Active listening

Before you can find a solution, you first need to have a deep understanding of the situation. Active listening is a very popular and highly effective technique that helps you get a handle on another person’s point of view. When you’re trying to influence a team member regarding a new product, you need to be able to listen first and speak second. Also, using active listening can diffuse challenging situations where others are insistent or argumentative. Many times conflict arises simply because the other party doesn’t feel heard and doesn’t believe that you deeply understand its point of view and opinions.

To practice active listening, do the following:

1. Allow the other person to talk and state his complete case.

   Don’t cut him off or try to respond. Let him speak his piece so that he has been able to voice everything he needs to. If he talks a long time, give him verbal cues like “uh huh” so he knows you’re still listening.

2. When he’s finished, say, “It seems that…” or “What I heard you say is…”, and then repeat back what you think you heard.

   If you got it right, he’ll automatically respond with “yes.” If you didn’t get it right, he’ll correct the part you missed or even say “no.” If you’re the least bit unsure about whether your understanding is correct, ask him whether he feels you have an understanding of his point of view. If you don’t feel comfortable paraphrasing what he just said, simply repeat the last three words.

   Deep down, the need for active listening is only partly in making sure that you understand the facts. Acknowledging the feelings behind the argument is equally or maybe more important. Here’s the difference: “I hear that you want to go to the store.” Fact, no feeling. “I hear that you’re frustrated because you want to go to the store and can’t figure out how to get there.” Practice the second kind of response.

3. Repeat Steps 1 and 2 as necessary until both parties are convinced that you thoroughly understand the other’s point of view.

   If you hit a wall in this process, you may need to ask open-ended questions to get more insight from the other person about what you’re misunderstanding. Try starting your open-ended questions with “what” and “how” for more informative answers.

The interesting thing about active listening is that after going through this process, you often don’t need to explain your point of view to the other person. When he feels heard and knows that you understand (but don’t necessarily agree), he may drop the subject altogether. And sometimes when the other person believes he’s been heard, you can let him know that you now understand and will factor his opinion into the decisions you make about the product.

The usual role of a product manager is as an arbiter and decision maker. Active listening can be very frustrating because you simply can’t tell someone what to do. Imagine that in most of your activities, you lean forward to drive the conversation forward. If you’re in an active listening situation, change the forward stance and physically lean back onto your heels or into your chair. It gives you a different physical sensation and reminds you that you’re in listening mode. Practice this skill often, and you’ll be amazed at the results.

Convincing with the three reasons method

After doing some active listening to get the other party’s point of view (see the preceding section), you may still need to do some convincing to sway him to agree with you. One of the simplest and most effective methods is the three reasons method.

Here’s how it works for a conversation that you plan in advance:

1. State what you believe should happen and that you have three reasons.

   Plan out your three reasons.

2. Provide your first reason, using any data or real-world examples you have.

   Use as many facts as you can because facts and data are difficult to argue with.

3. Repeat Step 2 with your second reason.

   Again, use facts and examples wherever possible.

4. If the first and second reasons don’t convince your audience, you can present a third reason.

So why does this method work so well? Regardless of whether you have a well-thought-out argument upfront, using this approach gives the other person the impression that you’re confident about what you’re saying. Anyone who claims three good reasons for an opinion most likely has a reasonable stance to argue, so declaring you do puts you in a strong position right out of the gate. Does it work every time? No, but if you aren’t able to come up with three reasons your opinion and argument are right, you may need to rethink your position in the first place.

Asking for what you want — concisely

One of the keys to getting people to listen to you (or read what you have sent) and then do what you ask is to keep things as brief as possible. For example, if you need to influence your team to change the schedule to add a crucial new feature, having a long conversation or writing a three-page email stating every reason you can think of simply won’t work. Chances are that your audience will tune out after the first minute or no one will read the entire email. Instead, your information will simply be ignored or dismissed.

In all your communications, be as short and to the point as possible. In emails, use bullet points if possible. Many times, your response to an email can simply be one or a few words, such as “Agreed” or “Approved.” In fact, short communications can, in many cases, be more effective than longer ones. Product managers who go on and on endlessly, whether via email or in conversation, tend to be far less effective than those who can get their points across rapidly and efficiently.

Figure 18-1 outlines a good method for concisely presenting your case to get what you want. You sketch out the situation in a few sentences, give a few pieces of vital information to make your argument, and then clearly tell the other party what you want and why giving it to you is good for both sides. The key to this method is to not try to present a long, drawn-out case. Make any communication short and compelling.

If you think you have a tendency to being long winded — or even if you don’t — time yourself the next time you give an explanation. See how close you can get to a sufficient (not exhaustively complete) explanation in 30 seconds. In emails, shoot for no more than two or three short paragraphs.

Drawing up an influence map

One tool to use when influencing executives (and other stakeholders) is an influence map, as shown in Figure 18-2. An influence map helps you determine who is on your side and how much they can help or hinder your efforts. An influence map can also give you a sense of what kind of politics may be going on behind the scenes so that you can build the relationships and have the conversations you need to ahead of time to get support for your efforts.

