Product EQ Toolkit Part 2: Build Essential Product skills with the Product EQ Wheel

I recently shared a self-reflection exercise called the Product Practice Canvas, designed to help product leaders develop a balanced understanding of the type of skills essential to product management - human skills and technical skills. 

Today, I’ll be sharing another self reflection exercise that can be used along with the Product Practice Canvas or on its own -- The Product EQ Wheel. 

Download a copy of the Product EQ Wheel on my website here.

Designed to help you go deeper into understanding and assessing your own human skills and emotional intelligence, The Product EQ Wheel is based on a coaching tool called the Wheel of Life, and is created to help you identify areas of growth in your human skills and to set priorities for areas that you’d like to focus on for development and growth.

The skills that I’ve included in this wheel - self awareness, resilience, emotional self control, empathy, adaptability, collaboration, communication - are some of the most essential to our work as product people; full definitions and examples of each skill can be found on my website.

I’ve also created a virtual version of the wheel and this practice on Miro.  

I’ve also created a virtual version of the wheel and this practice on Miro.  Please dm me for a downloaded version while it awaits approval on the Miroverse.

Here’s how to use the Product EQ Wheel:

1. For each segment ask yourself, “On a scale from 1-10 (with 10 being the ideal), how would you describe your level of ___________ (self-awareness, resilience, empathy etc)?” This initial score should be a general representation of where you think you are. It’s a place to start, so don’t overthink it.  
2. Rate each segment on the canvas, and draw a line that connects the points until you have a second ‘inner’ wheel. This can help you to visually understand where you are compared to your ideal. Choose the segment you feel is most out of balance.
3. Consider all the bright spots that make up this score and write down “What is working well?”
4. If anything were possible, what would your ideal satisfaction score be for the area? This doesn’t have to be a 10. This is the number that you are satisfied with. Write that down under the heading “What I want to change.”
5. Compare your two lists: ‘What is Working?” & “What I Want to Change.” What do you notice?
6. What could you do to move up one point between your score today and your ideal? For example, if you’d like to focus on increasing self awareness, can you challenge yourself to ask three colleagues for feedback in the next two weeks? If you’d like to work on your ability to influence, can you push yourself to set-up meetings with two tricky stakeholders to understand their own challenges or concerns on a recent project?
7. Decide on an achievable action to bring you one step closer to your target. Write it down, and note when and how you’ll come back to review your progress.

The great thing about the Product EQ Wheel is it’s flexibility. It can be used as a:

• Tool for self reflection to help you better understand human skills and your opportunities for growth.
• Conversation starter with your manager or team to help uncover areas of development.
• Team exercise to find out where you as a group may be lacking in human skills. In that way it's a great pre-cursor to the Role Canvas workshop to help your team better identify priorities for a new role that you’re hiring for. We'll be talking more about the Role Canvas in the next article.

If you found the Product Practice Canvas or the Product EQ Wheel valuable, I graciously ask you to check out my book and let me know what you think! You can also read more about these product exercises or my book, Hiring Product Managers: Using Product EQ to go beyond culture and skills, on my website, kateleto.com