Passion Can’t Be Taught

You have it or you don’t.

I am often asked what’s the most important thing for a product manager to have…

The most important trait that I look for in a product manager is passion. It can’t be taught; it is hard to fake and is the key to motivating a team to drive a solution that is the best of that product’s user base. Passion is also very hard to spot in a one hour interview, so I have worked on a structure of questions to try to see what a potential product manager might be passionate about, including work that they have done, to see if it would apply to the product or role they are interviewing for.

Once you have passion and really want to make something better, empathy is next. I have seen many product managers that were so passionate to solve user problems that they steam-rolled their own ideas into the product as the solutions, without thinking through how others use the product. They lacked the empathy that each of their users was experiencing in their day-to-day jobs and the product suffered, dramatically. Empathy to me is something that can be taught, however it is very difficult without the right structures around research, feedback and direct user interactions within a product team.

If you have a product manager that has the passion and empathy to really create a meaningful and dynamic product, they need to be able to also lead a team by being a great communicator and facilitator. Notice I didn’t say “leader”. A product manager isn’t a “manager” or a traditional leader in the case of roles that share similar titles. A product manager is there to clearly make decisions and define the strategy for the team, remove barriers that might be in their way, partner where needed and empower the team to do the work — then they need to get the hell out of the way. Products can quickly become at risk when a product manager micro-manages the work or prescribes exactly what the team should be building. The easiest way I describe the role of a product manager to someone that has never been a part of a product organization is to equate him or her to a “team captain”, like on a soccer team. That captain helps rally the team, define the plays that will be used, makes the important team decisions and places the right players in the right positions. Then, they play with the team, getting out of the way for the people in the positions to do what they do best.