To create your influence map, list all the executives who have any influence on your work. Map them into how supportive they are for your product efforts and then how influential they are in the organization. You are looking for those who have a lot of influence and are very supportive. Target your key influencers with more information and ask them to support your cause with other executives. For executives with lots of influence who don’t support your product efforts, list issues they consider to be more important and then how you can link your product to their key interests and goals. Enlist executives who are on your side to take up your cause with the others who don’t support your cause. Use the relationship building techniques in the next section to explore resistance to your product ideas and build as much positive perception of your product at the executive level as possible.

In rare cases, every (or almost every) executive is mapped as not supporting your product efforts. If you don’t have the support you need and you don’t believe you’ll be able to change the situation, your best bet may be to move on to a situation where you’ll have a better chance of success. For example, if the CEO or several senior-level executives don’t believe in your product or strategy and aren’t willing to fund it, you’ll have an uphill battle as the product manager. The alternative is to remain on the job and become frustrated and negative, and that is truly career limiting.

Building relationships with the key players

One helpful technique for influencing executives within the organization is to determine the top five key players that you’ll need support from. Fostering relationships with these people early on, without any agenda, is important. By getting to know them on a personal level while showing them that you’re the market and product expert, you’ll be setting yourself up so that when you do need support in a critical situation, they have confidence in you.

Building these personal relationships is also a great way to help move your career along. Find out what the executives are interested in and what motivates them. Take them to lunch or stop them in the halls to ask their advice. If you can, get them to agree to be your mentor. These steps all seem like common sense, but the product managers who succeed actually follow through with doing this stuff.

Here are a few ways to build rapport:

• Mirror executives’ language — both verbal and body as you communicate with them. Note how they dress and dress in a similar style. Don’t go out and buy the same sweater that the CEO wore last week, but do keep to the same general corporate look. Women should emulate the same or slightly higher level of dress formality, and not, for example, adopt collared shirts and slacks (if that is the male corporate uniform).
• Find opportunities to share experiences by either working on a tough assignment at work or, if you travel for work, doing something together during non-work hours.
• Share information and assistance with them freely. Be helpful, cheerful, and always positive. Share your successes with them.
• Remember that they also need down time. Don’t pester them. Let them guide the level of interaction that is comfortable for them.

Talking the talk: Executive-speak

In order to influence executives, you have to learn how they think and speak their language. For example, product managers are often very interested in the minute details of how their products work. They have to be in order to make sure they deliver a polished product that delights customers.

Executives, however, don’t generally know or care about the in-depth details of product features. They’re much more concerned with the big picture and things like how to accelerate the growth of the business and whether they’re allocating resources the right way to maximize the company’s return on investment. Thus, presentations for executives that have 20 (or more!) slides about the details of the product will lose their interest (and hurt your credibility). Keep things short, sweet, and focused on what they care about.

Keep these guidelines in mind when communicating with executives:

• Keep it short and to the point. Don’t waste their time.
• Focus on what’s in it for the company and for them. Be specific on the benefits that the company and the executive are interested in. Learn what successful talking points have worked with executives and then use similar ones. For example, one company may focus only on profitability. In another one, it’s all about engaging customers.
• Provide a summary, but have the details and data on hand in case they want to dive deeper on a topic. Put non-essential slides into an appendix.
• Be succinct and to the business point in all your conversations.

Building your credibility

Credibility in product management is everything. Your challenge is going to be to build credibility despite what development considers your role to be or not be. You need to show engineers what you’re doing and why you’re doing it and make sure they view you as an expert in a range of areas. Areas to show your credibility in include the following:

• Technical: Establishing yourself as a technical expert with your development team members is absolutely critical. Otherwise, they simply may not respect or work with you. Your ability to influence them will be negligible. Follow the trends in your area of technology and know the acronyms and terminology. You don’t necessarily have to be a complete expert and understand all of the underpinnings of the technology, but you do have to prove to your team that you have the ability to understand. Check out Chapter 2 for more details.

  If you don’t have technical expertise in your new area of responsibility, ask a lead engineer to brief you on the product. It is common to have an engineer brief a product manager on technology topics, so don’t be shy. At each stage, remember to look for the customer significance of each of the technologies or features that developers are telling you about. Take good notes because you need to get up to speed quickly.

• Product management: Everyone in your company — not just your engineering team — needs to view you as someone who understands product management inside and out. You wouldn’t want to hire a chief financial officer or an accountant if you didn’t know the candidate knew finance inside and out, and product management is no different.

  Certainly, any training you can go through and any certifications you can get increase your credibility. If you become a certified product manager through the AIPMM (Association of International Product Marketing and Management), for instance, and you hang your certification in your office cube, your team will see it and understand that you truly have studied this discipline and are excellent at what you do.

• Best practices: You need to be able to confidently say, “This is the wrong approach. Most companies do it the following way.” You also need corresponding skills for tasks like creating business cases, prioritizing product backlogs, writing user stories, and creating personas.
• Market: You have to know more about your market than anyone in your entire company. You need to understand growth rates and competition, and you need to be able to have facts and data ready that you can bring up in discussions.

