To get things done, a Product Manager has to be believable. In other words, the role of the Product Manager is to persuade others to follow their direction. Persuasion for Product Managers can be broken down into three parts 1. Defining a clear Product Vision, 2. Achieving mastery of the product, 3. Building relationships that enable effective teamwork and alignment. These three components work together because the Product Manager collaborates on a Product vision with others.
Ray Dalio defines believable people as follows: ” 1) have repeatedly and successfully accomplished the thing in question, and 2) have demonstrated that they can logically explain the cause-effect relationships behind their conclusions.” In Extreme Product we use writing as the communication medium because writing makes the cause-effect relationships clear. The challenge for Product Managers is that they are often driving a vision for things that don’t exist yet. Past experience and success is valuable but it can be challenging to draw a line between past success and the current problem.
I’m not going to go into depth about how to build a product vision in this article as the focus is on believability. However, developing a compelling product vision needs to be done in collaboration with others and by doing so becomes a shared vision. It is this collaboration and bringing people into the process that is key to believability. Collaboration helps to build trust and trust is the key to being believable. You cannot believe someone who you don’t trust. If you try to build a product vision in isolation, then share it later with stakeholders you will hit a wall. The further away from the current direction the product vision is the harder it is to persuade people about the new direction.
In his book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert Caldini breaks down influence into a number of key components such as consistency, likability and authority. People make decisions that are consistent with previous decisions. As a consequence, changes in direction are jarring for people. Especially, if the change implies that the original direction was wrong or flawed. By working with others to define the product vision, the group becomes acclimatized to the new idea over time and is more receptive to the future vision.
The role of the Product Manager is to take people on a journey. Along the way you are likely to encounter friction, pushback and negativity to new ideas and concepts. This is where a great Product Manager will use active listening to hear the feedback and address the underlying concerns of the stakeholders. This listening and reacting helps to build trust and trust is the basis of believability. By building trust through risk mitigation the Product Manager turns detractors into supporters. Ray Dalio advises to find the most believable person who disagrees with your approach and understand their reasoning. Don’t be afraid of the debate. It's debate that will lead to a shared vision and trust.
Unfortunately, for Product Managers they typically do not have any authority over others they work with. This removes a key lever in the influence toolkit as described by Robert Caldini. The Product Manager has to rely on the trust they build with their team and key stakeholders to get things done. This trust is built over time by consistently delivering on commitments, active listening and demonstrating mastery over the product. Mastery of the product is demonstrated by having the right answer to product questions consistently over time. Good decisions in Product Management tend to compound into effective outcomes over time. It helps to be likeable but if you get the other things right you won’t need to rely on being nice. People around you will value your opinion and will trust your commitment to the cause.
One mistake that I see less experienced Product Managers make when trying to be believable is attempting to sound overly confident answering questions they don’t really know the answer to. This approach tends to break down quickly when probed with follow-up questions. The way to build trust is to admit that you don’t know and to commit to an action to find out. This approach builds far more trust and leads to better outcomes as the answer will be more grounded in reality. Rather than trying to sound confident, the goal is to identify the flaws in the plan through collaboration with the team and stakeholders then to focus intensely on finding answers to those tough questions. Through this process you need to convince yourself that there is a solution and that there is a path forward. It is impossible to be believed by others if you cannot convince yourself.
The Product Manager must be viewed by others as an expert of their product. If they are not, others on the team will likely question any product decisions made by the Product Manager because they will feel that they are more likely to be right. The goal of a Product Manager should be to establish a track record of being right with the team. This is particularly hard for a Product Manager in a new domain or working towards a new product that is outside of their past knowledge. In these situations, the Product Manager has to work hard to stay ahead of the team in terms of knowledge in order to maintain their position as the domain expert. Anybody can become an expert in any domain with the right level of focus and commitment. However, learning on the job is challenging for a Product Manager because changing established perceptions of mastery is extremely difficult.
Being believable is critical for Product Managers because they need to persuade others to create things that don’t exist without the authority to tell others what to do. Play the long game, focus on building trust and work hard to build your mastery of your domain.