Strong Product People

Dos… Light up their brains. Use words that provoke emotions Use words that trigger their senses, including smell, touch, vision, sound, and even taste Make them laugh Make the story you’re sharing relevant, important, and true.184 Show your curiosity and passion and be vulnerable while telling your story.

When working with PMs to help them close their gaps, I like to use something called the future self,

3. Add company values and other company-wide factors. These

After you have created your narrative, ask your PMs or yourself the following questions: Does this help us make better decisions sooner? Does this help us focus on the critical business problems? Does this help us to explain our “not-to-do” list? Does this help everyone understand where we are headed? Does this give us a purpose and a meaning?

Can they describe their now? What will they deliver over the next four weeks? Can they describe their next? What will they be working on over the next five to 12 weeks? Can they describe a long-term vision? Can they articulate the bigger opportunities for their products, and when and how they will pursue them?

like to use the Situation-Behavior-Impact (SBI) feedback tool, developed by the Center for Creative Leadership to help managers deliver clear, specific feedback.59 It requires you to describe the exact situation you want to talk about, the behavior the other person showed in this situation, and what negative/positive impact this might have on them,

What can I hold you accountable for next time we talk? What can I be accountable to you for the next time we talk?

Write down five characteristics of the worst colleague you could ever imagine. Collect the characteristics then dot vote on them (which ones are the worst—the ones driving everyone nuts!). Pick the top 10 and ask the team to come up with the contrary positive characteristics. Let the team discuss which ones of the 10 characteristics are most import

Not enough alignment. There are no shared goals; no clear targets; or the product vision is missing, it needs to be repeated, or it is not motivating the team.

So, it’s a good exercise to go through, even if you’ve been managing your people for quite some time. And if you explain to them why you are doing this, and that you want to invest more of your time in their personal growth, they usually like this exercise.