Great Product Leaders Know When They're Not the Expert, and That’s Their Superpower
By Phil Faust, Founder at Faust Forward
In product management and leadership, there’s an underrated skill that can quietly transform a team’s effectiveness: the ability to recognize and empower others’ expertise, especially when that expertise exceeds your own.
At Faust Forward, we work with product teams and executives navigating high-stakes decisions, organizational complexity, and ambitious growth targets. Again and again, the most successful leaders we encounter aren’t the ones who try to own every answer. They’re the ones who know how to surface the best thinking from the people around them—and hand over the wheel when it counts.
This isn’t just a soft skill. It’s strategic leadership in action.
Leadership Isn’t About Being the Smartest in the Room
The myth of the all-knowing, hyper-competent product leader is persistent and deeply flawed. Today’s product environments are built on specialized expertise: systems architecture, behavioral psychology, growth marketing, AI modeling, regulatory compliance, and more. No single person can master every dimension.
Trying to be the smartest in the room leads to bottlenecks, missed opportunities, and under-leveraged teams. Truly great leaders ask instead:
Who on this team has deep knowledge in this area?
Who has the firsthand experience I lack?
How can I pull their expertise into the center of our decision-making process?
Identifying expertise is only the first step. The real impact comes when leaders act on it.
Case in Point: Putting Expertise in the Driver’s Seat
Consider the example of a senior VP of Product at a fast-growing health tech company. As the team prepared to launch a new platform aimed at a regulated European market, the VP had a seasoned product manager on the team with a background in healthcare compliance and firsthand experience launching in the EU.
Despite the VP having overall accountability and deep product intuition, she recognized that this PM’s domain knowledge dramatically exceeded her own in this context. Rather than simply assigning tasks, she elevated the PM into a leadership role for that specific initiative, giving them authority to shape decisions, direct cross-functional efforts, and interface with legal and regulatory advisors.
The results spoke for themselves: faster execution, fewer roadblocks, and a more compliant, market-ready product. Just as importantly, the move signaled to the entire team that expertise, not title, determines leadership in the moments that matter.
That’s what empowering others looks like at a high level. It’s not about abdicating responsibility. It’s about amplifying capability.
Expertise Is a Signal Leaders Must Listen to
Expertise shows up in many forms: academic training, industry experience, pattern recognition, and intuition grounded in exposure. A data scientist may notice behavioral shifts in user segments that aren’t yet visible in dashboards. A customer success lead may identify value drivers that the product team hasn’t prioritized. A designer with accessibility expertise might see friction points invisible to others.
High-functioning product leaders are tuned into these signals. They know how to observe, ask, and create the conditions for that insight to be acted on, often by giving others more autonomy, decision-making authority, or visibility.
Create a Culture That Honors Expertise
Empowering expertise isn’t a one-off behavior. It’s a leadership principle embedded in culture. Here’s how exceptional product leaders make it happen:
Model intellectual humility
They openly acknowledge when someone else knows more, and use that as a rallying point rather than a threat to their role.Distribute decision-making
Rather than centralizing control, they design workflows that elevate those closest to the problem or customer.Support ownership
When they identify someone with deep expertise, they don’t micromanage—they resource, coach, and clear the path.Recognize contributions visibly
They celebrate not just delivery but the unique value people bring based on their domain insight and experience.
The Strategic Payoff
When leaders step back at the right moments and invite others to step forward, the payoff is real:
Better, faster, more nuanced decisions
Stronger engagement from team members who feel seen and valued
A culture of trust, mutual respect, and growth
A more resilient, adaptive product strategy
At Faust Forward, we believe that the most effective product organizations are built not just on vision, but on distributed expertise. Great leaders don’t just lead, they listen with intention and elevate with purpose.
Are you building a team that leverages every ounce of its potential?
We help product leaders and organizations assess team strengths, build leadership habits, and unlock the value of untapped expertise. Because in today’s environment, the smartest move a product leader can make is knowing when someone else should take the lead.
