Strong Leadership Skills Will Keep Product Alive and Well For Years to Come

Years ago, the tech world was buzzing with a question: “Should product leaders learn to code?”

I wrote a post (often referred to as my tome) back then explaining why I would NEVER learn to code - I didn’t believe coding skills would make me a better leader and still don’t. Fast forward to today, and a similar question has resurfaced, but with a new focus. In 2024/2025, you can imagine what that new obsession is… AI.

“Should product leaders master AI to avoid being replaced by it?”

A lot has been said on the topic, some claim Product Management is Dead, others discuss how it’s supercharged. If you follow me on LinkedIn, you already know my take on it. Here’s my short answer: Learning AI skills can make product leaders FASTER, but leadership skills help people go HIGHER.

In a recent lecture which I attended, Ethan Mollick said that "Management skills are key because you manage the AI systems the way you manage people." He was referring to knowing how to prompt AI in ways that get you what you need often even convincing the AI that it has capabilities it doesn't know it has. On a higher level it means that Leaders will have to teach management skills to their teams to enable them to be successful at leveraging the power of AI, so they better be good at managing themselves.

 

That was my short answer to the question. The long, detailed answer is in the form of the article below. As part of the Unleash the Leader Within series, this piece dives into how product leaders can balance AI with human skills to master the LEAD framework.

Let’s explore how AI impacts true leadership - and why it will never replace it.

L - Look Towards the Future

AI is reshaping the way we work, and it’s happening fast.

As Claire Vo said at her Lenny & Friends Summit talk, AI is “collapsing the talent stack.” Individual contributors (ICs) are now more equipped than ever to produce great outputs with the support of AI tools.

But here’s the catch: tools are only as valuable as the vision guiding them.

Great leaders set the “Where To?” for their teams. They look towards the future and articulate a clear vision for what the team is building, why it matters, and… how AI can help! Today, developing a strategy for how AI will help you create customer and business value is part of a leader’s job. Because without strong leadership, AI becomes noise. It is capable of generating options but it cannot decide which option will serve customers the best or generate business value aligned with the company mission.

Take Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI as an example. They didn’t just jump on the AI train mindlessly, they invested with purpose. They saw how AI could align with their strengths in enterprise software, brand security, and customer trust.

Takeaway for Leaders: AI amplifies your team’s capabilities, but YOU provide the direction. It’s your job to look towards the future, communicate a vision, and ensure the team is aligned.

E - Empower Your Team

Good leaders don’t just set the vision, they empower their teams to deliver on it.

As Dan Chuparkoff, ex-google engineering leader and AI expert states… “AI doesn’t make choices. YOU DO. The goal should never be to replace human decision-making, just empower it.”

AI tools can increase team productivity. For example, they can:

• Speed up analysis of user feedback and sentiment

• Surface edge cases quickly

• Automate documentation

• Personalize customer interactions

 

But while AI helps teams move faster, it’s leadership that guides them how to leverage these tools effectively, where the human touch is still needed, and how to grow into leaders themselves.

As Denise Tilles, CPO of Grocket, puts it:

"A trend I see is product operations leaders coaching their teams to utilize generative AI to supplant low-value tasks. Rather than using AI as value signaling 'we're using AI' to check a box, what can AI do to clear more time for higher-leverage work? Things like creating training docs and survey drafts with AI, so that product operations can focus on key needs like aligning resources to strategy."

This shows us something critical: AI should be used to free up time for the work that matters most. Instead of chasing trends, leaders should guide their teams to use AI in ways that directly support their goals and amplify their impact. We must also guide which tools are being used to ensure value, trust and security. Everyone wants to feel purpose in their work, and letting people focus on outcome oriented efforts instead of tedious ones improves the balance.

And per the poll below... should be improving the customer experience and adding value to them ... which in turn builds business value.

 

A fantastic example of this is Hilary Gridley’s (Director of Product Management at Whoop) interview for Lenny’s Newsletter, where she discussed ways she empowers her team with the help of AI. She cited, for example, using trained ChatGPTs to improve her team’s writing skills, argumentative abilities, or synthesis capacities. She then as a product leader gets to work with them on strategy selection and generating influence without authority.

