To be a better PM, be less annoying
Starting this series off with some heat: fix your own sharp edges! Be less annoying!
I’m not here to tell you to test value, viability, feasibility, and usability risks. If you’re here, you’ve already mastered Product Management 101.
If you’re here, you’re trying to whittle your already-sharp self into the ultimate weapon of product management. And to do this, you have to be your own worst critic and zero in on painful but necessary areas of yourself to improve.
This article covers three points:
YOU are the most important product to improve and iterate on. So drop your ego, and just do it: make yourself less annoying.
You can’t rely on others to proactively give you critical feedback. And don’t be upset about this; we’re only human. Instead, seek it out with some practical suggestions.
Suggestions on how to better identify your own blind spots, including some common annoying tendencies we are all guilty of from time to time
Here is one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever received
I had been a product manager for about 1 year. One day, my CEO (and a product guy through and through) told me:
I know you think you’re a hotshot product manager now, and you have to have a lot of opinions and speak up in meetings to be respected.
But the true master knows how to shut the fuck up and listen!
But wait. The advice I’m giving you isn’t “listen more.”
The advice from my CEO unfurled into: “Sometimes when someone is speaking, you preemptively finish what they are about to say (and sometimes you are wrong). When you finish others’ sentences, it can make people feel like you don’t value or want their input. It’s more effective to let others feel heard than to show that you already knew the answer.”
The advice I’m giving you is to polish your own rough edges: figure out how you may rub others the wrong way, and fix it.
Get out of your own way!
YOU are the most important product to improve and iterate on. So drop your ego, and just do it.
Just as a sports car goes more quickly if it is aerodynamic, so too does a product manager “product manage” better if people enjoy working with you1.
If you’re here, you already know this. But I’m telling you to go a bit further, and that you have to put in your own work to achieve it.2
Recognize that you can and should be vigilant about improving not only your product craft and technical/business/UX savvy, but also the package that it comes in. Not what you are doing, or even how you are doing it. This is more about the way that you are—the way you behave without even thinking.
But how?
Necessary feedback is hard to find
You can’t rely on others to proactively give you critical feedback. And don’t be upset about this; we’re only human. Instead, seek it out with some practical suggestions.
“But wait,” you might think. “I have great feedback in my annual reviews! Surely this advice doesn’t apply to me?”
First, you can always improve. And the advice you need the most is often the advice that others are least willing to give you. By “the advice you need most,” I mean: some suggestion that, if applied, may make your future endeavors more likely to succeed… by making you more pleasant to work with.
Why is it so hard to get this feedback? We’re only human.3 And so:
We want to be liked, so we won’t rock the boat.
We doubt ourselves. If we find the way another person behaves to be less-than-optimal, we may assume that the problem is us, not them.
We’re self-conscious. If we find a problem with the way another person behaves, we may think, “who am I to tell them anything?”
We may be afraid of crossing professional or social boundaries.4
Maybe we’re productivity-optimizing people taking Maya Angelou’s quote too far to heart as we try to grow our careers: “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” While Ms. Angelou is right, our over-awareness of this principle, and/or improper application in a professional setting, can obstruct our ability to grow and improve.
By design, organizations do not incentivize brutal but helpful honesty. Even companies that proclaim “radical transparency” or “radical candor” may not operate accordingly. When we work together in an company, we may fear that saying anything other than praise can damage our interpersonal relations, so we can’t rely on our colleagues to tell hard truths.5 And even when we no longer work with someone, we still stand to benefit by leaving others with a wholly positive impression of ourselves—ruling out former coworkers and professional acquaintances as sources of brutal feedback.
To summarize: you can’t rely on others to proactively tell you why you suck.
It’s on you to figure this out.
I was lucky. But what we can do is help others feel more comfortable giving us honest but brutal feedback:
Accept the constraints. Recognize that people are generally, inherently interested in being liked, and not likely to tell you something you don’t want to hear.
Choose the best data sources.
Find someone who does not stand to benefit from telling you what they think you want to hear. You know what I mean: don’t ask your partner, don’t go to your nicest colleague or your work wife, or even your manager. Or maybe that’s exactly what you should do, depending on your unique relationship with a person.
If you didn’t hear something you don’t want to hear, maybe you can find a tougher critic.
Protect the relationship; reassure collaborators about your desire for self-improvement. Make it clear to them that their sharing a criticism won’t damage the way you feel about them. For example:
Set expectations with your ask: “I’m working to improve myself. I value your honest feedback, and I expect that you may tell me something that may make me momentarily unhappy, but that I can take action on to be happier in the long term. What’s one thing I could do or stop doing that would make it easier to work with me?”
React neutrally, even blandly, if you hear something you don’t want to hear. Remember, that was the point! Do not scare them off from giving you honest feedback again.
Thank them. Reward them instantly! “Thank you. I appreciate the honest feedback, and I’ll take it into account as I work to improve myself.”
You don’t need to do this all of the time, but periodically, regularly soliciting difficult feedback can make it more likely to appear.
But if you really want to get better, it isn’t enough.
