 Hi everyone. My name is Ronke Magicadumi. I am a Senior Product Manager at PayPal. And today I get to talk to you all about how great product managers build people and products. And I want to thank Product School for providing this lovely opportunity today. And thank you all for taking the time to attend this webinar. As I mentioned, I'm Ronke and I'm a CNPM at PayPal. As most of you know, PayPal is an American company that operates an online payment system around the world in countries where online payment transfer is enabled. So this is in lieu of money orders and checks, like the old fashioned way. As most of you know, PayPal is double-sided. We support businesses and we also support consumers. For most of my career working in the financial industry, I've helped to build B2B platforms and B2C platforms. I've always worked in Fintech and that's just what I've been up to. That's a little bit about my background. So whenever I do this presentation, I always like to share my PM super power. For me, I thrive in finding insights beyond the side of others. What do I mean by that? Well, when things aren't going well or when I get a no or when, you know, it looks like my project is dead. There isn't a way to get it to market or bring it to fruition. I take a step back and I take a look at all the other possibilities to see what I can do. Sometimes it is as simple as inner sourcing my colleagues code and then that colleagues supporting us to get our product vision to market. Other times it might be re-evaluating what that MVP is. So I employ you all to use your PM super power because that's one of the things that helps you as a product manager to fulfill your product vision. And since we're talking about great product leaders today who build people and products, I wanted to share with you all my favorite books about leadership. I'm a bookworm. My favorite thing to do at night is to look for books on Amazon and on Apple. And I love books about leadership. So these are just a few of my favorites. So I wanted to share them with you all today. So as I mentioned, great product managers build people and products. So today we're going to focus on the people part. The product part I've already done that I've already done that presentation is called characteristics of exceptional product managers. But today we're going to focus on the people. Leadership is an endeavor service. Why do I mean this? What do I mean by this? It means that our goal as product leaders is to lead our cross functional teams, our scrum teams, our partners, our colleagues, whatever they are. Our goal is to work for them. They don't work for us. We work for them. And because by working for them, we envision them to dream big. If they dream big, they can be creative, they can be innovative, and they will always bring their best selves to work, which is what we want. And the opportunity is open up for them and for us as well. So that's why I always say leadership is an endeavor service. We work for our cross functional teams. So the other thing I wanted to share with you all today is our actions motivate our teams to think big, become more versed, and to blossom into more. And to me, this is really what leadership is about. It's about motivating our teams that to think bigger than even though it's possible to become more versed and to blossom into more. And that's why I always say that we work for our teams so that we can make them better at whatever it is that they want to be. Whatever their professional goals are, whatever their personal goals are, but to help bring that into fruition for them. And that also helps us to bring our product vision to life. So today we have a couple of main takeaways. Empathy, we're going to talk about empathy. This is how we build people. Empathy, we're going to talk about being present, listening, trust. We're going to talk about gratitude, opportunities, and empowerment. So those are all main takeaways today. These are all attributes that I believe help us to build great people. Okay, so I wanted to start with empathy and talk about the impact of the pandemic. So for my organization, for instance, we've been home for the last 19 months, 19 months of not seeing my colleagues of not having lunch with them on a regular basis. I see them via team meetings, right? And Zoom calls. So the science of human relationship demonstrates that we all want to be seen, we all want to be heard, we all want to be validated. And if you look at some of the studies from the impact of the pandemic, women tend to suffer more because women tend to be more, to be laid off more as a result of the pandemic. Women are caretakers in their houses. They're taking care of their husbands, their kids. They're taking care of, in some cases, they've been taking care of extended family members and their own parents. And so sometimes it's just the simplest checking with your colleagues and saying, listen, what can I do to help? And sometimes it's as easy as, you know what? Please don't schedule a meeting at 8 o'clock in the morning. Sometimes it's just as simple as that, but really checking in. I'm talking about whether through Slack, whether through email, whether through phone, but really checking in on our colleagues and seeing how they're doing. It makes a big difference. Studies have always shown that if an employee feels like their employer genuinely cares about them and their leadership genuinely cares about them, it makes a big difference. Sometimes I've always shown that if an employee feels like their employer genuinely cares about them and their leadership genuinely cares about them, they will care about that organization as well. So if you think about the impact of COVID, we need to express more empathy if we haven't already done that. And the other thing I wanted to mention, great product leaders always have empathy. Empathy is one of the key attributes that they must have. And then I want to talk about well-being. The impact of the pandemic has changed things so much that employees want to feel like they are, that their employers care about them and care about their well-being. And that's what I mean about doing that checking, you know, to see how our colleagues are doing, our teams are doing, and to see how we can be of help. If we do all these things, offer empathy, check in on our colleagues, make sure they know that we care about them. They care, they don't care about the organization and their leadership