“Technical skills are great up to a certain point in your career. However, When you’re trying to do that jump from senior to lead or senior to manager, that is when you really need to be thinking about these power skills.” – Rochelle Williams, lead product designer at Elsewhen.

In this episode, Rebecca Kalogeris and Rochelle explore a variety of power skills, how to build them and demonstrate them daily. During this conversation, Rochelle not only provides an overview of her winding design career but also gives practical advice to both novice and experienced designers on how to grow their strategic impact and advance their careers.

During this episode, they discuss:

• Why Rochelle urges people to use “power skills” instead of “soft skills” because they “aren’t a nice to have, they are a must-have.”
• How to enable decision-making (aka facilitation)
• Strategies to get more from design workshops
• How to navigate conflict management and self-management
• Ways to start building your power skills today

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This article explores the essential communication skills that every data analyst should master.

The ability to analyze and interpret complex business data has become more important than ever. Yet, beyond the numbers and algorithms lies a skill equally critical but less discussed: communication. As the demand for data analysts increases, those who can effectively convey their findings to diverse audiences not only have an advantage in the job market but can also shape the future of business with data-driven decision-making.

Ready to learn five effective communication skills for data analysts? Keep reading, or use the links below to jump to the section that most interests you:

• Importance of communication skills for data analysts
• Skill #1: Data Storytelling
• Skill #2: Data Visualization
• Skill #3: Written Communication
• Skill #4: Interpersonal Skills
• Skill #5: Presentation Skills

Why is it important for data analysts to have strong communication skills?

Data analysts need technical and mathematical skills to gather, analyze, and interpret complex data from various sources. However, communication skills are also essential for successful data analysts. That’s because data analysts need to be able to explain their analyses, data models, and findings to teammates, clients, and executive stakeholders. It is also essential that data analysts share justifications for their conclusions and their implications for businesses. Logistically, clear communication helps teams align on project goals, timelines, and deliverables. 

The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts demand for data analysts will grow by 35% between 2022 and 2032. As demand for this competitive role grows, data analysts need strong communication skills to stay competitive in the job market and effective in their jobs. Investing in your communication skills is not just nice to have; it’s necessary for your career growth and job security.

Skill #1: Data Storytelling

With endless dashboards, spreadsheets, and charts, data analysts can engage stakeholders with compelling storytelling that thoroughly explains the findings. Data storytelling involves mapping data and numbers against a narrative to help improve data comprehension and create investment in the findings. Rather than requiring your audience to parse through complex numbers, it helps them focus on the key insights. It removes all the noise and focuses on the key insights. 

Why is it important? Data storytelling is an essential skill for data analysts because it helps engage stakeholders, simplify complex information, and help teams make data-based, strategic decisions. 

Example: When presenting sales data, a data analyst might show that sales decreased period-over-period. Instead of simply showing the trend, a savvy communicator will dig into the data to understand the cause of a downturn and create suspense as they share what generated it. Then, they can follow a data storytelling narrative arc to share discoveries and bring the audience to a resolution by providing data-based recommendations.

How can data analysts learn data storytelling? It’s not as daunting as it may seem. By studying data storytelling frameworks and practicing linking data insights with strategic business outcomes, you can take your audience on a hero’s journey. This practical approach will give you the confidence to effectively communicate complex data in a compelling way. 

Skill #2: Data Visualization

As human brains process visuals 60,000 times faster than text, data visualization is a critical skill for data analysts. Data visualization helps individuals interpret the data visually, allowing them to absorb the insights and drive business decisions quickly. Data visualization uses graphics like line graphs, area charts, tables, pie charts, and numeric scorecards. Additionally, robust data visualizations call attention to critical insights, such as by offsetting important information in different colors or using data callouts.

Why is it important? Visualizations help communicators share the most important insights from their data. Data visualization also aids comprehension among audiences by highlighting key information and the same data elements for everyone in the audience.

Example: When you need to share insights about a specific market segment, a talented data analyst might tailor a presentation to set data for that market segment apart visually from other market segments using different colors. 

How can data analysts learn data visualization? Data analysts should complete data visualization courses to learn best practices for data literacy and visual communication. Practice creating your visualizations using Excel, Google’s Looker Studio, Microsoft PowerBI, or Tableau. Then, share your visualizations with colleagues and ask for feedback. 

Skill #3: Written Communication

Writing precisely and concisely is essential for data analysts. Analysts might summarize findings in presentations, report documents, or even emails. Strong written communication skills help you adapt your message to any audience and make it appropriate to the channel through which you are communicating.

Why is it important? Strong written communication skills help you tailor your communication to ensure your findings are understood and actionable. Taking the time to write clearly and concisely can prevent confusion or misinterpretation of the data. 

Example: A data analyst can report on the results of a marketing campaign by clearly summarizing the context behind the data, how it was collected and analyzed, and highlighting key findings. By using clear written communication, marketing team members can understand the campaign’s results and adapt their strategies based on data. 

How can data analysts improve their written communication skills? Take online courses on business writing to learn the best practices you can implement in your job. Practice regularly and ask for feedback from colleagues and mentors to help you improve.

Skill #4: Interpersonal Skills

Interpersonal skills encompass the ability to interact effectively with colleagues and stakeholders. They help you relate to others through empathy, form lasting connections, negotiate to reach common agreements, and resolve conflict. Essentially, these are the skills that make you “good with people.” 

Why is it important? Interpersonal skills in the workplace help form a collaborative environment that upholds psychological safety and helps teams work through obstacles to achieve common goals. For data analysts, this helps navigate the complexities of business needs (and sometimes conflicting priorities) and improves collaboration. 

