Hi all,
I’ve been managing a PM who moved from another department within the org. through a lateral transfer. They were fairly new to the org. to begin with. They started reporting to me due to an org change and has been the set up for the last 6 months.
Their levelling is quite senior, but they are struggling to the basics:
- Product Roadmapping
- Product Execution
- Analytical chops
- Communication
- Stakeholder management
- Product sense (major red flag)
But I do see them excel in areas such as: - Co-ordination
- Bringing teams together
I have done several things in the last few months to help them learn these skills for PM - worked with them 1:1 spending several hours on them as compared to the other reports I have and also recommended them for learning and development in these areas. There are patterns to their behaviours as well. They really need a lot of support (more than my other junior PMs) in every single task “assigned” to them. This is another area - they are not able to self identify what they should be doing to start and execute the task assigned to them, even tasks that are similar to the ones they handled before that I helped them with. Finding problems to solve is galaxies away.
Would it make sense to help them further in the PM career? Is this a lack of opportunities to learn these skills or a wrong fit for PMing? I’m increasingly convinced that this PM job is a wrong fit for them and in the long run they may not be able to get fulfilment from their work or make an impact. If it is indeed a wrong fit, how do I approach the subject with them where they don’t get defensive or gaslight me?
I’m really concerned about this because until now, I strongly believed that PMing is not rocket science and that anyone should be able to do. But seeing this person struggle, I am wondering if it is indeed a hard skill.
Another aspect of this problem is also how it is affecting the morale of the rest of my team. One of them even hinted it openly to me during my 1:1s about how much I’m protecting this particular senior PM, that they are not able to get ahead without my help.
The third aspect is that - since I’m spending too much time shaping their product along with them, I am not able to spend as much time in the other areas of my portfolio and help other PMs shape their product.
Any thoughts?