Managing people is one of the hardest jobs you can have. Particularly if you’re working in a highly talented place. As the folks on your team are very talented and motivated, and each has their way of thinking. Forging a team and navigating the mentoring, coaching, guiding, and orchestrating to execute at high performance isn’t easy. I’ve put together a small selection of product manager books I’ve enjoyed reading in the past which helped shape my thinking on this topic. Hope you enjoy the selection.

My selection of Product Manager Books:

Radical Candor

This book by Kim Scott is great to help you think about managing people on your team. She spent a lot of time at Google and Apple. And she developed an interesting framework on how to get people to excel. It’s about challenging folks in a kind way. If you challenge unkindly you’re a jerk pretty much. And if you don’t challenge at all, then you risk mediocrity.

OKR. Objectives and Key Results

This one is by John Doerr, who is a renowned VC in Kleiner Perkins. He was the series A investor at Google I believe, and helped the early team with execution with OKRs. This is a well know methodology to align the entire team on goals that measurable (key results) and direction (objectives).

Difficult Conversations: How to discuss what matters most

This book by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen has been a welcome addition to the Harvard Negotiating Project. Much of the Harvard work on negotiation has been about focusing on the analytical aspects of finding win wins. It’s stuff like BATNAs, etc. The work this book adds is how to understand and work through the emotions that people bring to the table when issues are core to their identity. It’s useful for planning and running a conversation when stakes are high.

Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell

A book by Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, and Alan Eagle. It’s a good book that combines anecdotes from Bill Campbell (who was coach to many CEOs and executive teams in Silicon Valley) with ways to approach your team. Build trust. Challenge directly. Foster team dynamics. Campbell was a football coach for many years in the first part of his career. And he brings that approach to developing teams.

Mindset: Changing the way you think to fulfil your potential

Great book by Carol Dweck. This one is close to me, as I read her work while I was doing my PhD. She’s a cognitive psychologist, and she focuses on people’s models of their own capabilities. Some people have what’s called a fixed mindset, that capabilities are fixed and there’s stuff you can do and stuff you can’t. And other people have growth mindset, that you can stretch and develop and do greater things. When you manage people, it’s useful to understand how your team members react to challenges and failures, and whether they see these as a path to success or as defeat. Edison used to say of his failed lab experiments that he now knows another thing that won’t work, on his way to making a great invention.

Do you know more great product manager books?