Shreyas Doshi's compact definition of the job:
"Make successful products via others and build self-managing teams."
Two clauses do the work: successful products are built through other people, not by the leader directly, and the leader's job includes building teams that don't need the leader to keep running.
"Product leader" and "PM leader" are treated as distinct labels. A product leader does not necessarily manage PMs, and does not need to be a PM themself — the role is about leadership of the product function, not seniority within the PM job ladder.
This role definition is the backdrop against which Product Leadership Archetypes: Operator, Craftsperson, Visionary and Product Stage as the Primary Fit Factor for Product Leadership operate: the archetypes describe which of these responsibilities a given leader is naturally strong at, and stage-fit describes which the product currently needs most.
Shreyas's four-part breakdown of what a product leader is actually responsible for, expanding beyond the compact "make successful products via others and build self-managing teams" definition:
Use this checklist against a role's actual responsibilities and evaluation criteria to catch when a "product leader" hire has quietly been scoped as an individual-contributor execution role instead. Overlaps with Context / Culture / Coaching Framework on the clarity and coaching dimensions, and with Product Leader vs. PM Leader (Vocabulary Split) on scoping which of these four a given hire is actually meant to cover.
Product leaders are called leaders rather than managers because the job requires a point of view — on vision, strategy, and org structure — not a compiled, bottoms-up inventory of what the team happens to be working on. A leader without a point of view is functioning as a project manager wearing a product title. See Product Vision, Product Strategy, and Product Leader vs. PM Leader (Vocabulary Split).
Cagan reduces product leadership to two responsibilities: coaching people to do good work (see "Two Things That Block Good Work" Framework), and providing the strategic context — vision, principles, the bigger picture — teams need to make good autonomous decisions. Evaluate product leaders on whether they actively coach individual contributors and consistently push context downward, not on headcount management or roadmap sign-off.
Marty Cagan (SVPG) collapses product leadership into exactly two core responsibilities: coaching and strategy — this is what separates genuine product leadership from just having someone with a 'product leader' title sitting on a feature team. See Coaching-on-the-Sidelines Leadership Model for how the coaching half plays out and Product Strategy for the strategy half. Cagan frames leadership itself as existing to solve the "Two Things That Block Good Work" Framework problem: people not knowing how to do good work, or knowing how but not caring.
Cagan argues product leadership reduces to exactly two responsibilities: coaching (empowering and developing the people on your team) and strategy (giving teams the strategic context to make good decisions). His reasoning ties directly to the "Two Things That Block Good Work" Framework framework — the only two things that ever block good work are people not knowing how to do it and people not being motivated to do it, so a leader's job collapses to closing those two gaps. As Cagan puts it: "at the end of the day your product is now your team" — the leader's product is the team, built through coaching and given direction through strategy.
In smaller, earlier-stage companies, the ultimate product leader is sometimes the CEO rather than the CPO. The title matters less than who is actually accountable for creating clarity on what to build, how to build it, and how to expand it.