and they will innovate. It gives them freedom to innovate because they genuinely feel like, wow, these people really care about me and my well-being. And this is new normal folks as of 2021. They become innovative and that increases employee engagement. I cannot stress to you how important these things are and how they're all interrelated. So that's empathy. Let's talk about being present, right? As I mentioned, these are attributes to me, to building people. So when you're present, what do I mean by that? Again, let's talk about the signs of human relationships, right? We all want to be seen, we want to be heard, we want to be validated, right? So when our teams come to us, especially since we're working from home, it's important that we're there. I mean, really there. We're not, you know, we're not looking at. So today we're going to talk about also being present, one of the attributes of building people. So again, I want to talk about the signs of human relationships, right? We want to be seen, heard, validated. So when our teams come to us, our cross-functional teams, our colleagues, our teammates, our stakeholders, they really, and they come to us with a problem. It's important that we are present. When we have one alliance with our direct reports and our teams, it's important that we are present. We're not distracted by our phones. We're not distracted by reading something else. We must be present so that we can also then collaborate with their feeling and share ideas. And so in discussions and meetings, if you ever sometimes are in a discussion or meeting, you feel like you've gone through the whole entire 30 minutes of the meeting and the person wasn't even really there, and that's what I mean. And if we are not present, it demoralizes our teams. They feel like we don't care. It causes aggravation. But if we're really present, right? If we are sharing ideas and saying, what about this and what about that? Not only do we transform our team, we change them and we inspire them, but also, inspiration, they become inspired and employee engagement goes up even more. It goes up the charts because they're like, wow, this person really cares. They're really present. They're really listening to me. They care what I have to bring to the table. They're sharing ideas. So that is, I recommend being present. The other third attribute to building people is listening. So when our teams come to us, especially our scrum teams, and they're explaining their frustrations or their concerns, we must listen. Let them share their viewpoint and their distresses. We shouldn't offer to fix it right away. We should let them get this out and then collaborate with them and say, okay, what are your thoughts? How do you think we should address this? So by fall for an empathy, by being present and listening, right? We can transform a line and inspire our organization. So we can transform them because they become changed because they're like, oh, wow, this person really cares what I have to say. Not only are they present, but they're listening. They're sharing ideas with me. They're trying to find a solution. And sometimes, even with our own teams, it might be just as simple as letting them vent. But being there to listen and participate is so important. Because if we do that, we can transform our team by changing them. We can align with them because they'll go, oh my God, my product leads really understand what I'm going through and really cares. And we can inspire them. Again, inspire them to think big, more than what is feasible. And we can also help remove any roadblocks. All we have to do is just be present, listen. So today I also want to talk about trust. Another attribute really super important to building people. When an organization has trust, no one notices because things just kind of move smoothly, right? Employees, you know, leadership, everything just kind of goes really well. Everybody's in sync. But when there's lack of trust, you'll know it right away. And the bad thing about lack of trust is it stifles creativity in employees. Employees feel like, oh, I can be my best selves. I mean, you know, I don't know what to do here. And you know it right away. How do you fix trust? How do you make sure there's trust in an organization? The way I do it is always to make sure that I communicate changes that are coming down. When my teams are asking me, oh my God, won't keep what's going on. I don't understand what we're making the decisions we're making. I am transparent with them. I tell them what I know. I don't know. I tell them I don't know, but I'm going to go find that. But also what I find is this. I always share with my teams, whether they're my partner teams or my own cross-functional, or my own spam teams, I will share with them. I will share with them the product vision, the product roadmap, and how all of these, you know, offer customer value, business value, and how they move us further in accomplishing organizational goals. So that they understand that why certain decisions are being made at the top and how it impacts the company vision and objectives and how in turn it impacts our roadmap. It's way late because of the climate changes. I'm very transparent about it because it lets them know, it lets them trust, you know, it lets them trust me, and that is super important. If my own team doesn't trust me, then we're going to, I'm going to be stifling their creativity and they won't grow. So communication is a key part of that. Communicating. Communicating, you know, and when you don't know, say, I will go find out and go do the research. And then autonomy is another thing. Another way I trust my teams and my colleagues is autonomy. I don't tell them what to do. I let them be their best selves and go try to figure out a solution to problems and come back with options. And when you do all these things, normally there's an increase in employee engagement, but your teams are more innovative than ever because they have that freedom and they have that trust in their organization and their leaders and they have autonomy. So they know they can go, they have freedom to go do research to see how to bring a product vision to life. They know they can innovate and find other ways to get a product vision to market. So trust super important amongst team members. I also want to talk about gratitude. So, I can't tell you all how important gratitude is. So for me, whenever I'm working on a