Before I started my MBA in the fall of 2018, I had no idea what product management was, let alone how to become a product manager. Seriously. Before entering the program, the vast majority of my working experience had been in an editorial capacity with online media outlets and Canadian television broadcasters.
Prior to spending the first few years of my career embroiled in Toronto’s media scene, I completed a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism.
This may shock you, but the topics of product development, customer centricity, and the gears that make the wheels of most businesses turn…never came up. Basically, if you’d asked me back then, “what does a product manager do?” I would have come up blank.
My Story: From Journalist to Senior PM
So, how, you might ask—with no technical experience and no business degree—did I find myself working as a senior product manager with the world’s largest provider of media monitoring technology? Some days, it’s just as much of a mystery to me.
The Aha Moment!
The tale of my product career path actually begins while covering a Saturday-morning breaking news shift several years ago. Just like any other day, our stubbornly manual operation was often rewarded with unpredictable reader engagement and an overly exhausted news team.
While frustrating, the struggles of the media industry to monetize itself in the digital age were already well documented. It didn’t take long for me to have the very thought that many great entrepreneurs and product managers have had before….”There has to be a better way.”
That mindset shift changed everything for me. I didn’t know it yet (and wouldn’t realize it for many years), but I had just stumbled upon the secret to being a great product manager—recognizing and solving real problems for customers (whoever that customer is!).
All the better if you’re among the first to solve that particular problem.
While that might seem like the end of the story, I’m afraid it’s not quite that simple. Yes, the core skill of a great product manager is solving problems for our users, but that’s often not where “non-technical” product managers struggle the most.
The Learning Curve
For several years, I applied this new mindset to solving problems within the media sector, before expanding my product career into other industries such as marketing technology, media monitoring, fintech, and the creative economy.
After landing my first product management job, it took years of struggling to keep up with technical terminology and learning new tools only to have them become obsolete, before I came to a valuable realization:
There are many ways to become a great PM.
As product management sits at the heart of user experience, technology, and business, many people enter the product management career path by leveraging backgrounds in software engineering, computer science, design, or business development.
While I continue to work on those skill sets, my core strengths lie in the creative ways that I solve problems for customers and businesses and communicate my product vision to stakeholders.
My background as a writer and communicator means that, while I may have to lean on my development team to help make certain decisions, I excel in advocating for our joint vision, managing stakeholders, empathizing with customers, and connecting the “why.”
4 Underrated Skills of Non-Technical Product Managers
1. Presentation Skills
Many non-technical PMs have backgrounds in the creative and communications sector. This naturally gives you an advantage when it comes to visualizing and presenting ideas to audiences large and small.
Thanks to my experience in broadcast journalism, I’m well-versed in delivering prepared presentations during quarterly planning meetings as well as speaking eloquently off-the-cuff. The immense benefits of this skill surprised me the most after making the switch to product management.
Product managers with refined public speaking skills are in high demand by product leadership teams because the product team often acts as ambassadors of the company vision within their own respective departments.
How to Leverage Presentation Skills
This skill can be leveraged at almost any time but is best put to use in scenarios where key leaders are present to witness your presentation prowess. Think, quarterly planning meetings, ideation workshops, and product demos.
Tips:
- To let your natural talent shine, be sure to prepare talk tracks ahead of important presentations to get comfortable with the subject matter.
- Feel free to practice your delivery as if you were really presenting to your audience (jokes and all!) to iron out any awkwardness in your phrasing or pacing ahead of time.
- Lastly, practice building professional slide decks. Don’t worry about leaning on the PowerPoint Designer to help you out there.
2. Empathy
Empathy is probably the most important soft skill in an aspiring product manager’s toolkit. It’s also the hardest to master and deploy. Empathy not only benefits us when identifying customer needs, but also when engaging with stakeholders.
As a former journalist, my ability to empathize with my sources and readers was a necessary skill to creating honest and authentic content that accurately represented their struggles and needs.
In many non-technical professions, such as marketing, advertising, content strategy, graphic design, etc., empathy is a critical ingredient to connecting with a target audience and putting effective messaging out into the world.
