Product Management | Psychological Safety | High Performing Teams | Product Executive | Women and Earnings |
In this interview, we discuss with Soumeya Benghanem the role of a product manager, learnings from Soumeya’s career, and how to create psychological safety to support high-performing teams. In the second part of the conversation, we also discuss the topic of women and earnings. Some of the questions we consider are: Are you happy with your earnings, are you unsure whether to ask for more money in your discussion with your manager, what do you feel about money & earnings in your life? This is a part of the discussion that sparked some important learnings, such as seeing money as a tool to live the life you want to live.
Soumeya Benghanem is a Product Management executive with 20 years of experience building product teams and software. She is currently a Product Management Practice Leader at Pivotal Labs, a Division of VMware. She has been the Chief Product Officer and Head of Product at startups in Financial Services and Healthcare. Some of the organizations that she has worked with include The United States Space Force, Merrill Lynch, The Bank of NY Mellon, and Paypal.
Takeaways:
Follow Soumeya's updates on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/soumeyab/
Follow Soumeya's updates on Clubhouse: @soumeya
Episode Timeline:
02:00 What is product management, and how did the field develop in the last years?
03:48 How did you decide to move into product management? What are some of the peculiarities of the role?
06:30 How would you define the product space to somebody completely new to it?
09:55 Managing high-performing teams: How do you create high-performing teams?
12:40 How do you create psychological safety?
17:41 Any advice for teams in the remote-work era? How to implement psychological safety in this new setup?
21:20 DRIP Framework for 1-on-1 meetings.
23:10 What was the biggest surprise of your career?
25:46 Learnings from Soumeya’s current executive role at VMware.
28:05 Upbringing and learnings from Soumeya’s life.
33:00 Women and Earnings.
38:00 Bias towards women if they ask for money. Being greedy versus being confident.
47: 00 Challenging situations and how you navigated the scenario.
50:00 What advice do you have for those who want to follow in your path?
55:00 Anything you wish you knew at the beginning of your career?