Gabi Bufrem has been on every side of product leadership — IC, CPO, and now the person other product leaders call when the job stops making sense.
Gabi’s hard hitting truth: the transition from IC to leader is an invisible skills inversion that nobody prepares you for, and most executives are still operating on the wrong side of it years later.
The Shift Nobody Teaches You
There’s a version of this conversation that’s comfortable — the one where we talk about leadership development in broad strokes and everybody nods along. Gabi Bufrem doesn’t do that version.
She goes straight at something most technology leaders have felt but rarely say out loud: the things that got you promoted are actively working against you now. You were the best problem solver. The most technically fluent. The one who caught the detail everyone else missed. And now every one of those instincts is pulling you toward the wrong work.
The day you got the title, the job changed. You’re responsible for how well your people perform, not for performing yourself. Bad leaders assume it’s as easy done as it is said. To avoid learning the hard way, recognition is key.
Gabi outlines some of the critical ways former strengths get inverted when you move up:
Being obsessed with the intricacies of the work made you sharp. As a leader, it’s micromanaging.
Solving every problem that hit your desk made you indispensable. Now it’s suffocating your team.
Knowing everything happening across your product made you reliable. At scale, it’s impossible. Probably wasting your time.
Having strong convictions about how work should be done made you a top performer. Forcing your operating style on everyone else makes you unpopular.
Reconstructing How You Operate
Seeing the pattern is one thing but breaking it is where most leaders get stuck. Oftentimes, the problem compounds before it gets better.
Take micromanaging, for example. It’s something almost every former IC struggles with and almost none of them even know they’re doing it. Her definition is precise: micromanaging is focusing on the work instead of the person. The CTO who reviews a deck to flag that something is “0.5 off” is focused on the work. The one who asks why their PM struggled to defend a position in that meeting is focused on the person.
Calling out every mistake is tedious. Coaching someone to think differently about how they present, execute, operate — is meaningful. The question to ask before you intervene: am I fixing the output, or am I developing the person?
Sometimes Owning Your Title is Half the Battle
Gabi makes an observation that resonates with me: a lot of leaders don’t feel they have standing to develop their people in the first place. Redefining the dynamic is one of the most awkward parts of the process: how do you delegate to people who were once your peers? Who are you to tell them how to do their job?
I struggled with this when I first stepped into a leadership role. But Gabi reframes it powerfully: leading people is not a right. It’s a responsibility. It was written into the job before anyone handed you the title.
And there’s a ceiling to what even the most self-aware leaders can fix alone. Gabi only understood that after stepping out of the role entirely. I was a CTO for 10+ years before someone got me to invest in external perspective. I was self-critical, held myself to high standards. I didn’t think I needed someone else to check me. Years later, I only wish I’d made the investment sooner.
Listen for:
How to tell a high performer they need to level up for the next stage of growth without crushing their confidence
The one-on-one debate: keep them, cut them, or fix what’s actually broken
Two habits any executive can start this week: one about trust, one about impulse control.
Huge thanks to Gabi for a conversation that made me rethink my whole concept of the job at the leadership level.
About Gabi: Gabrielle Bufrem coaches product leaders and founders after spending years doing the job herself, at Google and across nine industries on three continents. She lives in New York City and speaks four languages.
Learn more about Gabi: gabriellebufrem.com
Connect with Gabi on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/gabriellebufrem/
