Product managers are responsible for defining the vision, strategy, and roadmap of a product, and ensuring that it meets the needs and expectations of the users. They also must coordinate and collaborate with various teams and stakeholders, such as developers, designers, executives, and customers.
To perform these tasks effectively, product managers need to master one essential skill: communication. Communication is the ability to convey information, ideas, and emotions in a clear, concise, and engaging way. It is also the ability to listen, understand, and respond to feedback, questions, and concerns.
In this post, we will explore why communication is important for product managers, and how it impacts their outcomes and success. We will also share some tips and best practices on how to improve your communication skills as a product manager.
Why communication is important for product managers
Communication is important for product managers for several reasons;
- Defining The Product Vision and Strategy
- Guiding The Product Development Process
- Engaging Your Product Users
- Communication improves collaboration and teamwork
- Communication increases influence and leadership
- How can you be a better product manager communicator?
Defining The Product Vision and Strategy
Communication helps define the product vision and strategy. Product managers need to communicate their product vision and strategy to various stakeholders, including developers, designers, executives, and customers. This helps align everyone on the outcomes, expectations and creates a shared understanding of the product goals, value proposition, and target market. Communication also helps product managers gather feedback and input from different perspectives and validate their assumptions and hypotheses.
Guiding The Product Development Process
Communication helps guide the product development process. Product managers need to communicate their product requirements and specifications to the development team and ensure that they are understood and implemented correctly. Depending on the type of product, this may require in-depth levels of granularity and being clear on the outcome. Communicating precise logic for every scenario, including failure cases, needs to be well documented and understood by the team. They also need to communicate the product progress and status to the executive team, and keep them updated on the achievements, challenges, and risks. Stakeholder management is all about communication, your cadence of communication may vary depending on the stage your product is in or what work is being done. It also helps product managers manage the expectations and priorities of the stakeholders and negotiate trade-offs and scope changes.
Engaging Your Product Users
Communication helps engage and delight the product users. Product managers need to communicate with the product users, and understand their needs, problems, and preferences. They also need to communicate the product benefits and features to the users and persuade them to adopt and use the product. Communication also helps product managers collect feedback and testimonials from the users and measure their satisfaction and loyalty. Generally, this work is done by marketing, but as a product manager, no one knows your product better than you. You’ll need to be able to provide your marketing team with the right information about how your product works, how it will improve the lives of your customers, and how it’s better than your competitors.
Communication improves collaboration and teamwork
Effective communication with others can help build trust and rapport with their team members and stakeholders and foster a positive and productive work environment. More importantly, effective communication can also avoid conflicts and misunderstandings, and resolve issues and disagreements quickly and constructively. Miscommunication can play a big factor in delaying decisions, getting alignment from others, or even building the wrong products. The ability to collaborate with others requires you to know what information is needed to make the right decisions and provide the right context to build what is needed.
Communication increases influence and leadership
Product managers who communicate well can establish their credibility and authority as the product experts and influence the decisions and actions of their team members and stakeholders. They can also motivate and empower their team and lead them towards a common vision and goal. Those who are able to communicate well can express themselves clearly, confidently and articulate their opinions and perspectives effectively. This skill not only gets stakeholders aligned, it gets stakeholders to trust that you are providing the right information and doing so in a way that is easily understood.
Now that we understand the importance of communicating as a product manager, how can you get better at it?
How can you be a better product manager communicator?
Know your audience and purpose. Before you communicate, think about who you are communicating with, and what you want to achieve. Tailor your message, tone, and style to suit your audience and purpose, and avoid using jargon, acronyms, or technical terms. Whether you think those are common terminologies or not, it is always best practice to spell things out.
Be clear and concise. When you communicate, use simple and direct language, and avoid ambiguity and vagueness. Structure your message logically, and use headings, bullet points, and visuals to help clarify your points. A great way to make sure you stay concise with your content is to build a template and an outline. A template helps you keep consistency for your content, so you aren’t starting from zero every time you need to communicate. A template provides guidance of the important things you should consider and include for your medium. An outline is something you should have for every document or presentation. Your outline should be at a high-level answering these kinds of questions:
– What do I want to communicate?
– What are the most important things I want the reader to know?
– What is my expected outcome of this communication?
– Is there a call to action needed?
Seek Feedback: Don’t be afraid to ask colleagues, peers, or mentors for feedback on your writing. It can seem personal, but it’s not. If your peers are unable to understand what you are trying to communicate, chances are, so will your stakeholders and customers. Collaborate with other product managers or even your communications team to work on building the right content. Constructive criticism can help you identify areas for improvement and where you may need to refine more of your thoughts.
Practice: We’re talking about practice. Writing is an evolving skill and the more you write the more you are able to hone that skill. A great way to practice writing other than what you’re working on, is through reading. Reading well written content like books, articles, documents related to your field, even blogs, can help you better understand how to structure your ideas and expose you to different writing styles. You can even offer to peer -review the documentation of other product managers within your organization. It not only exposes you to a different perspective, but you are helping a fellow colleague.
The art of communication is something that we all need, no matter what role we are in. However, for product managers, the biggest part of the role is communicating with others. We are communicating daily and to a variety of audiences. It’s important to know what to share, with who, what style, and when. Great communication comes with practice, it comes with understanding your product and understanding your intended audience. Of all skills product managers need to master, communication is the biggest and most impactful for career growth.
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