project with my colleagues before COVID, or even after COVID, even though we're home from the pandemic. I always make sure that I send them a thank you note to thank them for their work, especially if I know that they're spending long hours trying to get a project out the door. Pre-pandemic, I will write them personalized thank you notes and I'll leave it on their desk. That note that took me three minutes to write changes somebody's day. It changes their outlook. Again, I remind you all that signs of human relationship. We want to be seen, we want to be heard, we want to be validated. We validate them. I'm going to give you all an example. There was a junior developer that started on our team and I left him a thank you note. He took a picture of the thank you note and he sent it to his family. They lived in another country. They wrote him back how proud they were of him. And we made his day just by simply putting that note on his desk and his parents validating it and seeing how proud they were of him. I'm going to give you all another example. A while ago, same thing, I left a thank you note on my another tech leads desk. He kept it. Two years later, he took a picture of it to remind me to let me know that he still had it. These things matter. It may take us three to four minutes to write a thank you note, but it means the world of difference to that person who's getting it. We transform them, we inspire them and we change them. I highly recommend those two notes. Pre-pandemic, celebrating the big and the small milestones and someone on my team is getting married, having a baby, even getting the driver's license. I've been known to bring in cupcakes. I've been known to bring in donuts on Wednesdays just because it's Wednesday. We can do those things right now, but I still make sure that I celebrate the big stuff, whether sucking somebody and telling them how happy I am for them or writing them an email. All super important. The other thing is my organization has rewards and recognition programs, so I always nominate people and send them and nominate them for rewards and recognition to let them know how their work is impacting our customer values and our vision and so forth. And then of course, thanking your customers. Even though we're home, pre-pandemic, I used to bring customers into the office to do a day in the live or to do focus groups. I would write a personalized thank you note to them. Post-pandemic, I can't do that anymore, but when we do virtual day in the lives with them or virtual focus groups, I still send them a personalized thank you note. And for some organizations that I've worked in, I'm able to send them gourmet baskets. All of these matters, especially when your power user is taking time out of their day to spend with you to let you know what the issues they're having with your product is super important to send that thank you note to them. I cannot tell you all how important gratitude is. Gratitude makes a difference in your teams and in your customers' lives. So let's talk about opportunities. So I am one of those PMs who believe in having and providing opportunities for anybody that I work with. I want to make sure that the professional objective and the personal goals are aligned. So my job is to help them accomplish their goals and to make sure they're dreaming big and that they're not putting in any mutations of themselves. And sometimes helping them will mean that they move on to new opportunities and new experiences outside of my team. But I'm more than happy to do that because it's important to me to be that leader that offers opportunities and offers the door for my team. And also, I want everybody else that's on my team to know that I am there to help them accomplish their professional objective and goals as well. And I want them to dream big. There is no limitation to what they can accomplish. Just like someone opened the doors for me, I want to be there to open the doors for somebody else. So that means even if it means to leave my team, it's okay because they're happy and they're accomplishing their own professional objectives as well. So super important. And that is how we build people. So I want to talk about empowerment. Empowerment means to me that there's an alignment of trust and awareness. So employees trust their organization. They understand why the product vision is what it is. They understand what the customer value is. They understand what the roadmap looks like and they understand the product strategy. They also understand how it ties to their overall mission and vision of the organization. They understand all that. And there's awareness. So therefore, then we can let them be autonomy. They can have autonomy and go do their own work and try to figure out how to bring that product vision to the market. Because there's trust and awareness, we don't have to babysit our teams. They can be independent and they have autonomy to go look at options to bring our product vision to life. And that also means they can innovate because they're empowered. They're empowered. There's trust and awareness. There's autonomy. Therefore, they can innovate. And in turn, employee engagement and retention goes through the roof because then I'm going to leave because they're happy working with you. They understand the product vision. They have independence to go figure out how to bring the product vision to life and they can innovate. Empowerment is super important. So that is how I mean takeaways today. We build people by making sure there's empathy with being present when we when we talk to them with listening. We have trust. We're expressing gratitude. We're providing opportunities for them. And they are empowered to be their best selves. So once again, I leave you all with my PM superpower. I thrive in finding insights beyond the side of others. Please make sure you're using your PM superpower. We are the center of humanities. We have the intersection of humanities and technology. And we can build really great products that will continue to change humanity if we use our PM superpower. I want to thank you all for taking the time to attend this webinar today. My name is Ronke Magicaduni, PM, a senior PM at PayPal. This is how you can reach me. My website is RonkePM.com. I am on LinkedIn. I am on Twitter. Thank you so much for taking the time to attend this webinar today. Thank you Product School for providing me this lovely opportunity. Thank you.