Example: Data analysts use interpersonal skills to facilitate conversations between departments and identify key performance indicators (KPIs) that effectively measure the performance of individual teams and the company.

How can data analysts improve their interpersonal skills? Participate in team-building activities and leverage free resources like webinars and podcasts to improve these skills on your own time. You can also build empathy by working to consider others’ perspectives, asking for input, and requesting feedback during difficult conversations. 

Skill #5: Presentation Skills

Strong presentation skills combine the essential elements of data visualization, storytelling, and written and interpersonal communication skills. It involves presenting data and insights using visualization tools or presentation decks to share important information and ensure comprehension from your audience. Knowing how to tailor your information to fit your audience’s needs and skill levels and compellingly delivering that tailored information is an essential skill for data analysts. Beyond merely presenting the data, speaking clearly and concisely, making eye contact with your audience, and leveraging your body language to communicate key points can bolster your presentation. 

Why is it important? Data analysts might give presentations to audiences of all skill levels. The goal is to present data without confusing, overwhelming, or intimidating the audience. Not only presenting the information but also presenting it in a way that helps your audience understand it and feel invested in it is a powerful skill for any employee.

Example: A data analyst may give quarterly presentations on product quality and revenue to executive stakeholders. 

How can data analysts improve their presentation skills? Practice, practice, practice! Ask for opportunities to present data to colleagues (even when it’s not required). Get feedback on your presentation skills and ask for advice from presenters you admire. 

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Learn the hard and soft skills that product marketing managers need to succeed in their careers.

Product marketing is a challenging and engaging job that balances marketing, product, and strategic communication. Product marketers need the right blend of skills to develop thoughtful strategies and execute effective tactical marketing to succeed in this role.

Let’s dive in to understand the essential hard and soft skills for a career in product marketing.

• What does a product marketing manager do?
• Hard skills for product marketers
• Soft skills for product marketers

What does a product marketing manager do?

A product marketing manager develops and executes marketing strategies for products. They work with product management, development, and marketing teams to ensure their marketing efforts speak to the product’s unique value proposition for the target audience.

Product marketing brings finished products to market and promotes them throughout their life cycle, from growth to maturity and decline. Their responsibilities include:

• Crafting go-to-market strategies.
• Supporting the product after release.
• Promoting new features or to new audiences.
• Communicating with customers through deprecation.

Product marketing managers must be knowledgeable about marketing trends, tactics, and KPIs. Their efforts must align with the broader goals set by product managers, ensuring that marketing strategies support major product goals. In turn, those product goals must support organizational goals of acquiring or retaining customers, driving sales, and growing revenue.

Hard Skills for Product Marketers

Product Positioning: The process of identifying how the company wants the market to think and feel about your product and plans for how to communicate that. With product positioning, product marketing managers pinpoint how their product solves market problems. Product positioning is the “angle” a product’s marketing will take to communicate why a product is the best solution available.

Data Analysis: Analyzing data and interpreting results are essential tasks for any product marketer. They may analyze quantitative data sets, such as customer satisfaction surveys or third-party market research, and qualitative data sets, like customer interviews. To accomplish this, they may use software to analyze and visualize findings. A successful product marketer must leverage critical thinking to derive insights, communicate them effectively to stakeholders, and use these insights to inform data-driven, results-oriented marketing campaigns.

Go-to-market Strategy: A go-to-market strategy is a complete plan for how a company positions, prices, and promotes a product to its target market. Go-to-market strategies are distinct from marketing strategies because they focus on bringing the product to the target market.

Lifecycle Marketing: Lifecycle marketing involves strategically engaging with markets to drive sales, acquire new customers, and retain existing customers through all stages of a product’s life cycle. This type of product marketing extends beyond the go-to-market strategy to support products and customers after launch through growth, maturity, and decline. Product marketers work closely with product teams to understand upcoming features and releases. This ensures that all teams and messaging are aligned throughout the product life cycle and that customer-facing marketing supports the product appropriately at every stage.

Marketing Campaign Strategy: A product marketing campaign includes the strategic and tactical steps required to market a product, including prioritizing marketing channels, developing messaging for those different channels, creating assets for the campaign, and collaborating with channel-level SMEs such as content marketers, paid media buyers, or event marketers to ensure that all tactics are executed correctly on those channels.

Channel Mix Selection: Channel mix involves selecting specific marketing channels for product marketing campaigns. These channels might include digital marketing channels like paid search or organic social media; mass media buys such as TV ads or OOH media, and interpersonal and event marketing.

Budgeting: For product marketing managers, budgeting involves allocating resources and monetary budgets to different projects or marketing channels. This skill also requires prioritization to support the most effective channels and tactics for the product’s goals.

Soft Skills for Product Marketers

Empathy: Empathy is a critical skill for product marketers. They need empathy to understand the needs and concerns of their market and to put themselves in their markets’ shoes to develop product positioning and messaging strategies. Empathy also supports communication and collaboration because it helps you anticipate others’ needs, feelings, and questions.

Organization: While product marketing managers are not officially project managers, they are often responsible for bringing projects and campaigns to the finish line. To do that, you need strong organizational skills to monitor deliverables, meet deadlines, and ensure that all teams operate with the same information and work toward the same goal.

Communication: Communication is a crucial skill for product marketers because they need to be able to clearly articulate market needs, product positioning, and marketing strategy and goals. Communicating clearly and adapting communication to fit the needs and preferences of the intended audience is essential. As product marketing managers are often responsible for crafting creative briefs, developing marketing pitch decks, and sharing written project updates, written and oral communication skills can help ease the day-to-day work of product marketing.