How to Leverage Empathy
While imperative, empathy is the hardest skill to deploy. This is because leading with empathy is a mindset. The main ways of leveraging an empathetic mindset are when interacting with users, designing the user experience, writing user stories, and collecting user research.
When interacting with users, empathy is a critical component to understanding their deepest needs. By approaching these conversations with a sincere desire to understand, product managers can hone in on the most important problems the business should be solving.
Tip:
While empathy for users is the main priority of a great product manager, don’t forget to approach stakeholder relationships with an empathetic mindset as well. Doing so can help you forge alliances within your organization that may help accelerate your product roadmap.
3. Narrative Sense
You’ve probably been in a meeting at some point (doing your best to pay attention, of course) where you couldn’t help but think, “where are they going with this?” That disconnect can often be traced back to a lack of narrative sense on the part of the speaker.
Luckily for you, your background has probably made you an excellent storyteller, which will come in handy in more ways than one.
This skill can be leveraged in both formal presentation settings as well as informal conversational settings. Great PMs never miss an opportunity to tell the story of their product to anyone who will listen.
How to Leverage Narrative Sense
Storytelling skills come in handy in a wide range of scenarios, and unlike presentation skills, it’s just as important to call upon this talent in workplace conversations.
In formal settings, be sure to craft a narrative by breaking out your presentation into a logical beginning, middle, and end. Use plenty of visuals throughout and make sure to repeat key points and objectives you’re hoping to accomplish throughout.
In workplace conversations, however, this skill set can be slightly more difficult to use. The impact of workplace chatter on the prioritization and perception of work is vastly underrated.
To keep your projects top of mind for your colleagues and management team—in a good way—be sure to use consistent, positive language every time you discuss your product. The same terminology, objectives, and value points you would use in formal presentations settings should ideally carry over into your workplace discussions.
By being consistent in your communication across the board, you can ensure that whenever someone else mentions your product, the first words that come to their mind are yours.
Tips:
- People are naturally inclined to support people over numbers and spreadsheets. Regardless of the setting you’re in, when telling the story of your product, play up the users whose problems you are solving by delivering on the roadmap.
- This is also a great skill to pull out when interviewing for entry-level or associate product manager positions. You are uniquely equipped to use your advanced storytelling capabilities to connect your previous experience to future success and land that product management job.
4. Brainstorming
Generating creative and exciting product ideas is my favourite part of the product management role. If you’re entering product management with a non-technical background, there’s a good chance that your previous role involved a great degree of brainstorming and idea generation.
This is the time to put those skills to use! The research and brainstorming frameworks you used in previous roles are still useful in your future as a product manager. Since you’re already well-versed in following creative hunches, you’re already one step ahead.
How to Leverage Brainstorming Skills
One of the primary struggles of organizations today is inspiring creativity and innovation among their employees. In the product world, my favorite place to leverage this skill set is during product ideation workshops.
Tips:
- Learn a handful of design thinking frameworks that you are comfortable with that can help inspire strategic thinking when new product ideas are needed.
- While team activities can be very effective, don’t be afraid to dedicate a portion of your time every week to independently brainstorming new ideas for your product.
Technical Skills That Product Managers Should Learn
While leveraging your natural talents will undoubtedly help you thrive as a PM, learning other fundamental product management skills will further accelerate your success.
These are the “hard skills” that often appear in the job descriptions for product management roles—which often hold potentially great candidates back from applying. Becoming familiar with these concepts can boost your chances of impressing an interviewer.
Agile Development Frameworks
One of the most effective ways to enhance your confidence as a product manager is to brush up on your understanding of agile development methodologies—in particular, Scrum.
If you’re unfamiliar with Scrum, Atlassian defines it as “an agile project management framework that helps teams structure and manage their work through a set of values, principles, and practices.”
While not every company follows agile methodologies, many modern companies have incorporated agile development processes into their product lifecycle in some capacity. This definitely qualifies both agile and scrum as core product management competencies.