People will always need people. Coaching, mentoring, empowering, and aligning a team can’t be automated. Let’s make sure we’re teaching people to TALK TO OTHER HUMANS not just to robots.

Takeaway for Leaders: Guide your team to use AI tools wisely. AI speeds things up, but leadership is what makes progress possible.

A - Activate Your Supporters

AI tools can generate answers, ideas, and paths forward, but they can’t inspire confidence, build trust, or foster relationships. That’s where leadership skills comes in.

Great leaders navigate relationships, be it within their teams, with peers, or with executives. They know that trust and support are the foundations of influence without authority. Without these skills, your plans will fail, regardless of how brilliant they are.

This is why I push back on the idea that “AI prompting skills” will get you to the top. As I wrote on LinkedIn recently, “Work on your STORYTELLING before you learn to code”. Leaders who can come up with a compelling vision and build alignment around it stand out in a world where IC-level skills are becoming commoditized.

If you want to use AI in relation to this, have it help you take notes during meetings, generate action items, remind you to follow-up, do some background research on topics that excite the other person. Leverage AI to reframe your message again and again for each audience so that it resonates.

It can also help you as a leader work faster. As a recent study by MIT surfaced that AI helps people with the most experience and strong judgement the most. (thanks Marty Cagan by way of Dan Olsen for sharing this).

Takeaway for Leaders: AI can suggest the path, but YOU inspire the team to follow it. Build trust, tell great stories, and activate your supporters to back the ideas that matter.

D - Decide Sensibly and Swiftly

AI is great at providing options, alternatives, and recommendations. It can even prototype concepts in minutes, as discussed in this edition of Lenny’s Newsletter, to give teams something tangible to evaluate.

But consider this: AI generates answers based on two inputs: the data it synthesizes and the question it is prompted with. Imagine you ask it what’s the distance between the Earth and the Moon. It will give you a number, but is it referring to the distance between surfaces or cores? The number is correct for one of those, I’m 85% sure ;)

This means that the way you ask questions to AI matters more than you may think - both the prompt and the inferred judgment behind the prompt. Be careful and remember that as Dan Chuparkoff says "Everything is a hallucination. It's generating – it makes stuff up. That's what it does." Some hallucinations are just better than others. 🤯

Similar to conclusions and data needing to pass a “sniff test”, leaders must leverage their experience and domain expertise to sense whether or not AI has provided something of true value. Has this thought entirely changed your mindset around AI? It certainly changed mine!

Then, after AI has generated an answer, someone still needs to MAKE A DECISION. As Mohanbir Sawhney explains, AI can get you 70% of the way there—but it’s the remaining 30% that requires human judgment, creativity, and strategic insight. AI can suggest options, but only leaders can refine them into actionable, high-impact decisions.

That is the primary role of Product, to decide what to do next. We can gather and synthesize information (both qualitative and quantitative) with AI.

This is the exact same idea that Dan Olsen shared in his latest article (great read, by the way!): “Gen AI is strong at generating new ideas, but human judgement is better at evaluating the ideas and selecting the best one.”

Indecisive leaders undermine team morale and slow progress, even if AI is feeding them answers. On the other hand, great leaders:

• Decide quickly to keep the momentum going

• Explain their thought process so the team learns and feels empowered

• Encourage autonomy so team members make aligned decisions at their level

Claire Vo described this in a smart way with her analogy of “artisanally crafted teams.” Leaders must decide how to structure teams, which AI tools to invest in, and what to prioritize based on a clear strategy, not the latest trends.

Takeaway for Leaders: Use AI to inform your decisions, but don’t let it replace your judgment. Leaders who make thoughtful decisions and empower others to do the same will always stand out.

Conclusion: Lead AI-Enabled Teams with a Human Touch

AI is here, and it’s transforming the way teams operate.

It can significantly improve the work of ICs, automate boring tasks, and speed up workflows that used to take much longer. It can also turn ideas into prototypes in a matter of minutes. But AI cannot replace human leadership in Product or any other area of business.

The great challenge for current product leaders is to figure out how to balance AI’s power with the interpersonal skills that allow them to Unleash the Leader Within.

Leadership isn’t going away, it’s EVOLVING.