Storytelling: Storytelling is essential for product marketing, as it helps customers connect emotionally with the product by framing it as a solution to their problems. Data storytelling, in particular, helps marketers explain complex information in a way that is easy to understand, engages the audiences, and rallies support for common goals.

Collaboration: Product marketing managers coordinate complex, fast-moving marketing projects. Minimally, they coordinate with product managers, sales teams, marketing SMEs, and executive stakeholders to successfully launch a product. Marketing products through their life cycle may also require collaboration with engineering, development, and customer service teams.

Prioritization: Prioritization can be challenging when many competing deadlines, priorities, and deliverables exist. Product marketers not only need to prioritize certain messaging for their target audiences, but they also need to prioritize marketing resources and budgets to get that messaging out to the market. Identifying which projects and tactics will support business goals, setting marketing priorities accordingly, and adapting strategies and tactics to match those priorities can help keep product marketing relevant and accurate.

Product Marketing vs. Product Management Skills

How are product marketing skills different from product management skills? This question comes up frequently among product professionals. The simple answer is that product management is responsible for creating the products, and product marketing is responsible for promoting those products.

Both roles require a blend of hard and soft skills, and while their day-to-day responsibilities may differ, there is significant overlap in the skills they require and how they use those skills. Ultimately, product managers and marketers have distinct roles but collaborate closely to achieve shared business goals.

The post The Key Hard and Soft Skills for Product Marketers appeared first on Pragmatic Institute - Resources.

In this article, we explore what makes an enduring product leader and how enduring leaders can positively influence their teams and collaborators.

We’ve all worked with product leaders who excel in their roles. And we’ve all worked with leaders who just get by. But even dynamic leaders who are really good at what they do could improve. Organizations need leaders who are more than merely effective. They need enduring leaders who can help propel their organizations forward to remain relevant in the marketplace.

Ready to learn what makes an enduring product leader? Read on or use the links below to jump to the section that most interests you.

• Effective vs. Enduring Product Leaders
• What is an Enduring Product Leader?
• Spheres of Influence

What is the Difference Between an Effective and Enduring Product Leader?

The distinction between an effective leader and an enduring one is important. At a minimum, a leader should have a vision: Where are we going today?

An effective leader can build on that by putting words to that vision and leading teams, partners, and stakeholders in pursuit of the vision. An enduring leader can look even farther into the future, grasping the inevitability of change.

What is an Enduring Product Leader?

Enduring leaders can evolve their visions and bring along their teams and stakeholders amid a perpetually evolving market. Team members aren’t one-time project builders; they are resources whose skills and effectiveness improve with each iteration as they learn on the job. Through sustained engagement with their leaders and partners, enduring leaders can discover long-term organizational synergies, effectively influencing the organization.

Most critically, however, enduring product leaders are truly focused on their consumers and their ever-changing circumstances and needs. They take responsibility for their products beyond simple product planning or feature prioritization. It’s not enough for them to walk a mile in the customer’s boots—they must wear them permanently.

With this focus on the long term and the ability to evolve their vision, product leaders bring a sustainable competitive advantage to their products and organizations.

Spheres of Influence

Enduring leaders pursue sustainability, continually working within their three spheres of influence toward their goals:

• Marketplace Sphere of Influence: Refine and evolve their vision by constantly studying the marketplace’s needs and then market-testing possible solutions.
• Leadership Sphere of Influence: Engage their peers and organizational leadership to discover synergies and competencies. Leaders can plan for and build tomorrow’s competencies by understanding what their organizations do well.
• Team Sphere of Influence: Create a cycle of refinement. By putting processes in place at a program level, helping teams improve their skills, and working to remove obstacles, leaders can help their teams better deliver on subsequent iterations with always-improving results.

Enduring leaders must influence—and be influenced by—all three spheres.

Influencing Customers

When product leaders commit to a long-term partnership with their customers, they can constantly monitor what’s changing. How is the customer experience evolving? Is there a shift in their fundamental expectations? Customer desires can change rapidly, and your product may be a laggard when it launches. You should not consider your customer’s experience with direct competitors. Over the longer term, some customer experiences must be viewed at a macro-level as fundamental use cases alter. How do these experiences affect your customer’s expectations?

Therefore, listening to customers requires a never-ending cycle of discovery and prototyping. Ultimately, enduring product leaders can help their organizations become market-driven. 

Influencing Leaders

Almost every successful corporation employs a horizontal and vertical growth strategy, which means that exploiting synergies is now fundamental to your product’s success. Today, every product can contribute to an organization’s overall success. Apple’s integrated ecosystem of devices and software is perhaps the most famous example. Still, this strategy can also be seen across disparate industries such as consumer goods and automotive manufacturing, where interchangeable parts were famously key to reducing burgeoning costs and improving production speed.

Enduring leaders engage with the organizational leadership sphere across multiple iterations, keeping them abreast of the long-term product vision and always looking for synergies and opportunities in other departments. The goal is to impact the product and its customers and contribute to the organization’s future by replenishing the pool of internal competitive advantages.

Influencing Your Team

“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success,” Henry Ford once said.

Keeping teams together requires a dedicated effort to understand everyone’s capabilities, limits, drivers, and impediments. It may not be easy, but this effort pays exceptional dividends as the team’s theoretical knowledge converts into practical know-how. Their governing structure and processes are slowly molded to better enable the team’s work. Operational processes go from constraining their capabilities to supporting the team’s needs.

