As the role of a Product Manager continues to evolve and become more and more demanding, PMs also need to hone their core competencies at the same time.  These soft skills that can be developed over the years of working and through coaching/mentoring, could actually spell the difference between launching a product that will disrupt the industry and a mediocre one.

There are seven areas that I believe every Product Manager needs to understand and develop to become outstanding in their field.  Consider these as your building blocks or your stepping stones on your journey to excellence.  Let me share the seven areas with you:

1. Critical Thinking: it is the ability to explore all aspects of an issue in an exhaustive manner without being exhausted yourself. As a result, you are able to say something so profound that you are able to change the perception of others.  
2. Communication: is having the three C’s of good communication: clear, concise...

A Product Manager’s role is to set the vision for a product, set the path for the product, and communicate the vision to the stakeholders.  As you would a product, creating a roadmap for your career and streamlining your actions to ensure its progress is but imperative.

I recently conducted the Confidence Challenge Online Workshop, which received a great number of participants.  From this activity, I have received quite a lot of questions about how I manage to stay ahead in my career or how I keep it selling.  It got me thinking about how a Product Manager’s role isn’t cut in stone and so many tend to get bogged down in their day-to-day responsibilities.

In this video, I have talked about the six questions that every product manager must ask themselves to accelerate the progress in their career.

1. What will get me promoted?  Clarify exactly what your company expects from you and what is it that you can do to get...

One of the most valuable currencies as a product manager is influence.  As a Product Manager, you will often find yourself being involved in projects that you may not have any experience in handling yet and influence will help you get the much needed support from stakeholders, your own team and other support teams.  An integral part of influence is having the confidence in yourself, your skills, the project and most especially, your team.

 What makes a confident product manager?

 I think, along with that question, every Product Manager has at one point asked how does a confident product manager act.  As confidence is highly related to high performance, it is even more important for Product Managers. I have talked about the Imposter Syndrome in my previous lessons and how many Product Managers struggle with this.  Many feel they are being an imposter, that they are not really worthy of doing the job.

 In this video, I will paint a picture of what a...

SUMMARY:

In product management, I often get asked two questions:  “How do I go and become a product manager?”, “How do I get into Google as a product manager?” and “How do I prioritize features?”

In this video, I am sharing with you, not theories or frameworks, but the four levels of prioritization.  As you climb these four levels, you get more and more effective as a product manager. Do these four levels and you will soon notice that your efficiency have dramatically increased and you start doing more strategic things. 

So let’s get started.

First level: The basic level which is when you prioritize things essentially ticket by ticket.  It is where you break down the users’ story into all the engineering tasks, prioritize, sequence and categorize the tasks.

Second level: The must-have, should-have and could-have.  Here you start prioritizing by features...

In this video, I am sharing this one key that made it possible for me to accomplish a lot more than ever before.  It’s learning how to get re-energized fast. This is very dear to my heart and I’m sharing it with you. Do these easy steps and you’ll be amazed at the number of tasks you can accomplish.

There are three main things that I do:

First, know how to structure your day so you are doing similar activities together.  When you transition from one activity to another that are so different in nature will cause you to lose more energy.  Start bucketing your like activities together. This step has been so critical for my success in 2019 and allowed me to deliver what’s really important for my team.

Remember, we don’t lose energy working through the day.  We lose energy from transition.

Next, transition to the activities well by setting your intention right for those activities.  Be clear on your output and why it’s...

It’s time for 2020 and a whole new decade! If you have new year resolutions planned out - there is a high likelihood that they will fail. How about taking a strategy that will make them much more likely to succeed?

In most cases, the resolutions fail because they go against how we see ourselves.  The habits we stack in our life, which we think will contribute to our success, are not congruent with the future identity anchored in our brain. They are often at odds with each other. Here’s an example that will help illustrate this point:

Say my goal for 2020 is to coach a thousand product managers. To realize this goal, I need to think of the identity that represents one who coached a thousand product managers. I have to think of myself as a business owner or an entrepreneur. So now, my goal and the future identity that I want to assume are congruent with each other.

I want you to focus not on the goals but the identity you need to take on to succeed....

It started on a weekend. I suddenly started worrying about a new feature we were beginning to work on Monday.

All sorts of questions started to emerge. Did enough customers need this feature to justify building it? Had we understood the requirements enough? Did we have the right support from other teams? What if we were going to do a lot of work that would be worth nothing? What if?

I wish this story were atypical. I wish that I was hit with doubt and second-guessing myself less often.

Or do I?

Doubt serves like a set of brakes. They help you from running off the road, but in excess, they can slow you down tremendously.

So seek not to eliminate doubt but to optimize it.

There are five things you must do to optimize doubt:

1. Recognize when your sense of uncertainty causes you not to take shots that can change your life
2. Have empathy for yourself when you doubt yourself
3. Learn to step into roles
4. Own your successes
5. Build your support systems

Recognize when doubt causes you to miss...

Learn to Successfully Design Your Habits Easily

Previously, I’ve talked about building habits using pure willpower and the danger of anchoring on this alone to develop new habits.  Today is about the different ways with which you can start building really awesome habits. These tips are based on two books that truly inspired me: The Power of Habit and Atomic Habits.

First off, understand that your habits link to your identity.  How you see yourself will be reinforced by the habits that you adopt.  Full disclosure, I have for myself 8 statements that I read each morning in which I anchor my identity. The more reinforced the identity gets, the more improvement you will see over time.  This is fundamental in establishing habits.  

Make them obvious.  Implementation intention is the key here.  Identify a regular time, a place or a situation when you will do the new habits.  The easiest way is to tie a new habit with an...

That One Skill Every Product Manager Should Have

We are the voice of the customer and we cannot play this role unless we understand the customer. The most vital skill at play here is our listening skills. Engaging our customers, our teammates and anyone we are talking for any purpose cannot happen unless you get deeper in to the conversation.

I am going to share with you the framework I use to listen better and have those much needed deeper conversations so I can get the information that people don’t normally share.

I call this framework SOAR.

SOAR  will help you start to get better, and start to see that momentum where you’re building up your skills as a product manager.

Full Transcript

Hey this is Shobhit, founder of International Product Manager and today we are going to talk about how do you listen in a way, how do you engage your customer, your teammate, anyone who you’re talking to in a way such that you get more information, you get deeper into...