I've built PMM teams from scratch several times, and one conversation keeps showing up with almost every first-time manager I bring in or promote. The details change. The pattern doesn't.
The Tactical Trap
A director on my team runs PMM for one of our product lines. She's new to management, sharp, and good at the work itself. A few months into the role, I started noticing the same rookie mistakes I've watched other first-time managers make, and that I made myself the first time I managed people.
Her team's work was tactical. Someone wrote an RFP response for sales. Someone else built a demo for an analyst briefing. Real work, but no ownership beyond the task in front of them. Nothing end-to-end.
When I asked her what her team was working on, she couldn't answer at a glance. She didn't know how full or empty anyone's plate was. She couldn't tell me who was strong at what, or where the gaps were.
What She Was Protecting
Here's what I've learned to watch for: the person managing the work usually knows the answers to these questions already. They're protecting their team. New leadership shows up, and the instinct is to shield people from scrutiny, from reorgs, from whatever change might come next. I read that instinct as incompetence when I see it from the outside, even when the intent behind it is loyalty.
I told her directly. Not knowing her team's workload and strengths made her look bad to me, not good. And "I trust them" isn't an answer when I'm asking what her team is capable of. It's a way of avoiding the question.
Get Out of the Room
The second part of the conversation is always about delegation. I pushed her to give her team strategic, end-to-end projects instead of parceling out tasks. Her response was the one I hear most often: it's faster to do it herself. She's in the room with other leaders. Passing that context down to her team takes time she doesn't have.
I told her to get comfortable not being in every room. Let her team take those seats. Trust that they'll surprise her, because they usually do. We run flat here. If she's blocking work because she insists on holding every piece of context herself, she's the bottleneck.
Then I did the thing I was asking her to do. I wasn't in every room either. I started trusting her to meet directly with GMs on her own, without me relaying every detail first. Leading by example only works if you actually do it.
What Changed
The shift stuck. She's carrying less of the burden of holding information and passing it down piece by piece. Her team has more ownership, and they're more engaged because of it. She's less overwhelmed because she's no longer the single point of failure for every piece of context her team needs.
The Framework I Coach To
This conversation follows the same shape every time, because the failure mode is the same. I coach new managers on three things, in this order:
- Visibility. Can you tell me what your team is working on and how full their plates are, without checking first? If you can't answer that without checking, you're relaying tasks.
- Delegation. Are you handing your team ownership of outcomes, or just handing them tasks? An RFP response is a task. Owning the RFP process end-to-end, deciding the approach, and reporting back on the result is ownership.
- Presence. Are you the only path information flows through, or is your team building direct relationships with the leaders they need? If you're the one blocker between your team and the rooms that matter, you're limiting them.
I ask these in this order because they build on each other. You can't delegate real ownership if you don't know what your team can already handle, and you can't get out of the room until your team has the standing to be there without you.