At the heart of the enduring leadership theory is a requirement to build long-term teams instead of short-term projectized teams. Building long-term teams starts with careful retrospection at the end of every iteration. It requires soft skills to elicit systemic problems and an open mind to listen to critical feedback. Addressing this feedback not only ensures a better environment by removing impediments to product success but also helps leaders keep people on the team longer.

Benefits of Enduring Leadership

The long-term focus of enduring leaders enables companies to build and retain a loyal user base of evangelists who know you are aware of their needs before they are. It enables organizations to operate cohesively instead of as a house of brands built on siloed product lines. Most critically, it enables perpetually improving teams that take each iteration of a product as an opportunity to sharpen their skill sets, toolkits, and processes. Put another way: Enduring leaders enable enduring product lines—creating enduring organizations.

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What is the role of technical knowledge in product management? Does having a technical background help or potentially hinder aspiring product professionals?  This article discusses the topic from the point of view of a seasoned expert who is both a product professional and an engineer.

Many aspiring product managers wonder whether a technical background is essential for success in their role. This is something that I’ve been asked repeatedly by product professionals over the years. While this is a personal and situational question that has no crisp answer, sharing some of my experiences may help you work more effectively with, or as, a product manager with a technical background. 

So, is having a technical background required to be successful as a product manager? The answer is no, but it has certainly helped me to be more effective.  

Internal Wiring 

I don’t know if I went to school for engineering because of how my brain was wired, or if Carnegie Mellon rewired my brain for me, but I always say it is where I “learned how to learn.” How I approach learning, and how I apply different analytical techniques to synthesis, situational analysis and development of insights is driven by how my brain is wired.  

In product-management speak, the way I learn things is a distinctive competence, and it makes me objectively better as a product manager. I would argue that this is because of my technical background. I would expect people with similar backgrounds to have similar advantages. In this respect, my background and my wiring have benefited me as a product manager.  

The Inside Track 

As a product management professional, I tend to work most frequently with businesses that incorporate software development into developing solutions for their customers. I happen to have also spent several years developing software—and eventually leading teams which were developing software. This arcane knowledge of the secret handshake has helped me develop effective working relationships with the team members creating the product.  

When you do something, you learn it more viscerally than if you only read about it. Building on this deeper level of insight, which only comes from doing, is one way to develop camaraderie with the team of people creating your product. It is easy to see how a product manager with a technical background would have an advantage in these types of situations.  

The Temporary Crutch 

We’ve explored two ways in which a technical background benefits product managers and other product professionals, but this benefit is short lived. Eventually, the information you have will become irrelevant—and eventually it will mislead.

Imagine trying to apply pre-SQL database perspectives to conversations about NoSQL and distributed data storage architectures and the ensuing release-planning activities. You can also, of course, have a bundle of technical knowledge, which is not relevant to your problem domain. Bernoulli’s equation is not going to help me increase conversion rates on a website or assess the value of continuous integration.

You can see the potential for problems if you become too reliant on your former skillset and knowledge base. My approach to mitigating problems is to utilize my knowledge, both current and past, to enrich conversations with shared context, spot patterns in unfamiliar information, and apply my principles of learning to tackle new challenges. I do not try to apply the knowledge to solutioning, beyond using it to guide some directed questioning or to help with hypothesis formulation. 

One of the phrases I remember from Pragmatic Institute’s training was a question from my instructor: “If you are going to do their job, who is going to do your job?” That very question helps me walk away when I start to get too far down into the weeds in discussing how we’re going to solve the problems. It is a slippery slope, especially when you really enjoy technology and secretly wish you could be coding away (or designing or testing) with the rest of the team. 

Helpful, with a Twist 

The crux of it is that the benefit of having a technical background does not come from participating in the technical work, but from how it helps you collaborate with the technical team. Collaboration is a soft skill, and technical wiring can help product managers do it.  

Sometimes, we work on products that help customers solve problems in a technical domain. In these cases, being technical can help quite a bit, or be genuinely required, in developing an understanding of your market. 

Consider, for example, developing the staffing schedule for a large hospital. You need to be able to synthesize technical problems, combining the abstract mathematical problem (the nurse-rostering problem is a classic computational conundrum) with the business appreciation for defining the “good enough” solution.  

In my opinion, developing insights about how to compete in this market requires you to be able to appreciate the mathematical complexity of the value proposition, so that you neither assume it is trivial nor intractable. This is a problem that people will pay to solve. It is also a problem that requires a combination of technical solution and business perspective. 

At the end of the day, if you’re a product manager working on a product that tackles a particularly technical issue, I believe that having sufficient “technical wiring” in your brain is essential to fully understand the challenges and opportunities. This doesn’t necessarily mean you need an engineering or technical degree. One of the better (and very technical) product managers I worked with had a history degree, but his brain was wired to think technically.

In a Nutshell 

The usefulness of having an existing body of technical knowledge is limited and uncertain for product managers. It is limited because this knowledge is more valuable in practical applications than in collaborative scenarios. It is uncertain because it may quickly become outdated or incorrect. I think of this as a circumstantial outcome of having a technical background—not an asset that can be directly leveraged. 

But even if you’re a product manager that does not create products that are considered “technical,” having a technical perspective is still beneficial. And that’s not because it helps you with any of the technical heavy lifting, but because it can make it easier for you to work with those that are doing the technical work. 

The post The Role of Technical Knowledge in Product Management appeared first on Pragmatic Institute - Resources.

“He just gets it.”

“After spending five minutes with her, I know she’s going to be a VP in the next few years.

