Best of 2021: Build Your Product Management Career Around Empathy

In this episode of the How to Succeed in Product Management Podcast, marketing professor Jeff Shulman and The Product Management Center advisory board members Red Russak and Soumeya Benghanem welcome Kevin Shah (T-Mobile) and Lisa Huang-North (Microsoft) to discuss why product managers need empathy when communicating with customers and while building their career, as well as finding the balance between being empathetic and product success.     Support for How to Succeed in Product Management is brought to you by Apptentive, which enables product managers to measure shifts in customer emotion and gather actionable feedback across the mobile customer journey. To learn more, go to Apptentive.com/UW.   What to Listen For: 00:00 Intro 03:53 Empathy also matters in how you manage your career 07:36 Do you understand where you are in your personal journey? 10:13 We suffer from survivor bias 13:33 The lack of empathy to certain stakeholders or groups can show up in the execution 16:12 Don’t focus on the persona and characteristics, focus on the needs and problems 22:15 Data communication depends on the channels already established 24:48 What’s important to users vs what’s important to the company 27:16 Try to understand where the misalignment is happening 28:06 Come back to the pain points you’re trying to address 31:03 Feeling empowered and having an authentic PM mindset  34:10 An executive does not understand the customers as well as the PMs do 38:53 Myth: “I’m not a great sales person and that’s why I think I’ll be a great PM.” 43:02 Best relationship between sales and products are centered around culture 44:56 Product managers are artists and creators  49:19 Logically group your community and dedicate different efforts on each segment  56:17 Empathy is your superpower   57:49 Recommended resources for PMs to get better at being empathetic 01:01:16 Drawing a balance between empathy and profitability  01:04:23 Product management is a contact sport and also a team sport 01:09:45 Own the job and be resolute with your standards   01:11:34 You don’t have to love something, but you have to be really curious about it