A secret to confident leaders is empathy
Empathy isn’t a “nice to have” in product leadership
Empathy is the foundation for building trust, understanding your team, and leading them through the chaos of product work. In this issue, we unpack a fundamental truth that many product leaders ignore: Empathy for your team is just as critical as empathy for your users.
Sandy Huang, former VP of Product at GoodRx and veteran of Amazon, Shutterfly, and various industries from e-commerce to healthcare, reminds us that your team can’t thrive if they don’t feel understood — and that understanding comes from experience. We’ll explore why empathy is more than emotional intelligence, how to build it, and how it creates stronger, more resilient teams.
The Challenge: Leading Without Understanding
Too many product leaders step into management and forget what it was like to be a product manager. Some have come from a different path and haven’t spent much time being a product manager. They trade roadmaps for strategy decks, sprint planning for leadership meetings — and slowly, they lose touch. The result? Teams that feel unsupported, misunderstood, and burned out.
You can’t build trust from a distance or without understanding.
“How well can you lead your team if you haven’t been in the trenches?”
That’s the straight-talking challenge Sandy Huang throws down. Empathy isn’t a checkbox; it takes deliberate effort, and if you don’t have shared experience, that effort will be significantly larger.
Empathy can be forged through experience.
“I firmly believe successful product leaders have to be in the trenches. When people haven’t had a long history in product yet they are product leaders, I wonder, how well can you lead a team without that empathy?”
She’s not talking about cognitive empathy. She’s talking about earned empathy — the kind that comes from being an individual contributor (IC) long enough to have navigated a variety of challenges and build real perspective.
“Product managers are in a weird position — when things go wrong, they’re accountable. When things go right, the credit typically goes to engineering or design. There are a lot of dynamics to figure out and manage. Empathy from having done the job yourself makes you that much stronger of a leader.”
The Solution: Empathy Built Through Doing
Sandy didn’t just transition smoothly from IC to leader—she bounced back and forth between the two for years, not because she couldn’t let go, but because she valued what she gained each time she returned to the coalface.
“I went in and out of management because I just loved the IC work. But eventually, I realised I could make more impact as a leader — and the empathy I built through years of IC work is what made that possible.”
She’s clear: The more time you’ve spent navigating product chaos, the better you’ll be at helping your team through it.
“Your team is still deep in those challenges. You’re not anymore - at least not at the same level. But you were. That shared experience matters. That’s what lets you say: I know this is hard — and here’s how we’ll get through it.”
5 Ways to Lead with Empathy
Want to build stronger relationships with your team and be the kind of leader they actually trust? Start here:
Spend time in the trenches
You don’t need to be writing tickets, but stay close enough to understand what’s hard — and why.Recognise invisible effort
Not all wins are shippable. Praise the stakeholder alignment, the difficult conversations, and the things that quietly made everything else possible.Use your experience wisely
Don’t lecture. Relate. Share your own past struggles to normalise the hard stuff and help your team navigate.Pull insights, don’t push fixes
Ask: “What’s been tough this sprint?” or “What trade-offs are you making?” Let your team members bring their world into your view.Coach for self-recognition
Especially for quieter team members, help them see and share their own impact — and teach them it’s not bragging, it’s visibility.
Mistakes to Avoid
Skipping the IC phase: Fast-tracking into leadership without time as a product or related IC leaves you shallow. Your team will notice.
Confusing empathy with being soft: Being empathetic doesn’t mean lowering the bar — it means understanding the struggle and helping your team rise to it.
Empathise only when things go wrong. Build connections continuously, not just in a crisis. It’s not damage control—it’s daily practice.
Final Thoughts: Empathy is a Leadership Multiplier
You can’t lead through slides. You can’t connect through strategy docs. You lead through people. People respond to leaders who get it.
Sandy put it best when describing the kind of leader she admired:
“Her superpower was connection. Her level of empathy, the way she developed each person, gave feedback — it created a loyalty I’d never seen before. That’s what inspires me.”
Empathy doesn’t mean hugging your team. It means having their back because you understand what they’re carrying.
So here’s the real test of your leadership: Do your people feel seen? Do they feel understood? If not, it might be time to work more closely alongside them on a project to remember what it’s like.
Confident product leaders don’t just lead from the front — they remember what it was like to be in the mud. And they never forget how it felt.