What Exactly Do We Mean by “Product Leaders”?

The trend of calling every Product Manager a 'Product Leader' leaves us with a dilemma. What would you call the people running a product organization, then?

I’ve recently noticed a trend within the product world that’s a little unsettling to me. We’ve typically created a distinction between product managers or product owners, the individual contributors who are responsible for product discovery and delivery, and product leaders or product leads, the people in a leadership role who manage product managers or product teams.

However, the recent trend is to move away from the term “product manager” or “product owner.” The argument I’ve heard is that “manager” doesn’t fully describe all of the responsibilities, even of individual contributor product people, and “product leader” is a more accurate depiction of their work.

For someone like me who is a product leadership coach (focusing on product leaders in the traditional sense of the word, those who manage product managers or product teams), this is causing some confusion. It’s important for me to make this distinction because I’ve spent several years developing my coaching materials and curriculum for the specific issues that product leaders (in the traditional sense) regularly encounter. And a newly minted “product leader” who doesn’t manage other product people or teams wouldn’t be the right person for me to take on as a coachee. 

I’m also seeing the ripple effect of this ambiguity as an event organizer. For example, the Product at Heart Leadership Forum is an event that’s designed for product leaders who hold titles like Head of Product, Product Director, VP of Product, or CPO. The content is curated for the specific challenges faced by those who manage product managers. If someone who is using this newer definition of “product leader” attended, they would likely find that the majority of the content wasn’t relevant for them at this point in their career. 

So you can see that this blurring of what we mean by “product leader,” while well intentioned, may have some unintended consequences.  

I don’t have an answer, but this is a question that’s definitely on my mind. I’d love to hear your perspective: How are you defining the terms “product manager” and “product leader”? Do you have a clear way of distinguishing between individual contributor product people and those who manage other people? What do you think we should call the ones running the product organization and having line management responsibilities in the future if we start calling ever individual contributor a “product lead”?