• Customer: You want to be viewed as the person who is the true voice of the customer. You’ll know you’ve established yourself as the real expert who has a finger on the pulse of the customer when your development team proactively comes to you to ask, “We can solve this issue this way or that way; which way do you think the customers will want it?”

  To attune yourself to the customer’s needs, make lots of customer visits. Write up a summary of what you found at each visit. Include stories about what happened and information about the customer environment. Then share your report or email with your development team. Do this for each and every visit summarizing information into bullet points where possible. Continually bring up the customer in your conversations to remind engineers that you’ve spent significant time with them.

  Another good tactic is to occasionally bring your engineers along on customer visits. Taking them out in the field and having them observe what kinds of questions you ask and what environment your customers work in is always extremely valuable. For example, one engineer saw a customer actually cry when faced with a difficult-to-use test interface and adapted it overnight for the next round of customer feedback. When engineers meet real customers, they share their experiences with their development team back at the ranch, and it becomes a lot easier to get the team to adopt your ideas later on.

Assessing your team and adjusting

You need to analyze the development team you’re dealing with and then adjust accordingly. You may have a great team or a difficult team that may or may not respect you (or anyone else who is a product manager).

In some cases, you’ll have a great team where you can easily establish yourself as a leader. When you’re in the upper-right quadrant of Figure 18-3 is when your job in product management is really, really fun.

If you’re in either of the check-marked quadrants, you can definitely make it work and can move toward the upper-right quadrant. In most situations, that’s where you’ll be as a product manager. Brainstorm with the team or your manager about how to move toward the upper-right quadrant by building teamwork and increasing your respect within the team.

In the worst case, there’s nothing you can do with some teams and situations. You may be in that bottom-left quadrant, and you may seriously need to think about whether you want to move on to a different product or move to work with a different team. Before you utterly give up hope, talk to the team’s manager (or HR, if the manager is part of the problem). See whether a coach can be brought in or whether HR can facilitate an intervention with the team to its improve relationships and internal workings. In some situations, there is simply no way to win. Don’t let yourself get stuck for a long time in one of these — it’s a career-limiting move.

Sizing up different types of developers and how to handle them

Understanding the personalities of the individual developers and how to deal with each personality type is just as important as working with the development team as a collective unit. The following sections break down common developer personality types and give you tips on working with each.

Types of personalities

There are three major types of developer personalities (see Figure 18-4):

• Prima donna: These developers are absolutely brilliant and insist on having an argument about everything to make sure that they get to the truth (though usually they’ve already made up their mind about what the truth is). They may be excellent at what they do, but they don’t necessarily know or care about the role of product management.
• Coder: Coders are people who don’t have strong opinions but rather say, “Tell me exactly what to build. Give me a specification; I just write code. I’ll add any feature you want. Just be very clear and very specific.”
• Team player: In between the coder and the prima donna is the third type, which is the team player. Team players understand the value a product manager brings, and they really want to work with you interactively to build a product that customers love.

Fostering rapport with the team

Building good rapport with your team is a critical component of winning over your development team. Otherwise, you can’t count on team members’ support when you need a favor in a difficult situation.

The key to creating real rapport is sincerity. You can sincerely develop connections in a variety of ways, both subtly and overtly:

• Feed them. Obviously, grabbing lunch or coffee together is a good thing. When was the last time you had lunch brought in for your whole engineering team or took some engineers out after work to get to know them? If you can bring doughnuts to your weekly team meetings, attendance will likely go up dramatically, and you’ll develop a better working relationship. (Who doesn’t love doughnut day?) This approach sounds too simple to be true, but small things add up.
• Remember them when you’re picking up event freebies. If you go to trade shows, pick up giveaway items such as thumb drives for your team. Engineers don’t get the chance to go out on the road and attend trade shows, so bringing them back some of the swag can go a long way.
• Always have the coolest new gadget. Ask your team for their opinions on which one you should get, what the best features are, and so on. If you talk about games, gadgets, and cool new technology, many of your engineers will suddenly view you as more than just that business-oriented product manager.
• Don’t be Chicken Little. As a product manager, you constantly get frantic requests from sales or a large customer about “urgent” changes the product “needs” because of changing market environments or some other impetus. If you rush to your team like the sky is falling every single time one of these requests comes through, team members may eventually come to feel like you don’t have their backs. Instead, be very careful about how you filter any change requests for the development team. That’s not to say you can’t go back and ask for changes, but focus on the major changes that need to be made.

When you really build rapport and get to know your team, you then have the ability to occasionally play a chip and ask for a change that may otherwise seem unreasonable. Done correctly and sparingly, using this leverage can be very effective.

Making it easy for sales to sell your product

Following are a few tactics that help make a salesperson’s job much easier. And if sales is happier, your job becomes that much easier. Keep these factors in mind as you work through how to structure your product for sales success.