How To Be Articulate as a Product Manager
Some Powerful Techniques to Articulate Your Thoughts Better
Being articulate is important for basically anyone and it’s a crucial skill for those who want to get ahead and succeed in their careers and personal life. Not being articulate makes one less effective and can often lead to feelings of frustration. So fret not, articulation can indeed be an acquired skill with the right techniques, which I’ll list down below. The first two are more about the technical side of tailoring your speech to suit your audience and the rest are about practical ways to gain the confidence to be an articulate speaker.
1. Leverage their intake style
This means your method of articulation should match your audience’s intake style. Intake style is the way your audience takes in information which can be
a) Visual: Learning by seeing. Can incorporate presentations, charts, images etc.
b) Auditory: Learning by hearing. For this type of audience, you need to paint a picture with your words, focusing on vocabulary, description words etc.
c) Kinaesthetic: Learning by doing. Give them some time to do some activity based on your topic.
The speaker needs to know the audience’s intake style to deliver to that specific aspect. If you don’t know your audience or if you are speaking to a group of people with all of these intake styles, it’s better to include all three in your delivery.
2. Lean On Their Behaviours
Based on a set of behaviour patterns, people can be of four types:
1. Dominant and Commanding: Give these people a big picture vision and the how it big benefits that thoughts can bring them. Make bold promises, be forceful and speak in a stern tone with them.
2. Social and Optimistic: Appeal to the altruistic side of this kind of people. Talk about how your ideas can work for the greater good and help people. Speak in a softer, friendlier tone.
3. Laid Back: These people are more casual and you need to focus on building a connection with them. Do not rely too much on facts and figures as they will not be focused too much on that. Instead, convey your thoughts through a more casual conversation with them.
4. Analytical: Lay down the facts, figures, numbers, charts, flowcharts etc., to cater to people who are more analytical. Speak in a steady and more serious tone with them.
3. Learn How Others See You
The truth is people see you the way you see yourself. People don’t see you through their eyes, but through yours. This is where being self confident comes in handy. One way to improve the image you project is to take feedback from people you trust. If you let them know that you seek constructive criticism and won’t be offended or take it personally, people will give it to you. And if you hear something you might not have wanted to hear, you can take it as an opportunity for growth and build a roadmap for improvement.
4. Lay Them Down in Writing First
Sometimes there are things that we know very clearly and intimately in our heads, but don’t know how to put into words yet. This is true for complex thoughts that do not have an accurate verbal expression in your head and you haven’t even tried to associate with words. Articulation is about letting your thoughts exist in another person’s world. So the thing to do is to first build out a vocabulary or a vernacular around your thoughts and then writing them down which will give clear expression to complex thoughts. This is particularly useful for introverts who speak only after thinking what you should say. This way you will have put your thoughts out there before you do it in front of another person, which is exactly the preparation you need.
5. List Them Out With a Structure
This is particularly true for thoughts of a dynamic, nuanced and complex nature like subjects that require expertise. As it often happens, you start your sentence only to lose your train of thought mid-way. What to do in situations like this is to list out your points and build out a mnemonic with the keywords to remember your list. The keywords will cue your mind to the associated thought. Mnemonics work best when there is alliteration, like how all the points in this article start with the letter L.
6. Learn the Words
This is about expanding your vocabulary so that you can clearly articulate with the right words to match your thoughts. Good vocabulary helps you speak clearly, to the point in a compelling manner. But sometimes we need to discern if the issue is about vocabulary or about the speech itself. If there are difficulties in the fundamental mechanics of your speech like the ability to enunciate or to keep the words flowing, you need additional, conscious practice to improve these aspects.
7. Lose the Stage Fright
Stage fright comes when we are fearful of what others think. What to do is to think of your articulation as something with a greater purpose and focus on how you can help them with your words rather than what you would gain from it. You are allowing your thoughts to exist in someone else’s world so that they can benefit from it.
Being articulate is greatly about being confident. There is a step-by-step approach to confidence building, where the key lies in practising right. Practice does not make perfect, but practice makes permanent, therefore, it’s extremely important to practice the right things.
This article is based on the super educational YouTube videos by Dr Grace Lee.
This is the fifth among a series of articles by Adithya Sailesh, aimed at consolidating the product management knowledge that I gained from my structured and otherwise learning journey and successful career switch from software development to product management that started over a year ago. The primary goal of this series is to help aspiring/beginner product managers by comprehensively covering all the essential fundamentals, making this leap a lot easier and fruitful.