When you hear quotes like these, you either nod your head or cringe, depending on whether you can envision people saying these things about you. The factors that separate the good from the great, the worker bees from the rock stars, can be elusive—which is why they can be so frustrating.

Sometimes, there is no doubt that someone you’ve just met is going places in his career. On the flip side, we have all seen those product managers who have all the data—they have done market visits and have the perfect business plans—yet they never seem to achieve career traction. These could be two product-management professionals of similar backgrounds, age and experience, so why two completely different career trajectories?

I have been fortunate in my career to work with many talented individuals and meet even more through ProductCamps and as an instructor for Pragmatic Institute. Based on those interactions, I’ve formed some hypotheses about what makes a great product leader. The good news is that there is a pattern that we can all learn from, emulate, and use to change the trajectory of our careers.

Re-Envisioning Product Leaders

Many human resources departments would tell you that as professionals get more experience, their effectiveness increases—that someone with 20 years of industry experience will be more effective than someone with five.

I am here to tell you that HR’s perspective on product roles is wrong. Experience and effectiveness do correlate, but they are not necessarily causal. The seven “X-factor traits” differentiate product managers from product leaders.

Inspire Others

I have all of the responsibility, all of the accountability and none of the authority.

– Every product manager, like, ever

Product professionals around the world utter some variation of this statement every day. It is partially true, although incomplete. Their job titles, “product manager” or “product marketing manager,” can be misleading because most people assume they manage people and products. But they don’t. They are often given roles of great strategic importance in the organization, yet they have little ability to directly affect the changes they need. This is why the first of the seven X-factors that makes a product leader is the ability to inspire others to action.

While we sometimes manage teams of people, they are usually outside engineering, user experience, operations or support. Those are the groups we must work with to undertake the changes the company needs to roll out new and updated products. We can’t go to members of those other teams and issue management edicts (“Do this because I’m a manager, and I am telling you to do it”). A lighter touch is required.

Product leaders must be able to engage their teams in a discussion of the “why” to inspire action. When we help the team understand why their work impacts the bigger picture, strategy or goal, it motivates and inspires the team to greatness. People don’t want to collect a paycheck; they want to have an impact.

How to develop this skill: To describe the “why” to others in the organization, we must first understand it ourselves. Usually, founders have the “why” on the tips of their tongues because they started the company to scratch a particular itch. If the founder is available, interview them to map your product to the vision.

Another way to access the “why” comes from the market. You must always be in the market talking to customers and non-customers. As you hear the problems from your market contacts, drill down on why they care: Why this problem, and not that problem? Why are you asking for this enhancement; what problem are you trying to solve? You are ready to inspire others when you have the answers to these questions.

Communicating the “why” becomes simple. The roadmap can facilitate this conversation, so share it in your engineering or development meeting. Instead of discussing the next set of features to be developed, facilitate a discussion about why you are building these capabilities in this order.

Call out specific team members and use your market knowledge to help validate what they are working on. For example: “Don, the UX work you are doing on this next release is critical because 70 percent of our users are abandoning after three clicks.”

How to identify this skill: To identify this trait during a candidate interview, ask open-ended questions like:

• Why were you attracted to your last product?
• Why did your market care about what you released?
• If I hired you for this role and asked you to recruit a new team member, what would your pitch be to get them to join?

Future product leaders can describe the “why” behind what they do and how they do it. They can use that understanding to inspire others to action.

Speak Truth to Power

Every product professional is eventually faced with an inconvenient truth. It could be during a beta demo when they get feedback from the tester that the product is all wrong. Or it might be during sales training when the team is disinterested because their quota doesn’t reinforce selling the new product. And most professionals bear the scars of products that were delayed so much that the original release date is now an afterthought. Product professionals have a stark and clear choice in each of these situations: Do I bury my head in the sand or raise this issue to my leadership team, even though doing so would be uncomfortable?

Many product professionals choose not to raise uncomfortable issues because they worry about being rude or fear that someone might “shoot the messenger.” But those with product leadership potential know that they can be a voice of the truth in these situations. Raising visibility on challenging issues is not a sign of weakness; it is a sign of strength. If we genuinely want the product and business to succeed, we cannot “hope” issues away. There may be organizational designs or more significant resourcing issues at play that an executive can help resolve.

How to develop this skill: The first step in learning to speak truth to power is understanding at what level to engage those in power. No executive wants to work with someone who runs to them daily, looking for “parental supervision” on all issues. The second step is to learn that how you raise an issue is just as important as the issue itself. Consider the context. For example, calling out an executive in public might not be the best way to address a problem. Third, speaking the truth to power is not only about raising issues – it’s also about providing solutions. A product leader should describe the problem and offer several potential fixes.

Role-playing and practice can help alleviate the fear of telling the truth to those in power. Talk to a trusted colleague about the issue and what you plan to tell the executive team, then work with them to contextualize the message and provide potential solutions.

How to identify this skill: Uncovering this skill in an interview setting can be difficult. It is insufficient to pose the obvious question: “Tell me about a time when you told a difficult truth to an executive team.” Unless you know an executive at the candidate’s old company, you cannot know if you are getting the truth or what the candidate wants you to hear. Test truth to power by posing a direct, uncomfortable question: “Tell me the worst thing about our interviewing process.” You can then evaluate whether candidates are comfortable having this type of conversation and whether they suggest solutions or deflect and defer.

Synthesize Complex Information

Many product professionals are adept at gathering data. They spend hours researching the competition, interviewing salespeople or buyers and observing users. A good product professional might turn the various data sources into a 100-page business case. A rock star can synthesize that data into a compelling 10-page presentation, including a call to action.

