Become a noob (to improve your communication)
In Product Management, communication is key. PMs are responsible for creating and executing strategy, maintaining stakeholder relationships, finding ways to obtain and analyze data. A huge part of the work is also to make sure that the wider organization — as well as clients, users and other stakeholders — understand what the Product Team has actually been building, and what value the new endeavor (product, feature, improvement) is expected to bring. The Product Manager often becomes the unofficial PR person for the team.
There are many ways to work on your communication skills. Contrary to what many people think, this is not something inherent, not something that you either have or you don’t. Actually, the older I get, the more I think that very few things in life really fall into that category. For those who want to work on their communication skills, there are books, TED talks, public speaking classes, and even theater workshops for managers.
In this post, I want to convince you to try something perhaps a little unconventional: become a noob to improve your communication.
Hear my call — learn something new, and don’t be good at this. Allow yourself to not be good at this. Try carpentry, play ukulele, learn to knit. Thinking about monetizing it already? STOP.
Why do I think it is important, how is this supposed to help your case? Well, to understand your clients, to explain things to your team, to talk to Sales — you need to be able to put yourself in the shoes of someone who is not as smart or as informed as you. It is easy to lose that feeling, even more so when you continue to grow and specialize. When you are really good, you sometimes get annoyed by people who lag behind.
Become a beginner at something, keep becoming a beginner at something — and cherish it. You’ll see your empathy and communication skills skyrocket… And you may have some real, childlike fun in the process.
There is a saying that you can recognise intelligent people by how they can make you feel smart when they explain something. This is the aspiration. Become a noob.
