Product managers have to manage people, often using indirect influence. These people may be stakeholders, UX people, technical people, marketing and probably their boss too.
Some product managers may even be “lucky” enough to manage a team or other, more junior product managers. Whichever way you look at it, a product manager is going to have to manage other people in some form or other.
Given that we can’t hide from human interaction, let’s take a deeper look into the different relationships a product manager might have to handle.
How to handle your boss
Probably the most important relationship you have is with your boss or direct supervisor. The quality of the relationship you have with anyone directly accountable for your work, whether it’s a CEO or a more senior manager, will have a direct impact on the quality of your working life. Chances are if this doesn’t feel right, everything else about your role may feel a bit wrong.
It’s important to remember your boss is a person and is in that position for a reason even if on the surface that doesn’t appear to be due to merit. They have multiple pressures, their own personal agenda and won’t always get things right. Just like you if you were in that situation.
Now that you see them as a more equal human, your mission is to help them fulfil some vision. If that vision is not clear, work with them to make it clearer. You’ll both end up happier.
Be prepared to be more organised
Be aware that any time spent planning what you want to say and and the path you would like the discussion to take can get your conversation closer to the outcome you desire. Chances are, your boss won’t prepare so much for a meeting with you and will wing it because they have other priorities.
This is your opportunity to be more organised, take some control and manage the relationship upwards. Most managers will be grateful for this as it gives them less to worry about. Even those with peculiar control freak tendencies might might be pacified if they sense you have everything under control.
Healthier, happier relationships (and use data)
You may be unhappy about not having sufficient resources, the direction given, a lack of clarity or not being allowed to sit near the window. It’s generally best to be outcome-focussed and suspend any judgement as to why your boss is doing such-and-such and explain your position clearly and how you or your work are impacted.
For nebulous, opinion-based discussions have data available where possible, otherwise you’ll “lose” or in more positive terms, get less out of the discussion than originally hoped for.
Data will always trump speculation or statistics made up on the spot from some vague memory or intuition. Data gives both of you something concrete to latch on to and helps get around personal cognitive biases, which we all have.
Be outcome-focussed
By managing your own emotional state in any discussion you can focus on the outcome rather than any short-term emotion. There are several techniques to do this and even just pausing to take a couple of deep breaths can be enough to become more centred. Because ultimately, everyone wants a good outcome.
How to handle peers
In my experience peer relationships may appear to be the easiest to handle, at least easiest superficially, but can be problematic in reality.
On the surface, these are people you are familiar with, possibly spend a lot of time talking with, and hopefully have an equitable relationship with.
The lack of any obvious line of authority through the relationship can sometimes mean that, if unchecked, there are opportunities for political power plays to emerge.
First, understand that they may have different motivations and a different agenda to you and don’t assume they think the same way either. It’s generally better to rise above any issues and focus on outcomes for your product. This means putting yourself and your ego second so that the results speak for themselves. I find most people respect this sufficiently to then get out of the way accept what comes. After all, no one really wants to deal with competing egos.
How to handle techies
Techies are often not your average guy or gal, but yes, they are human too. The best tech people, apart from having exemplary tech skills, are the ones that challenge their assignments and your assumptions. They do this for a reason and it’s generally not to be deliberately difficult.
Good technical people need clarity about what it is that they are trying to achieve because this will give them focus and some clear outcomes to aim for. Focus is useful because it can allow the tech person to get into a flow state where they are at their most productive. Also, clear outcomes mean that we can define when something is done and that “doneness” can be tested. And good testing makes for good, working software.
How to handle stakeholders
Stakeholders vary in their enthusiasm for what you are trying to do. Don’t expect them all to be equally excited all the time as they won’t be. They will be on your back though when things don’t go as they expected, rightly or wrongly.
The key with stakeholders is communication in a form that they can easily consume. Some say it’s better to over-communicate as a product manager and while I agree that this is better than under-communication, the output can just appear to be noise if it’s not structured in a way that your target can easily absorb.
Personally, I experimented a lot with the communication I pushed out and spoke to people about what they thought of the information my team sent out. Usually the most insight came when things went slightly wrong.
For example, there may have been some user interface change and a client wasn’t aware of it and it had an impact on their business. Clearly, and quite rightly, they weren’t happy and someone such as an account manager would have to step in to limit the damage.
These are failure points where we learn fastest so long as we try to stop the same problem happening twice, often by improving the communication to certain stakeholders.
And the stakeholders are who…?
I see them as anyone who has an interest or is impacted by any work your product team does. This includes investors, managers, client facing and technical support staff, other teams in your organisation, and of course UX, marketing and the tech team.
Each of these has a different perspective so they will each need differing forms of communication. The key here is to push out information and elicit feedback to understand exactly what they need and adjust the content or quantity of the communication. Just don’t expect them to give you a clear list of what to do.
How to handle team members
This deserves mention, because this relationship is about more than peer to peer communication. Managing people is worth a book in itself, and there are plenty out there, so I’m just focussing on what I see essential as a PM.
Clear communication and boundaries
People need to know what’s expected of them and what is acceptable and unacceptable. Boundaries don’t mean being dictatorial, but rather that any actions outside the boundaries need to be discussed clearly and agreement needs to be reached.
Show interest
Show genuine interest in your team as people demonstrates to them that they matter. This doesn’t mean you need to know about their private lives, but get an understanding of how they function, how they are motivated, what they struggle with.
In my experience it is possible to force someone to do something against their natural abilities and motivations, but that consumes valuable energy all round. It’s better instead to work with their natural inclinations and play to strengths rather than attempting to override perceived weaknesses.
Check in regularly
I know that personally I’ve been guilty of assigning work to developers and disappearing off into my own bubble while they work away in theirs. Checking in regularly shows regular interest, improves mutual understanding, and most importantly keeps everyone engaged in the outcomes they are aiming for.
Daily standups help to keep the team working together, but sometimes a deeper dive is required to get to the crux of problems that emerge. Again, this is an opportunity to reinforce the relationship and build stronger understanding. It doesn’t even have to be long, a ten minute breakout session can achieve a lot.
What about communication?
Communication has been mentioned quite a few times here as being essential to maintaining good relationships with others. The importance of communication and the multitude of ways it can be done is worth a post in itself.
Relationships matter
In writing this, it became clearer to me that managing relationships with people are more important than ever. On reflection, I was initially attracted to tech because I thought I could work in an abstract bubble and occasionally speak to someone as and when I felt like it. I know that just doesn’t happen in the real world, and I was a bit slow on the uptake.
Times have changed and tech is now necessarily much more human-centric as it continues to pervade our lives. I’ve changed too as I realised that being interdependent on others is also much more fulfilling, as ultimately it’s possible to get more done and achieve better outcomes by pulling people together and enabling them to do their best work.