S02 E04 Product Management: Creating psychological safety to support your high performing teams with Soumeya Benghanem, VMware.

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:

• What is the range of pay in my role? “I use a range because I think it is more important than the average. Average implies there are many people above and many people below. If you get an offer in the average, you should counteroffer or negotiate for higher.” 
•  “Do not let money concerns or inequity pass because it multiplies. In one role, you are underpaid. You will probably be underpaid in the next role. So make sure to take care proactively in every role you get.”
• "Some of the most challenging things I had to go through were thinking the situation was a zero-sum game. You are either a winner or a loser. When in reality, there is complexity. The zero-sum game is an unhealthy mindset to have. Yet very typical when you grow up competitive or do not think about the complexity of a situation. Most of the challenges I had in my career were around situations that I treated like either I would win or lose. "

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?