Developing a strong understanding of these rituals and practices can increase your credibility with potential employers and lessen the learning curve of working with development teams when you do land that job.
Luckily, most product management courses will cover these practices.
Where to Learn About Agile Development:
- Agile Project Management Tutorial | What Is Agile Project Management? via YouTube (Free)
- Institute of Product Leadership Advanced Product Management – Agile Methodologies, via Udemy ($)
- Scrum Alliance CSPO (Certified Scrum Product Owner) Certification ($$)
- Scrum.org PSPO (Professional Scrum Product Owner) Certification ($$)
Design Thinking
Design thinking frameworks are an underrated set of tools that actually leverage a number of your core skillsets as a non-technical product manager.
These frameworks refer to problem-solving exercises that can be run in groups or independently to solve real-world problems of either the customers or the business, develop an idea, create a prototype, etc.
Despite my natural brainstorming and creative capability as a former writer and journalist, it was difficult for me to apply those skills to product ideation.
Learning a handful of product design frameworks, such as Jobs-to-be-Done, Brain-writing and Impact vs. Effort, helped me apply my creativity to developing better product ideas. Additionally, it gave me a boost to begin putting together my own frameworks for problem-solving that I continue to use to this day.
Where to Learn About Design Thinking:
- Product School: Webinar: Design Thinking for Product Development by Amazon Sr PM, Rahul Dua, via YouTube (Free)
- University of Virginia: Design Thinking for Innovation, via Coursera ($)
- Design and Creativity for Product Managers, via Udemy ($)
Beginners Corporate Finance
In order to be successful in the product management profession, building products that generate revenue and hit other objectives for your organization is key.
Fully understanding the impact of your product ideas can be tricky without a basic understanding of corporate finance concepts, especially when it comes to pricing and packaging strategy.
In most cases, there will be a finance team to support you with complicated analyses. However, having a solid understanding of the potential Return on Investment (ROI) of your product ideas will be key to whether leaders buy into your vision.
Where to Learn About Corporate Finance:
Data Analytics
There can be no sound product strategy in the absence of data. In fact, a primary role of product managers is to measure the success of the experiences they design. The good news is, it only takes a high-level understanding of a handful of key metrics to discern trends and make meaningful product decisions.
In addition to some choice data analytics software, some metrics to get familiar with include Downloads, Retention Rate, Bounce Rate, Average Revenue Per User (ARPU), Daily Active Users (DAU), Monthly Active Users (MAU) and Cost Per Acquisition (CPA).
Where to Learn About Data Analytics:
- Product School: How to Optimize your Product Using Analytics by Dan Olson, via YouTube (Free)
- Google Data Analytics Certificate, via Coursera ($)
- Product Management: Concise Guide to Product Analytics, via Udemy ($)
Technical Terminology and Concepts
Depending on the type of product, I don’t believe a product manager needs to know how to code to be successful. However, it is beneficial to meet your development team halfway, where possible.
You can do this by brushing up on software development terminology, getting familiar with the development tools they use (at least at a high level), and understanding the key use cases of the different coding languages.
Many online courses provide low-cost and efficient ways of brushing up on these skills on a part-time, flexible basis.
Where to Learn Technical Terminology:
- Learn Basic SQL in 15 Minutes | Business Intelligence For Beginners | SQL Tutorial For Beginners 1/3, via YouTube (Free)
- LinkedIn: Technology for Product Managers ($)
- University of Alberta: Software Development and Agile Practices, via Coursera ($)
- General Assembly: Programming for Non-Programmers ($)
Other Product Management Certifications to Consider
The best way to become a great product manager is to learn on the go. However, if you’re aiming to accelerate your PM career path and have the budget for a broader course, these are some of the product management certifications that are well-recognized in the industry today.
The Bottom Line
If you’re currently going back and forth about pursuing a career in product management, don’t let your previous work experience hold you back.
Successful product managers come from all a variety of professions, backgrounds and experiences. Regardless of your background, the most important role of the product manager is to build product features that solve problems for users.
There are many transitionary roles to consider, which can offer direct product management experience.
