By managing expectations and using customer and market data to ensure decisions are clear and defendable, product managers can foster positive relationships with senior leaders, allowing them to focus on creating a fantastic product for the customer, says Ian Lunn
The role of product management is one of the most challenging in any company as it means working with a vast variety of stakeholders both within and outside the business. These range from high level managers, through to colleagues in sales and marketing, UX designers and developers as well as customers, partners and end-users. These are people product managers need to influence, but who often have different agendas and competing priorities. The success of a product is often determined by how well a product manager can manage the relationships and balance the concerns of these different stakeholders.
One of the most important stakeholder relationships product managers need to build is with senior leaders. The senior leadership team has likely set the strategy for the business, and, as such, are key decision makers when it comes to the product. Knowing how to navigate this complex interpersonal landscape can be tough, but there are a few strategies you can use to earn trust, increase your influence, and create strong, lasting relationships.
Establishing trust is key
Great product managers are renowned for their wide-reaching market knowledge, ability to adapt to different scenarios and proven track record of delivering great results. However, beyond those core skills are arguably the most important ones: the ability to communicate and listen. It’s important to use those soft skills right from the start – most senior leaders won’t have the time or interest in knowing every little detail of the product, but you do need to put in the work to earn their trust quickly, thus avoiding hold ups and delays further down the line.
A great place to begin is with a one-to-one chat with each senior leader. Remember that everyone has different preferences when it comes to communication styles so establish what these are and be led by their choice. This will determine whether your meetings will be face-to-face (virtually or in person), a phone call or even via email. Once you know what the preference is, open up those channels of communication and keep them open. Small things like tailoring your communication style to the individual can go a long way in building trust.
Similarly, using active listening to be truly engaged in what your colleagues are saying can be invaluable in creating strong relationships. Maintain a two-way conversation and get to know the person. Find out what strategic challenges they face, what they’re most excited about with the new product and what their goals are. The most successful relationships are symbiotic, so always try to balance your agenda with theirs. You’ll find some stakeholders are open from the start and you’ll learn a lot about them in a short space of time. Others, however, will be more guarded so make a note of what you’ve covered and use this information to help inform future interactions.
Last, but not least, don’t forget to be human. While this seems an obvious point to make, its importance in building strong relationships is often underestimated and forgotten about, particularly in the high-pressure, fast-moving world of work. Talking about more than the job, finding out about interests away from the office and getting to know the person will offer opportunities for spontaneity in an otherwise structured environment.
Demonstrate how you fit into the strategy
Once you’ve established trust, you need to strengthen your reputation by demonstrating how you fit into the wider company strategy. To do this effectively, you must first understand it yourself. Make sure you can answer questions about why you’re doing the project and what’s in it for the wider business. Being able to sell your product confidently will make it much easier to get people on side, which, in turn, will make relationship building that bit smoother.
Having a good story about why what you’re doing supports the company vision can be particularly helpful here, and this is usually a part of your product strategy. This doesn’t need to be excessively detailed or explain every single decision, but it should support company objectives, explain the market context, show where the product’s going and highlight key points in the proposition. Most importantly, it should be clear and easy to understand. A product strategy is there to clarify and give direction, reassuring your stakeholders and team members that you know what you’re doing and everything is in hand.
A key part of the product management role is to advocate for the product. This means balancing the needs and demands of the product against the needs of the company. While you don’t need to become an expert on every single detail of the product, you do need to have a balanced overall view. Keeping the big picture at the forefront of your mind will enable you to weigh up the options against the risks, showing colleagues that you understand the full context and increasing their confidence that you will make the right recommendations.
Use market insight to build credibility
Being the voice of the market in the organisation will help add power and influence to your position, strengthening those key strategic relationships. The best way to build credibility here is by having good, evidence-based insights into your market and customers. Regularly talking directly to customers is the most straightforward way of gathering these invaluable insights, but it can be difficult to know how best to organise these meetings.
This is where listening posts come in. A listening post is a place or opportunity to hear about what’s going on in the market, helping you find out about customers, prospects, your competition, and market trends. Establishing a good network of listening posts will provide a continuous drip-feed of market insights, as well as being available to call upon when needed to answer specific questions. Customer listening posts can be in the form of one-to-one meetings or groups, online surveys, web analytics and usage data, while market insight can be gained through monitoring industry news, trends, competitors, and regulators.
The good news is, listening posts don’t have to cost money, but they do take time. Despite this, they should be made a priority for the whole team – and this includes senior leaders too. Facilitating these discussions will provide you with a wealth of real-time information directly from the end-user, helping you back up your recommendations with evidence and deliver fantastic results time and time again.
Conclusion
Building strong, strategic relationships with senior leaders is the key to your product’s success. Given the level of complexity involved in stakeholder management, there’s no one-size-fits all strategy to follow. Instead, you should approach relationship building with an open mind. Put the effort into creating meaningful interactions, build trust through consistency and always look for ways to add value.
You should also be prepared for the landscape to change. The product journey is never a linear one so use empathy to better understand each relationship within your team of stakeholders and adapt your communication style accordingly. Using influence rather than authority will always get better results when managing any product, particularly in conversations that relate to strategy and business operations – and in many cases your stakeholders will be more senior than you anyway!
Finally, remember that strong relationships take time. By managing expectations, making sure stakeholders feel heard and using customer and market data to ensure your decisions are clear and defendable, you can foster positive relationships with senior leaders. Once those relationships are established, you will be able to focus on what’s truly important – creating a fantastic product for the customer. After all, the customer holds the ultimate key to business success.
Ian Lunn is a global thought leader in product management and Founding Director of Product Focus, a leading global provider of product management courses in the UK, US and Europe. He has over 25 years’ product management and marketing experience with technology-based companies, ranging from startups to multinational businesses.
