Can you become a Product Manager and earn a 6 digit income?
The top three behavioral skills that you can easily learn and develop in your daily lives
The internet is filled with tons of articles, books, videos and countless other resources that can teach you how to become a good product manager. No doubt, while these resources are very helpful — I think most of them do not talk about some essential behavioral skills that can be easily developed to become successful in product management.
If you really aspire to enter the product management space someday or are already in it and aiming to improve yourself; then you should continue reading further.
Though there are tons of skills that can be listed for helping a product manager. Some would be general while others would depend on the industry and organizational context. Here I would be focusing on the skills that are applicable to all the types of product managers and are applicable for every type of industry. I would not only list the skills but share some simple techniques to help you in polishing these skills in your daily lives.
Collaboration
This is a very essential skill that is required in almost every job with a team but for product management; this is mission critical. I have seen very competent people struggling with this and not being able to collaborate with other team members. You can develop and polish this skill by adopting the following simple rules in your life:
1- Always welcome help by others and appreciate it as an opportunity for synergy to produce something better. Remember two average brain are better than one intelligent brain.
2- Never think you know it all and always remember that everyone brings a unique perspective to the table.
3- Try to team up with people around you in your life even for the simple tasks. For example fixing households items; running errands to the local market; looking for a big size turkey in the local marts.
“Teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.” — Patrick Lencioni
Communications
Another important skill that can make or break any product management career. A good product leader would be very effective in terms of communicating with all stakeholders. They would always be communicating with the end users of the product; keeping the executive management in the loop of what’s happening; and making sure that the engineering team is communicated all essential information including what is happening in the market and even the competitive landscape. Such effective communications cannot come through some information solicitation and dissemination mechanisms or any corporate standard operating procedures. Rather it can only come as an output of a good communicative nature.
This skill can be developed very easily in our daily lives by adopting the following rules:
1- Always have good and engaging conversations with your family and friends. Make sure all important details about your life are shared and you know what is happening in their lives. Spirit should be that everyone should stay abreast about what’s happening in your life and vice versa.
2- Remember good communications comes with clarity of thoughts. Practice to speak only on a topic once you have gathered your thoughts.
3- At all times speak concise and prefer more listening. Remember, the best communicators are not the ones who speak more rather they are the ones who listen more and speak less.
4- Very important to keep this in mind, your body is part of your communications. Always watch yourself how your body language is as that matters a lot when communicating with others. It can denote confidence and inspire others or it can show weakness on your part and reduce your weightage.
“Communication works for those who work at it.” — John Powell
Respect
As a product manager, every day countless number of times you would come across different types of people sharing with you different ideas, suggestions and even complaints. From the customer demo sessions to user focus groups and from engineering team suggestions in the sprint planning to sales & marketing teams inputs — you will have a lot of people coming up to you for giving you different suggestions. You would adore some of these suggestions at times, appreciate some complaints and even encourage more inputs — but other times you would feel angry or extremely dislike them. The latter is a serious problem that many unsuccessful product managers have and as a result they not only lose the opportunity of a constructive input but also damage to the interests of the product.
This skill can be easily developed and enhanced in our daily lives through the following simple rules:
1- Always listen to what others say in your family and friends and even if you don’t like it, still let them complete it whatever they are saying.
2- Don’t always respond to every negativity in life. Remember, the other person might be having a very bad day and what you are seeing is just the outcome of that so learn to ignore with a simple smile.
3- Most important to remember is that you might not like it what the other person has to say but usually the best of feedback for product growth comes from critics. Therefore, in your daily life learn to consider it as an opportunity for improvement and if possible thank the other person.
Even though these three behavioral skills might sound simple but mastering them takes time and can be only done when adopted in our daily lives. While you can learn and practice all other product management essential skills, these three behavioral skills should be considered as the foundational skills without which a product manager would fail.
“Respect requires empathy, the capacity to anticipate and understand the feelings of others. It requires consideration.” — Deborah Norville.
The end.