How to develop this skill: Synthesis is best developed by practice. Take the output and conclusions you have drawn from your information and assemble them into a presentation. Then, pull a trusted peer into a room and have them play the role of the critic. Ask them to consider:

• Are your conclusions well-founded?
• Have you backed your assertions with data (either in presentation or voice-over)?
• Have you included too much data for the audience?

Remember that what you say is important, but what you don’t say or include may be equally important.

How to identify this skill: There are several ways to test for synthesis. If you’re in a job interview setting, give the candidate a reading assignment before the interview. Then, during the interview, ask the candidate to tell you what they learned. A strong synthesizer will be able to sum up a long article into a few key takeaways. To raise the difficulty level, give the candidate a research topic instead. In this way, you can test both research ability and the ability to synthesize what they have learned.

Alternatively, you can use open-ended questions like: “Tell me about a time when you observed an end user of your product.” Then, you can probe to see if the candidate focuses on the observations or if they can pull threads from other data sources to emphasize what they learned, how that validated or conflicted with their existing knowledge, and what action items they took as a result.

Communicate Effectively

There comes a time in every leader’s career when they must stand up in front of their peers, managers and executives and sell their ideas and conclusions. For some, these situations create sweaty palms, heart palpitations and weak knees.

But a rock star learns to relish the opportunity to share their perspective with the group. They are skilled communicators who can hone a presentation’s content, style, tempo, and tone to the group at hand. They know the content backward and forward and can handle questions on the fly. The audience will leave the room nodding their heads because the presenter’s ideas and conclusions seem forgone.

How to develop this skill:  It’s estimated that 70-75% of the U.S. population fears public speaking. So, if you find yourself feeling anxious, you are not alone. The good news is that, like most fears, this one can be overcome. To overcome the fear of public speaking, practice. Challenge yourself to speak in meetings or join a supportive group like Toastmasters for feedback and mentorship. Prepare by becoming a subject matter expert on your topic area. Your confidence will skyrocket.

How to identify this skill: When interviewing, give candidates a situation, topic, or scenario in which they must ask for more funding. Have them prepare a 10-slide presentation they might give the executive team. Some candidates will balk at doing this amount of work for an interview—but those weren’t the candidates you wanted anyway. A true rock star will jump at the chance to use their synthesis and communication skills to excel in the candidate pool.

Challenge Popular Opinions

At Pragmatic Institute, we teach that product professionals should be the “president of the product.” Sometimes, that means challenging executive teams. A solid executive debater is an X-factor because a product leader must be the strongest advocate for what is best for the market and the product. Some may worry that using this skill is politically dangerous. However, the more the product professional exercises this skill (within limits), the more the executive team respects them. How can you respect a professional who can’t provide reasonable pushback?

How to develop this skill: To develop your executive debater skills, first evaluate your situation. Will your executive team be receptive to being challenged? If not, you might be able to shift the dynamic with an upfront conversation about how you plan to provide stronger guidance and leadership—even if it means offering pushback. Otherwise, recognize that not every company wants this from the product teams. Some companies want people to check their brains at the door and simply execute. If this is the situation you find yourself in, you may be at the wrong company.

Next, look for opportunities to challenge team thinking and drive the right outcomes. How you debate will vary based on the team’s personality and temperament, but in general, remember to praise in public and criticize in private. Also, recognize that moderation is key, so pick your battles wisely. No executive team wants to be pulled into a debate on every decision. Focus on the big decisions that matter.

How to identify this skill: Ask the candidate for examples of when they challenged an executive team and the result. One interesting way to phrase the question: “Tell me about a time when you challenged your executive team. Now, tell me about a time when you did that, and they overruled you and why.” A good candidate has prepared for the first part of the question, and the second part allows you to evaluate how the candidate feels about being overruled. Another way to test this skill is to assign candidates a presentation or analysis to perform and then poke at their findings. Challenge them and force them to defend their conclusions, perhaps in a panel interview where the panelists toss questions to the candidate in a round-robin format. This method is intended to probe deeply, use the group’s intelligence and induce stress in the candidates, so you can see how they perform under pressure.

Build Consensus

Great products do not come from the force of personality. They require the organization to work together toward greatness. However, inspiring others to take action is not enough, especially if different parts of the organization work at odds with one another. To become strong product leaders, we must be “consensus builders” who align the organization to solve a problem together.

Unfortunately, consensus is often elusive. It has received a bad reputation recently, with many looking at it as the fluffy domain of management consultants. However, product professionals who are consensus builders can travel across an organization without being perceived as pushing an agenda. They can ask questions and receive honest and open answers because they have the street cred of the market. Other teams trust that they are looking out for the good of the product and not a specific department. These soft skills allow them to smooth out team conflict and get products to market faster by redirecting energy that would otherwise be spent on internal strife.

How to develop this skill: The best way to develop building consensus is to practice. Start by getting to know your organization better and understanding how departments are measured, such as quotas, net promoter scores or hitting dates. Where there are warring factions, bring them together to discuss. Do not choose sides in the conversation; facilitate it and let them work through it on their own. The consensus will stick better if they feel like they reached it instead of you forcing it. Pose leading, open-ended questions, such as: “I’ve noticed that there is friction when your team and Joe’s work together; what do you think about that?” If deeper issues are at play, these questions will bring them out so you can work on them with the team.

Sometimes, just listening is enough to oil the gears and get people working together again.

