Product Leadership Coaching with Ken Norton

Bring the Donuts

Before becoming a full-time product management coach, I spent more than fourteen years in product leadership at Google, building products that are now used by more than three billion people worldwide. I have coached and mentored product managers and product leaders of all experience levels, from recent grad associate product managers to newly promoted product directors to experienced VPs of Product and Chief Product Officers.

I’m passionate about the craft of product management and dedicated to helping other product leaders achieve success through the power of coaching.

I have worked with PMs from many industries and companies of all shapes and sizes, including consumer software, e-commerce, enterprise, hardware, life sciences/healthcare, frontier tech, FAANG, and Fortune 500.

What is Coaching?

Coaching is distinct from advising, training, or mentoring. The International Coaching Federation, of which I am a member, defines coaching as “partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.” Unlike advisors or consultants, coaches help you get to the root of the challenges you’re facing. They don’t tell you what they would do; they collaborate to help you discover what you should do. Coaching is unlocking people’s potential to maximize their own performance.

There’s no finish line when it comes to growing as a product leader. Although I specialize in coaching product leaders, I focus on the whole person. A cornerstone of the Co-Active Training Institute, where I trained as a coach, is the belief that clients are naturally resourceful, creative, and whole. That means the definition of success is uniquely yours. Executive coaching is about asking the right questions and using innovative techniques to evoke in clients the realization of their fullest potential. A coach is someone in your corner you can test out ideas with, speak with candidly about your fears, and who will push you and hold you accountable.

I’ve benefited throughout my career from coaching, and I wish I’d discovered it earlier in my career. Sometimes it was helpful to just work through a problem with someone who’d been there, or even just someone who didn’t work at the same company. They helped me resolve conflict, create great cultures, make tough decisions, become an authentic leader, chart the direction of my career, and deliver world-class products. My twenty-plus-year career in product management and product leadership has sharpened my skills as a coach.

I’m passionate about the craft of product management and am dedicated to providing that same help to others. I hope we get the opportunity to work together.

Typical Engagements

Below are just a few areas my clients and I focus on:

• Connecting with your values
• Developing as a product leader
• Finding your purpose as a product manager
• Building a healthy and robust product culture
• Designing your vision for a fulfilling product career
• Team and organizational structure and dynamics
• Hiring, coaching, and mentoring other product managers
• Working with other groups and challenging personalities
• Building outstanding relationships with engineering and design
• Improving product strategy and process
• Setting goals and objectives
• Coping with setbacks and building resilience
• Connecting with your authentic leadership style
• Long-term product planning and vision
• Learning to have difficult conversations
• Working effectively with CEOs, other execs, and board members
• Developing self-awareness and processing feedback
• Gaining confidence and overcoming impostor phenomenon
• Work/life integration
• Choice and perspective
• Getting unstuck

And here are some typical situations where clients reach out to me:

• A fast-growing startup’s lead product manager, told that the Chief Product Officer role is “theirs to lose” and wanting to 10x their development
• A big tech company group product manager, recently promoted and growing from individual contributor to product leader
• A VP of Product at a big tech company, looking to reach their goal of becoming a CEO in 3-5 years
• An experienced PM who feels like their career has plateaued, looking to shake up their potential, achieve work/life integration, and fall in love with the job again
• A product manager who just took on a large project, struggling to become more confident and decisive in the face of executive attention
• A Chief Product Officer at a high-growth startup who wants to become a better manager of managers, and challenged with how to structure an organization
• An experienced product leader who was hired to change the product culture at a Fortune 500 company
• An L6/L7 product manager at a FAANG, looking to become more strategic, grow in confidence, and accomplish their goal of being promoted to director
• A newly promoted product leader, challenged in a recent performance review to be less tactical and deliver a compelling vision for their product area
• A mid-career product leader wondering if they’re climbing the right ladder

Client Testimonials

I’ve worked with product leaders, product managers, executives, and teams from the following companies:

Read more testimonials »

Packages and Pricing

All individual coaching packages require a minimum six-month commitment. That will give us the time and space to work together on the challenges you face, get to know one another, and develop a powerful coaching alliance based on authenticity and trust. I offer a free, no-obligation one-hour exploratory session to determine fit.

If you represent a company with multiple team members looking for 1:1 coaching, contact me for availability and discounted pricing.

Check to see if your company’s learning and development stipend covers coaching, or ask your manager about receiving sponsorship. People are often pleasantly surprised to discover their employer — even early-stage startups — will cover all or a portion of individual coaching. (Here’s some helpful advice on making a pitch.)

I especially welcome the opportunity to coach PMs from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds: Ask about scholarships.

About Ken Norton