Building Trust as a Product Manager
Building trust is critical to success in product management or any other career. Trust is hard to gain but easy to lose, so here’s my advice on how you can earn it:
- Be good at your job
- Own your mistakes
- Build relationships
1. Be good at your job
To build trust, you first need to be good at your job. As a PM, that means focusing on customer problems and rallying your team to build a product that addresses those problems. It also means collaborating well with others and working with them towards a shared goal. That’s easier said than done — it’s natural to want to complain about another person or team because they disagree with your direction or are blocking your work. When these situations occur, I remind myself that the other party is likely also trying to build what’s right for the customer and that there’s always something more productive that I can do to resolve the conflict than complaining.
To be good at your job, you also need to set the right expectations with others. Be clear about what you and your team will deliver and when. Trust is built through a track record of setting goals and meeting them.