As long as you can apply your problem-solving skills and previous work experience to identifying and resolving the most pressing challenges for customers, you’re on your way to a long and successful career.
About the author
Jessica Vomiero is a tech-journalist-turned-Senior Product Manager with a diverse professional background spanning media, content strategy, business and technology. She’s passionate about helping mission-driven companies leverage technology to accomplish their goals. She’s currently fascinated by Web3, AI and the role of creativity in a tech-driven world. Her role at Cision allows her to work on the world’s largest SaaS tools for the communications and creative sectors.
This article originally appeared on Theproductmanager.com and was syndicated by MediaFeed.org
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When Politics & Election Debates Enter The Workplace: An Organizational Guide
It’s safe to say that the political climate, like the natural one, is somewhat charged right now. In the US, Democrats and Republicans are further apart ideologically now “than at any time in the past 50 years.”
A significant 24% of Republican employees—and 23% of Democrat employees—wouldn’t want to work with a co-worker who plans to vote for a presidential candidate they don’t like in the next election.
So, it’s something of a tinderbox and HR professionals and leaders may well end up having to deal with some potentially incendiary situations.
To help keep the peace, we asked some HR experts and business leaders to explain how they’ve approached creating company policies that cover political expression in the workplace and their best practices for de-escalating workplace political disagreements when things get heated.
Let’s look at what the law says first.
Most Americans hold their constitutional right to free speech close to heart.
So you might be surprised to hear that, in most U.S. states, the First Amendment only covers government employees, not employees working for private businesses. This means that, once most US citizens arrive at work, they leave their right to freely express their political views at the door.
In fact, most employment relationships are “at-will” in the U.S. This means employers are well within their rights to let an employee go at any time and for any reason—or even for no real reason at all if they feel like it—which means most U.S. businesses can ban all political discussion in the workplace and fire any employees talking politics at work.
It’s no wonder why 60% of employees believe discussing politics at work could negatively impact their career opportunities.
That’s not the case in every state though. Some have passed legislation that gives private sector workers employee rights that protect them from being discriminated against at work because of their political activity.
According to The National Law Review:
- In Colorado, North Dakota, and Utah, employers can’t discriminate against employees based on any “lawful conduct outside of work.” In Colorado and North Dakota, employees also can’t be fired for any off-duty lawful activity, including speech.
- In Connecticut, private employers can’t discriminate against their workers based on the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment—as long as an employee’s political activity doesn’t substantially interfere with their job performance.
- In California and New York, workers can’t be discriminated against for any off-duty “recreational activities” they take part in—which covers attending political events.
- Employers can’t retaliate against employees for engaging in “political activities” in the states and territories of California, Colorado, Guam, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, South Carolina, Utah, and West Virginia or the cities of Seattle (Washington) and Madison (Wisconsin).
- In New Mexico, employees’ “political opinions” are protected by law.
- Businesses are explicitly banned from discriminating against employees based on party membership or for engaging in election-related speech and political activities in the states and territories of New York, Illinois, Washington DC, Utah, Iowa, Louisiana, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands and the cities of Broward County (Florida) and Urbana (Illinois).
This leaves businesses in Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida (with the exception of Broward County), Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Wisconsin (with the exception of Madison), and Wyoming free to ban political discussions in the workplace.
But should they?
Let’s take a closer look at what happens when you try to ban people from talking politics in the workplace—and some tried-and-tested policies that help you keep the peace a lot more effectively than trying to police what your employees can and can’t say.
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Of course, just because businesses can put a blanket ban on talking politics at work doesn’t mean they should. Just ask Basecamp CEO, Jason Fried.
In 2021, a Basecamp employee flagged they didn’t appreciate an internal list of “funny” customer names. This sparked a fierce debate among the company’s staff centered around diversity, inclusion, and tolerance.
Fried responded by announcing there would be “no more societal and political discussions” at his company, the result of which being around a third of his employees resigned within a matter of days.
Fried was perfectly entitled to do that, but trying to control what his employees could and couldn’t say at work didn’t go down well at all.