How to identify this skill: When you call on the candidate’s business references, don’t just ask the standard, “Would you recommend Amy for this role?” The reference doesn’t know anything about the role you have created and is completely unqualified to answer. Instead, ask for specific examples of Amy building consensus across the organization and how she did it. Someone familiar enough with a candidate to be a reference should be able to provide a few simple examples.

Demonstrate Empathy

The final X-factor is intertwined with all others and will amplify all the other soft skills product leaders bring to bear. It is the ability to empathize with others, inside and outside the business.

Empathy means understanding what people are going through without having experienced it. Unfortunately, many product professionals undervalue empathy and issue edicts such as “We’re moving up the ship date” or “We’ve worked with management to add this to your quota.”

When product leaders fail to understand others’ situations, their tendency to make unreasonable demands skyrockets. Then, their credibility and effectiveness decrease. Eventually, they flame out, and their products fail. Failing to empathize with people outside the organization, such as customers, is even more fatal to product success. At best, you will not ask good questions, and at worst, you will make terrible choices. Both routes lead to failure.

One reason that empathy receives short shrift today is culture. Most business cultures embrace execution and “just-do-it” attitudes, with empathy sometimes seen as a sign of weakness. Another reason is that being empathetic takes time. In a world where execution and daily tasks rule, stopping to understand a peer’s world outside of a hot action item feels strange–almost like a waste of time. Nothing could be further from the truth. Empathy is wound into the entire product we deliver, whether we know it or not.

Empathetic product leaders budget time to understand their peers. They know how other teams are measured, how their collaborators spend their time, and when a request is reasonable or not. As a result, the empathetic product leader can intercept, redirect, and reframe executive action items that could derail the team. Empathetic rock stars also understand that their prior industry knowledge may not apply to every situation, and they seek to fully understand the market. The result is products that are created faster and solve problems more completely.

How to develop this skill: Start by putting yourself into your peers’ shoes. Think about how they are measured and then ask them open-ended questions to understand their lives:

• What are your top concerns at work?
• What drives you crazy about your job?
• What would you change about work if you could?

Next, think about the last five things you requested from them and how they align with what you just learned. You will probably discover that you caused some stress. Consider how what you asked might have changed if you had known this data beforehand. Would you have asked for a different timeframe or in a different way? Would you have asked at all?

Being empathetic is not about being soft or not caring about results. The opposite is true: When used correctly, strong empathy can create better trust, communication, and results.

How to identify this skill: Empathy is one of the simpler X-factors to evaluate. Run candidates through a battery of questions about their past or current roles and ask them to identify how the different groups at the company were measured. Drill down for details. A strongly empathetic leader will recall these measurements quickly and discuss whether they were good or bad. Ask follow-up questions such as: “How did that measurement change the way you worked with that group?” This will help determine if they used empathy to change how they worked across the organization.

Think about how you interact with the data you collect and the people you interact with. Are you inspiring others, speaking the truth to power, synthesizing data, and building consensus? Are you empathetic while also being willing to debate executives?

As marketing guru Peter Drucker said, “Effective executives differ widely in their personalities, strengths, weaknesses, values, and beliefs. Some are born effective. But the demand is much too great to be satisfied by extraordinary talent. Effectiveness is a discipline. And, like every discipline, effectiveness can be learned and must be earned.” This holds equally true today for making a rock-star product leader.

While some X-factor soft skills might already be present, others can be learned. Take the steps outlined in this article to become a rock star and launch your career to new heights.

The post The X-Factors: Soft Skills for Product Leaders appeared first on Pragmatic Institute - Resources.

I wear my respect on my sleeve for the many dedicated product management professionals who work in what I believe is one of the most difficult and critical roles in today’s fast-moving technology and B2B organizations. Product managers shoulder a tremendous responsibility to guide organizational resources, facilitate strategic choices, and lead execution initiatives—often with little or no formal authority. If corporate roles were Olympic athletes, product managers would be the decathletes. 

While admittedly biased (based on my years as a product manager and as a leader of product managers), I firmly believe these talented and well-rounded business professionals represent some of the most valuable assets in a firm’s talent pool. Few positions outside of the role of product manager demand mastery of a broad spectrum of leadership, communication, and management skills as prerequisites for success. 

From understanding the “voice of the customer” to assessing and recommending strategic choices…to building the relationships and systems needed to drive execution across organizational silos, the product manager is truly an executive-in-training. 

Of course, not every product manager is destined for (or even desires) a role in executive leadership. And many who are interested fail to properly develop the critical soft skills needed to grow into and succeed as one of a firm’s top leaders. The most effective product managers and mentors of product managers recognize the importance of mastering the portfolio of informal leadership skills, and they constantly focus on creating and participating in developmental experiences that help those skills emerge. 

Here’s my short list of the top product manager soft skills to develop if you want to crack the ranks of senior leadership. 

Leadership Skills

Today’s emerging leadership model is moving away from the command-and-control style many baby boomers grew up with. It’s moving towards a leadership style that emphasizes flexibility and adaptability. 

The new model for leading focuses on creating the right environment for teams and individuals to succeed. It places a priority on the continual development of talent through coaching and mentoring. Early on, the successful product manager recognizes these leadership tasks as “table stakes” for success and works to strengthen his or her skills at every opportunity. 

Developing leadership skills is an intangible task many try to achieve by attending training courses, reading books, and observing other successful leaders. And, while these are useful steps to help an individual develop context for the true role of a leader, they are never substitutes for the experience gained through live-fire developmental activities. 

As a wise and experienced professional once told me, “Leadership is a profession with a body of knowledge waiting to be discovered.” Books and classes are important and valuable if the insights and approaches are leveraged to solve real problems for customers and organizations. 

