Leadership Is About Translation
The Best Product Leaders Are Great Translators
The best product leaders are not just good at strategy and execution. They are excellent communicators and translators. Not in the linguistic sense, but in their ability to connect different disciplines within a team. For example, a designer might say, "This page needs more breathing room." But what does that mean technically for an engineer? A marketer might suggest, "We need to optimize the CTR by 2%," but does that inspire a designer to create user-focused solutions? Not really.
That's why being a product leader means being a skilled translator—someone who can turn metrics into motivation, abstract ideas into tangible solutions, and scattered visions into a clear and shared direction.
So, what do great translators do?
They speak each team's language: Designers think in terms of user experience, engineers focus on efficiency and scalability, analysts work with metrics and trends, and marketers prioritize growth and profitability. A product leader must understand and unify these perspectives.
They turn objectives into engaging challenges: Instead of saying, "This page needs more breathing room," they might ask, "How can we make the website easier to read?" Instead of "we need to optimize CTR by 2%," they might frame it as, "How can we improve navigation to help users find what they need faster?"
They facilitate alignment and decision-making: The best leaders are great translators. They ensure that every team member understands and contributes to the vision with clarity.
In a world where digital products are built by diverse teams, true leadership is not about dictating the path but ensuring that everyone understands it and moves forward together. When a team shares a common language and grasps the impact of their work on the product and its users, execution becomes smoother, decision-making more efficient, and results significantly better.