3 Traits of Great Product Managers

Over the course of my career, I have worked in a variety of roles from Program Management, to Product Marketing, and now Product Management.

In each of these roles, I have partnered with Product Managers with all manner of backgrounds, methodologies, communication styles, and personalities. Most were adequate to the task, some fell short, and others excelled.

We are all familiar with the adequate Product Manager, and many of us have had unfortunate (… and possibly traumatic) experiences with a Product Manager that was not up to the task.

I have been blessed to work with and observe many truly great Product Managers that have had amazing impact and led incredible growth, and I have taken note of what I believe are the three critical traits they all have in common:

They Build Relationships

Although the Product Manager can have a tremendous impact on the strategy, shape, and success of a product, they rarely have direct authority over the teams that build, market, or sell the product.

So how does the Product Manager get work done? Relationships.

Sometimes, the Product Manager is lucky, and is assigned to a product that is THE key priority for the company, and the development and business resources are automatically made available because of the broad acknowledgement of this priority.

But more often than not, the product they own is one of many products that are competing for a share of scarce resources for survival.

This is where genuine, trusting relationships are the difference between abundance and starvation.

Think of this example:

A Data Science team supports all product initiatives within the company. Product Managers bring requests for support on a variety of initiatives and, like most other teams, the Data Science team has more requests than they can reasonably support.

There is a prioritization process, but (naturally), 75% of the projects are Priority 1.

A tiebreaker is needed.

If I am a Data Scientist facing a backlog of items with the same prioritization from three different PMs, and one of those Product Mangers has regular one-on-one meetings with me, shows interest in me, seeks to understand my work, educates me about the business dynamics of their products, and has helped me understand why their request is critical…. which of those Products am I going to support?

Obviously, the Data scientist, and any other human, will take the opportunity to prioritize supporting their friend over someone that treats them as a cog in the necessary drudgery of getting stuff built.

Relationships like these characterize every aspect of the Product Manager’s job. Whether you are working with Developers, Customers, Executives, Finance, Marketing, HR, Operations, Security, etc. etc. etc., there is no interaction that does not benefit from a continuous investment in a personal and trusting relationship.

They Are Curious

Great Product Managers are always asking questions.

Yes, they also have the answers when other people have questions, they must be the experts on their product, but their product does not exist in isolation. The product is part of a complex ecosystem of industry dynamics, customer needs, new technologies, political influences, and resource constraints, and there is always more to learn.

Most Product ecosystems have enough nuance and complexity that no single person can be the expert in all aspects, but every Product Manager has the opportunity and obligation to continuously increase their knowledge.

Sometimes this takes the form of research, certifications, and courses: these can be valuable, but they do not always address the idiosyncrasies of your exact circumstance.

The most valuable resource to increase your knowledge? The people around you (See trait number one: Building Relationships).

Do you need better insight into the market dynamics? Talk to your marketing and strategy teams.

Are you wondering how customers will react to new features? Talk to the business development and customer support teams.

Do you want to understand the impact of software architecture options? Talk to the engineering and architecture leads.

Are you trying to understand how your Product aligns with the company objectives? Talk with your VP.

Seeking knowledge from coworkers and sponsors has two massive benefits: one, you gain knowledge; but perhaps more importantly, you strengthen relationships.

We learn this as children when being taught how to make friends: “Ask them questions about themselves.” Why? Because people like to be valued for who they are and what they know.

Gathering knowledge is important, but it also represents an opportunity to let someone else SHARE knowledge, which strengthens the relationship.

They Are Advocates

By far, the most common failure I have seen in Product Managers is when they collect requirements from customers, put them on the product roadmap, and hand it to the development teams to deliver.

Why is this a failure? It’s only half of the job (back when I was in school, 50% was a failing grade).

A Product Manager is uniquely placed in the company, at the confluence of incoming requests and outgoing products. This position comes with an opportunity and a responsibility.

The opportunity is to gain knowledge and build relationships both inside and outside the company and build a highly informed perspective on the impact the company’s products can and do have in the marketplace.

The responsibility is to advocate in both directions. Yes, you should advocate for the Customer to the Development teams, but it is equally important to Advocate for the Development teams to the Customer.

What does this look like in practice?

A great Product Manager, having built relationships and gained knowledge, can enter a customer meeting ready and able to hear the customer’s needs, evaluate the priority, understand the capabilities and capacity of their own development teams, and push back on requests from the customer that are not aligned with the product roadmap and/or are not critical enough to pull resources from other tasks to support.

The mistake that is too often made is for Product Managers to drop the latter half of this process into the lap of the development team leadership, who can certainly push back based on capacity, but do not have the context to evaluate the customer need and are often only brought in after the a commitment has already bee made to the customer.

Being an advocate for the customer and the development teams may mean saying No to a customer sometimes, and it may mean insisting on deliveries from the development teams, but it leverages and reinforces the relationships built through investment in the first two Traits.

A customer may like always being told “yes”, but eventually this will result in a commitment that cannot be met, which will permanently scar the relationship and plant seeds of doubt in all future commitments.

It is much better to establish the expectation early in a trusting relationship that you will do everything you can to support the customer’s needs, you will be honest if a request cannot be supported, and you will be creative and helpful in bridging the gap where possible.

A customer that trusts you is immeasurably more valuable than a customer that feels they can control you.

On the flip side, very few things are more destructive to morale than when a development team knows that their Product Manager will sell them out on a customer’s whim.

In order for the developers to give their best work and an honest appraisal of their capacity and capabilities, they need to know that the Product Manager will not abuse that trust, and will defend them from unreasonable or unnecessary customer demands.

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The combination of these three traits of Relationships, Curiosity, and Advocacy has been present in all of the most effective and valued Product Managers I have ever seen. Their development teams and their customers are loyal to them because they know that they are treated with honesty, integrity, and expertise.

Certainly there are other tools, methodologies, and certifications that can boost Product Management effectiveness, but these are usually only valuable to the extent that your specific company culture values them.

The value of the three Traits is transcendent: They apply to every Product Manager, in every company, in every industry, and investing in them will never be wasted effort.