That could have been the least of Fried’s worries if he hadn’t reversed his decision. As Talia Knowles, HR Specialist at Human Resource told me, “Some people find their identity in what is considered by others to be ‘political,’ such as LGBTQ rights, religion, or hatred of a president. Others take those people’s identities as a personal affront to their own religious beliefs or freedom of expression.”
Which begs the question: what does banning “politics” from the workplace look like when one employee’s request to use their correct pronouns—or their choice to wear a form of religious dress—is another’s hot-button political issue?
Trying to keep the peace quickly starts to look a lot like workplace discrimination if you’re not careful here.
Ultimately, political conversations are going to happen at work whether they’re “banned” or not. In fact, 83% of people say they talk about politics at work, with people at either end of the political spectrum being more likely to bring up politics in the workplace than those who sit on the fence.
Despite this, only 8% of organizations have communicated guidelines to employees around political discussions at work.
Trust me: you’ll want a formal policy around political speech in your business in place before things go nuclear between two employees who don’t see eye-to-eye on a hot-button issue.
The more proactive you are about creating an environment where your employees can civilly discuss their views through the right policies, the less likely that is to happen.
But if banning all political talk is a bad move, what should your policies around politics at work cover?
I asked leaders and HR professionals for their best advice for creating workplace policies that help maintain a healthy working environment for your people.
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- Set clear expectations in your Code of Conduct Policy. “This should include things like wearing appropriate workwear (without slogans/offensive language) and how the organization promotes open and transparent communication.” – Tracy Rawlinson
- Get an official policy against political discrimination in place. “This policy should include unwelcome behavior such as jokes, insults, or gestures. Make it clear that any employee engaging in such behavior will face disciplinary action if necessary.” says Mary Alice Pizana, Human Resources Manager at Herrman and Herrman PLLC
- Set a precedent of respect above all. “You might not be able to ban all discussions of sensitive topics, but encourage your employees to respect each other’s beliefs and avoid inflammatory topics,” says Knowles.
- Help your people recognize discrimination and harassment. “Provide regular training on handling political conflicts at work and recognizing signs of discrimination or harassment,” suggests Pizana, “This training can help employees identify potential issues early on and take appropriate action before they escalate.”
- Be clear on what’s not appropriate for the company Slack. “Much of our interaction happens online, so we’ve put together guidelines for positive and respectful online communication,” Chris Alexakis, the CEO of Cabinet Select told me. “This includes refraining from sharing politically charged content on company channels.”
- Set clear expectations from day one. “Even during the onboarding process for new hires, you should inform all employees that the company has well-defined policies and procedures in place for conflict resolution and a code of conduct,” says Andre Oentoro, CEO of Breadnbeyond, “Outline what behaviors are acceptable and unacceptable when discussing political topics at work. This will provide a framework for addressing and managing political conflicts when they arise.”
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Let’s face it, even the most airtight HR policies and procedures won’t prevent political disagreements from popping up altogether.
In fact, 45% percent of U.S. workers say they’ve personally experienced political disagreements in the workplace, and over 1 in 10 have actually experienced bullying in the workplace due to their political views.
Here’s how HR experts approach politically-centered arguments when they do blow up.
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It can be tempting to treat it as a taboo subject once the dust has settled on a political debate that reaches boiling point in the office.
After all, if two employees have opposing political beliefs then there doesn’t seem much use in retreading that ground. Is it not better to leave the whole thing in the rearview mirror and move forward?
But that would be a blunder, Lou Reverchuk, Co-founder and CEO at EchoGlobal told me. “The big mistake some leaders make is to think that not talking about an event makes it lose its importance when actually the exact opposite happens,” he said.
Instead of leaving the incident to become the elephant in the room between everyone who was privy to the bust-up, a manager should pull the people involved in the disagreement into a meeting and give them feedback on how it affected their teammates. “This meeting shouldn’t be about saying who’s right or who’s wrong,” says Reverchuk. “It should be about asking the people involved to put themselves in the shoes of the other person—and those who witnessed the argument—and offering an efficient solution.”