Identify your own blind spots
Suggestions on how to better identify your own blind spots, including some common annoying tendencies we are all guilty of from time to time
Know thyself. Here are some suggestions of where to look:
Observe other people’s reactions. Did someone grimace or seem annoyed after something you said? Sure, they may just be petty. But they are human, and you are a pragmatic product manager. This is free data! And maybe, even if only one person reacted that way, it could be that others (who are better trained in controlling their expressions) feel similarly? Maybe there’s something you said, or the way that you said it, that could have triggered a negative response? Use the “common annoying PM tendencies” section below for some ideas.
Observe your own reactions. I think there is some maxim of, if you find yourself annoyed by a certain behavior in others, it may be that you detest this tendency in yourself.
Consider some common annoying PM tendencies,6 think about whether others may have reason to find you guilty of them, and try these practical suggestions to combat them:
Do you take too long to get to the point? (Pithiness is a virtue! Time is money!)
→ (For meetings and in real time) Why are you taking so long? Are you trying to soften the blow before voicing disagreement or sharing a criticism? You don’t need 250 words to do this; say that you understand, make your point, and free up time for others to contribute.
→ (For written channels) Ask a trusted colleague how they might shorten your message or document, and if there are points that are unclear or uninteresting. Deviate from the template, write a second draft, or start from scratch with a fresher, shorter page as is useful.
→ Outline arguments with the points you want to make. If applied to written documents, the practice will also strengthen your verbal presentation.
Do you dominate meetings with your words and ideas?
→ Try to let others speak more. Better yet, invite perspectives from those less likely to speak up in a meeting while saving time. Try asking something like, “Would anyone like to share a point of view that hasn’t been represented?”
→ If you are remote, try muting yourself during video calls. The act of needing to unmute yourself can be enough of a check to help you think twice before jumping in.
Do you shut down others’ ideas? Phrased differently, have others stopped coming to you with ideas and contributions? Are they reluctant to collaborate with you?
→ Always thank people for their contribution. It takes time, energy, and cojones to form an idea and share it.
→ Work to improve shared understanding. Provide context proactively. If an idea is missing a point, bring it back to the problem and customer/business context. If the idea is great but there is x reason why you can’t do it, explain why. And may the next idea be better!
→ Actively solicit ideas and contributions, and welcome critique. Avoid responding defensively.
Are you sharing a stream of insights and ideas into the void, and not getting responses?
→ Facilitate a discussion rather than giving a lecture. Ask any honest questions you had and invite perspectives other than your own.
→ Process your learnings yourself, and share with others only suggested, actionable applications to your product or organizational context.
If you’re engaging in self-improvement, bravo! But your first motivation should be to better yourself, and not to be praised and admired for such a basic achievement.
Are you promoting and selling yourself, your own teams and your own initiatives, too often?
→ Try not to promote when the topic is somebody else’s initiative. It’s fine to say, “there is an opportunity to collaborate with x other initiative,” but let them have their moment. Keep the focus on them.
→ Let your work speak for itself. The next time that you feel the impulse to self-promote, hold back and let the frequency drop a bit.
→ Shout out somebody else for a change!
(Bonus) Better understand people by reading good fiction. Can you tell me why Mr. Collins from Pride and Prejudice is annoying?7 What about Ged in his youth in A Wizard of Earthsea?8 Observing fictional characters and their interactions from the perspective of a reader can help you better identify personality traits and behaviors that make someone annoying, or likable, or - often - both at once. Unless it’s Mr. Collins. Plus, it’s fun.
🗣️ Are there other common annoying tendencies that you’ve observed in yourself or others? What are you working to improve?
🗣️ What’s some good advice you’ve received?
🗣️ I’m working on writing more clearly and concisely. Are there parts of this post that I could have left out or shortened? 😊
Soft skills are essential to product management. The better your soft skills, the more quickly and ably you can obtain critical insights and perspectives, sell your vision, recruit collaborators, design and launch the best change possible, and have unexpected help along the way, e.g. hotfix a release when somebody (you) forgot to swap out the development and production feature flags….
Here I am, 6 years later, still constantly battling against myself to stop finishing other people’s sentences! But I’m certainly better at it than if I didn’t recognize and remind myself of the need and opportunity to improve.
I do think “we’re only human” is one of the core principles of product management—not only when thinking about customers, but also when collaborating with and across teams.
Would most people have told the youngest and only female employee at a startup to shut up and listen more? Probably not. And yet, it was one of the most useful pieces of feedback I’ve ever received, and applying it has helped me in my career and personal life.
This is one reason I find public praise and peer reviews (which are consistently, reliably praising - for all of the reasons mentioned) not only unhelpful, but actively damaging. The decision to publicly praise others may be motivated by a desire to change the impression of the praise-giver.
This is not meant to be specifically petty, but generally critical. I am not calling out any individuals but outlining common practices that anyone may be guilty of, including/primarily myself.
Mr. Collins relentlessly tries to play up his own connections and self-importance. He over-values rank, acting superior to those he perceives to have a lower social position, while blindly flattering those above him (even if they may be lacking in other decent qualities).
SPOILER! Ged is hungry to prove himself and, while he shows himself to be adept at basic magics, gets over-confident and thinks he is ready to handle arcane, dark magic without understanding the implications. I can relate.