How Product Managers Can Be Better Listeners
Make better decisions, build better relationships and ship better products by doing one important thing — listen
In my experience, when people think about the skills that make a good Product Manager, they rarely think about the importance of being a good listener. Although often overlooked, by being better listeners we will be able to make better decisions, build better relationships, and most importantly, ship more valuable products.
Listening to make better decisions
Being a Product Manager also means being a decision-maker. And to make decisions we need to gather all the relevant information. We must listen to the needs of our customers. But if we only had to listen to our customers, our job as Product Managers would be easy. Instead, throughout the product lifecycle, we must also listen to the various teams we are working with.
For example, the Marketing team will tell us that they need us to deliver a specific feature for a big promotion. But our Engineering team will say they need more time to build a more robust solution. As Product Managers, we need to be able to evaluate all the information we receive holistically and objectively to decide what our Product team builds next. The key to doing this effectively starts with listening.
We should first take the time to actively listen to each team’s reasons and opinions. What’s important to them? By actively listening to each team we can begin to see where we can dig deeper to get more clarity. We can ask the Marketing team questions such as:
- What is the goal you are trying to achieve with this feature?
- What happens if we don’t ship this feature on this date but we ship it a week later?
- What if we create a minimum version of this feature and then iterate on it?
We should ask our Engineers to explain their concerns, too.
- Is there any risk involved if we ship this feature faster?
- Is this risk internal or customer-facing?
The goal here is to be able to start separating the must-have requirements from the nice to haves whilst never compromising on value to the customer.
Once we have all this information, we will then be able to make a well informed and impartial decision. We will be able to prioritise building the right solution for the customer and not the right solution for the stakeholder.
Listening to have more Influence
Our job as Product Managers is to find the right problem to solve and to help guide a team to deliver a product that brings value to the business and value for our customers. But along the way, we will need to get buy-in from stakeholders. We will need to convince key players such as the CEO to trust our decision. To do this, we must first be prepared to listen, before we can influence. This is a negotiation technique mentioned in Chris Voss’ book Never Split The Difference:
Negotiation is not an act of battle; it’s a process of discovery. The goal is to uncover as much information as possible.
Imagine your CEO comes to you because they are concerned with the number of churned subscribers. They are adamant you build a specific feature that they think will decrease this metric. If you simply build what the CEO suggests, in most cases, you will end up wasting time and money building a feature that doesn’t solve a problem for your customer or move a significant metric for your business. Your feature will likely be seen as a failure and as a result, your team will feel demotivated and the leadership team frustrated at the lack of progress.
In order to avoid such a situation, Product Managers must seek to understand the roots of these requests, establish a common goal and use that to bring stakeholders on board with their vision.
- Why do you think this feature will solve the problem?
- How does this align with the business strategy?
- Has something changed?
In this case, you might find out that your CEO is concerned that they will not be able to raise another round of investment if they continue to lose subscribers.
You have listened and now you understand. Now you can empathise. Now you can tackle the right problem together. In this case, you might agree that your objective is to reduce churn by a certain percentage. Now you and your Product team can be trusted to validate what feature to build to solve this problem.
The feature that you end up delivering may not be the one your CEO originally suggested, but by being a better listener you are able to reach a common goal and will be trusted to deliver the same desired outcome.
Listening to build better relationships
Our success as Product Managers is defined by the success of our teams being able to ship products that deliver value for the business and for the customer. Therefore, we must invest the time to listen to and build relationships with our Product team. It’s worth mentioning here, that I am not saying that Product Managers should be superficial. I am stressing the importance of fostering an open and collaborative relationship with our team members. We need to be able to motivate, empower and lead a Product team, and to do this, we should know them deeply on an individual level.
- What motivates each person?
- When do they feel proud of their work?
- What do they think about this idea or direction?
Listening is the most powerful thing we can do to motivate our Product team. By doing this, we show them how much we value their opinion and emphasise the feeling of being one team working together towards the same objective. Each with their own unique skills to bring to the table.
By asking for their feedback and opinions, and placing our judgement aside, we encourage honesty and open communication. If we don’t nurture these relationships by being prepared to listen to our team, they will not feel safe to challenge us. This could impact the quality of the solution we build together, because we haven’t drilled down into the why behind this solution or considered other worthwhile options.
In addition, if our team feels frustrated and can’t come to us, the lack of communication will stifle progress, impact the motivation of the entire team and create a feeling of resentment. We will struggle to lead our team to build a successful product. However, by showing our team we are ready to listen whenever they need it, we are cultivating a culture of trust that will empower every member to do their best work.
Being present, asking questions and showing empathy are all steps we can take to become a better listener. By becoming a better listener we will be able to build better relationships with our teams, find a common ground to influence stakeholders and make better decisions that help us to prioritise building the most valuable products. If we focus first on being better listeners, the rest of the skills we need to be a successful Product Manager will follow.