In supporting the development of product managers, I encourage an approach that emphasizes the application of key leadership skills in diverse and challenging situations. Developing informal leadership skills by shepherding a new product to market is a formative experience for a product manager. 

This situation emphasizes the development of critical business planning, communication, negotiation, and execution skills. By the same token, managing an initiative to assess and create strategies for product offerings that are struggling helps develop critical-thinking and decision-making skills in the face of tough circumstances. 

While not inviting the “product-manager-as-project-manager” debate, I encourage product managers to recognize that execution inside an organization happens through projects. Additionally, I advise them to gain experience in developing and leading project teams. 

The experience of working to develop high-performance project teams teaches the product manager the importance of focusing on creating an effective working environment. Additionally, the time spent dealing with the many headaches and people-issues that often bedevil projects provides invaluable training. It teaches the reality of how challenging it is to drive results by leading without formal authority. 

 The practicing product manager or the product manager’s mentor must focus on an approach that emphasizes the development of key leadership skills and the application of these skills in a series of diverse leadership situations. 

Ideally, any leadership development program for product managers will emphasize gaining experience in leading informally, leading horizontally, and managing upwards. A constant focus on testing the product manager in new situations accelerates personal learning and development which is critical to emerging product manager leaders. 

Strategic Thinking

Like leaders, strategists aren’t born; in most cases, they are forged over time via the development of critical analytical skills. Few positions in a firm have the potential to contribute more to strategic thinking and development than that of the product manager. 

I was fortunate enough to enjoy early career mentors that challenged me to constantly think outside of my product and outside of my company…to look at the big picture…to tune in to my various audiences…and to develop and test strategic hypotheses while growing the business. This is a very different way of thinking than the typical “What are the top 10 features I can jam into my next release?” Too many product managers don’t learn to look beyond their narrow scope (product, market segment). Worse yet, too many don’t grasp the importance of their role as a strategist in the overall firm’s plans. 

The product-manager-as-strategist understands he or she must invest in looking at the big picture of market forces, customers, and competitors—and comparing this view to a company’s strategic priorities and capabilities. The effective product manager seeks to uncover unresolved client problems. Then, they develop programs and experiences that fill those needs and delight customers in ways that competitors cannot readily emulate. 

Perhaps the most difficult obstacle for the product-manager-as-strategist to overcome is the ability to look critically at his or her own struggling product offerings. They must conclude that, in some circumstances, the problems are not solved by investing more money, creating more features, or working on the next release. 

I know a product manager has evolved to an important intellectual level when he or she has the courage to confront a failing initiative with a strategy other than “spend more” or “develop more.” I’m particularly excited when the new proposal is clearly grounded in the “voice of the customer” and takes into account the prevailing and expected market forces. 

If you are a senior leader or mentor, it is important to encourage your product managers to think critically and to consider the external environment in formulating their plans—as well as to involve them in strategic planning activities. Ensure your interactions are heavily weighted toward asking strategic questions versus offering answers. Your own example will teach product managers on your team to think holistically about strategy when formulating plans. 

If you are a product manager seeking to grow your career, learn the art of asking questions. And remember to invest ample time in the market—observing customers and looking for unresolved problems. And most important, recognize that the sun does not rise and set with the products you manage. Rather, your goal is to uncover unique opportunities to create value for your customers. The true solution may be something that doesn’t remotely resemble the offerings you are managing today. 

Communications Skills and the Art of Diplomacy

A great product manager learns the skills needed to speak the language of executives, recognizing that every encounter is an opportunity. Regardless of with whom they are meeting, it’s a chance to build trust by understanding needs, creating shared perspectives, and building reasons for people and teams to move forward. 

The HBO miniseries titled John Adams, based on David McCullough’s biography of the same name, shows the mercurial and aggressive Adams. He jeopardizes any chance to earn France’s support for the American Revolutionary War with his demands for immediate action. His style and tactics nearly destroy the hard-won credibility that Benjamin Franklin earned over the several years he spent developing a mutually agreeable reason to oppose the British. 

As a product manager, you may very well understand the “right” direction and believe that those who don’t share your opinion are blind to the obvious. Recognizing that no two humans look at the same picture and see the same thing is an important first step in understanding the need to develop diplomatic skills. 

Another wise person in my life once advised, “Seek first to understand and then to be understood.” This simple statement underscores a powerful philosophy that product managers and all leaders should apply in their day-to-day communications. 

In today’s world, developing a communication style that creates interest and fosters respect is essential for success. Diplomatic skills are crucial for a product manager’s career progression. Managing upwards, collaborating across departments, and leading diverse, distributed teams across generations and cultures are key. These skills help a product manager quickly advance beyond a mid-level role. 

Tying It All Together

It is remarkably easy to get caught up in the pursuit of day-to-day business and the “urgent-unimportant,” and forget that every day is a chance to advance your career. 

If you are fortunate enough to have a great mentor, consider yourself lucky. Pay attention to that mentor; listen and learn. If you don’t have a valued mentor or coach, it is incumbent upon you to take the initiative. Create the experiences necessary for you to develop and fine-tune the leadership, strategic, and communication skills needed to advance your career. 

Simply put, the role of product manager offers a unique foundation on which to build a successful career. And while the typical product manager career path is focused on hard skills, you’ll need to include soft skills if you want to achieve true growth in the field.
 

Resources for product manager career growth:

5 Ways to Become a Respected Leader in the C-Suite  
Level-up your Leadership Skills
Taking Inventory- Identify your Leadership Strengths (and Weaknesses) 

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