How great leaders grow people

The best leaders are great coaches.

In this talk, Gabrielle Bufrem—a product leadership coach who has built products across nine industries in Europe, North America, and Asia, featured in Marty Cagan’s book TRANSFORMED—shows why coaching is one of the most powerful (and misunderstood) tools of effective product leadership.

Drawing from her work with executives and teams around the world, Gabrielle reframes coaching through a product lens: if you’re a leader, your product is people. And like any great product, people don’t improve through control or instructions alone—they improve through trust, clarity, feedback, and continuous development.

Gabrielle breaks down what great coaching actually looks like in practice, how leaders can build trust quickly, and why curiosity, empathy, and candid conversations outperform advice-giving and micromanagement. She shows how leaders who coach don’t just get better performance—they build stronger teams, deeper ownership, and more resilient organizations.

Attendees will leave with:

• A clear understanding of what effective coaching actually looks like in practice
• Concrete techniques for building trust and psychological safety quickly
• A new lens for measuring leadership impact through the growth of others