challenging feedback and finding balance in leadership

(30:47) When stepping aside wasn’t the right call

(35:59) Rebuilding after tough feedback

(41:24) Disbanding a future-focused team: the reality of working on the fringe

(46:38) The power of slowing down and building trust with your team

Resources:

Connect with Diana:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dianas/

Product Gold: https://www.productgold.com/

People-First Leadership: https://dianastepner.substack.com/

Connect with Andrew:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewcapland/

Hire Andrew as your coach: https://deliveringvalue.co/coaching

Thanks to our amazing sponsor!

Learn more about Navattic: http://navattic.com/value