I have been doing a retrospective on the top five qualities that have served me well as a product manager and a product leader. Like a true product manager, I compiled a list of 15 items and prioritized them based on their impacts on my career. I picked up the following top five skills.
Communication: Listening with empathy is crucial, but storytelling engages and connects with stakeholders and customers. It's about conveying information and creating a narrative that resonates with your audience. These are not just aspects of communication; they are the keys to making your audience feel engaged and connected in the journey of a product manager.
Adaptability: In the dynamic world of product management, challenges like receiving bad news about a product, handling customer escalations, or dealing with changes in the market are not uncommon. The key to navigating these situations is adaptability, acceptance, and the ability to replan. Embracing these qualities will make you resilient and prepare you for the ever-changing landscape of product management, instilling a sense of readiness.
Prioritize to execute: You are building a house and have limited money. What would you prioritize? It is a critical decision. Like your real life in product development, you must prioritize things. Quantitative tools help, but prioritization is often a decision based on a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis. Usually, we put strategic thinking over execution, but I beg to differ, as having just a vision will not make a good product delivered to the market. It's the execution that matters.
Leadership: You are an individual who has little power to change things within an organization. The only way to navigate is to use what I call the 'soft power' of leadership. This 'soft power' is not a weakness; it's a strength that empowers you to bring people together to run a business, even when you have little organizational power. As you grow in your career, you will gain more organizational power, but even then, 'soft power' will continue to be a valuable tool.
Strategic Thinking: As you start working as a product manager, your thinking widens. Instead of thinking of a feature, you start thinking about the product as a whole, market, and business, developing the skill of looking at the "bigger picture." This is a critical skill as you grow as a product leader.
The cherry on the top is to "build trust" with anyone you work with – team members, management, cross-team interactions, engineers, partners and customers. Without people trusting you, all your qualities will be futile. It has been my mantra of being successful.
I will discuss these qualities in detail in the upcoming series, and I am open to your thoughts and comments so we can have a healthy discussion. Please share your experiences and insights on these qualities, as it will enrich our collective understanding of product management and leadership.
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