Of course, when two employees have a blow-out argument in front of their teammates, they’re not the only ones affected. “The climate that is created from these conflicts affects all team members,” says Reverchuk. “So, it’s important to hold a meeting—after the conversation with the members who were involved in politically-based conflict—with all the employees of the sector in order to close the matter.”
Bringing the argument back up again might seem counterproductive, but it will actually prevent the event from lingering over everyone and help set the warring employees on a path to being able to work with each other without any issues.
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For the most part, political disagreements aren’t a big deal between people who get along with each other.
I doubt you share the exact same political opinions as all your friends but you still enjoy hanging out with them because your relationship is about so much more than which political candidate they voted for in the last election.
But you’re a lot less likely to let things slide with Mike from accounting if all you know about him is that he supports a different political party than you.
Now I know team building activities get a bad rep (I’ve certainly cringed through most I’ve been made to do), but “Events that bring employees together in a non-political context come in handy to foster a sense of camaraderie and build positive relationships among team members,” says Oentoro.
Bringing people together through things as simple as icebreaker questions can be the perfect antidote to things turning sour when your people start talking politics, as we all cut people we know a lot more slack than strangers.
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At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter whether two employees are arguing about gun rights or whether pineapple belongs on pizza (it totally does by the way…).
If they’re causing a scene or making their teammates feel like they need to walk on eggshells around them, they need to cut it out.
So, when political discussions get really heated in the workplace, Knowles says it’s well worth “Reminding employees that they’re at work to work, not solve national problems.”
This gentle reminder can often be enough to diffuse the situation if you’ve got a strong company culture that encourages your people to prioritize mutual respect and kindness.
If not, it’s time to move to conflict resolution.
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“Politics-based conflicts are in essence no different from any other type of conflict,” Diane Rosen, an HR consultant at Compass Consultants, explained to me. This means they should be navigated like any other kind of conflict by “Encouraging people to ask rather than tell, listen to learn, engage in dialogue rather than download, and look for common ground on a human level,” says Rosen.
People so often go into political discussions geared up to try to “win”. To de-escalate political debates between teammates, Rosen recommends stepping in and encouraging the warring workers to “Respect each other, have an open mind, and be willing not to win”.
Today, our politics are so polarising that it can be hard for it not to affect our working relationships if we find out that the people we work with sit on the other side of the political fence to us.
If you can successfully dial things back a few notches when hot-button topics come up, you might be able to encourage employees at opposite ends of the political spectrum to learn to live and let live.
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Great leaders motivate their people to bring their best selves to work every day. CEOs who spend their weekends wading into political debates on social media? They do the opposite.
“Leaders are role models to their employees,” explains Tracy Rawlinson, who has over 30 years of HR-related experience. “If their boss showcases listening and conflict resolution skills, employees can learn how to react and diffuse a situation where people don’t have the same views.”
With this in mind, your higher-ups should think twice about wearing their political affiliation on their sleeves. And managers should definitely focus on resolving political discussions around the office, not getting involved in them.
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Most people don’t set out to deliberately upset their colleagues. But when water cooler talk turns to politics, things can quickly get ugly.
“In most situations, people don’t realize their actions cause harm,” says Rawlinson. “So, reflect on real examples of times when an employee struggled to keep the peace with a colleague with them during their performance reviews. Use a restorative approach that describes their behavior, and agree on an action plan together that will help stop things from getting out of hand again”.
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2024 is set to be one of the most contentious elections in U.S. history and that tension is bound to spill over into your workplace—especially if you’ve got teammates who sit on opposite ends of the political spectrum.
Use the expert tips we’ve outlined here for the best chances of keeping the peace between employees who don’t see eye-to-eye.
About David Broderick
You’ll usually find David writing about the latest and greatest developments in the world of HR. He’s passionate about empowering busnisess with the strategies and tools they need to engage their employees.
This article originally appeared on peoplemanagingpeople.com and was syndicated by MediaFeed.org.
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Featured Image Credit: Jelena Danilovic/istockphoto.
