Always buying the perfect gift for your friends? You might be a good product manager.

Buying a gift for your best friends is often not easy. But sometimes you just see something and you know that she will like it. And it’s not just about utility, it’s about love.

The constraints for purchasing a great gift are empathy and motivation.

Empathy is when you know somebody well enough that you know what she thinks, how she feels and what she wants. Though some people are more empathic than others, everybody can learn it — it just takes longer: You need to spend quality time with people to build empathy. Listen. Watch. Ask questions and be genuinely interested in others. Summarize what you think people just said and how they feel.

You also need motivation to search for possible gifts (opportunities) and then think about it if she would like it or not (empathize). That might take a lot of time and energy. That’s why you need motivation, otherwise you may settle with a gift that makes a kind of sense, even though your gut tells you that it’s not good.

Now think about great products. As a product manager, your gift to the user is the product (even though it’s not for free). Great products are built with a lot of empathy. If you don’t spend enough time with your customers — listing, watching, asking questions and being genuinely interested — you will never have enough empathy to feel what they feel.