How to Influence Quickly? Essential Tips for Product Managers

Product managers who lead the execution of a product know that working with an inattentive and context-switching development team is a struggle. This is why developing strong influencing skills is crucial in product management.

Reading Mindtheproduct blog, we’ve found 5 great tips for product managers who want to influence quickly. Here they are in brief:

  1. Define individual motivations for anticipated challenges

Every team member has different motivations that can slow the development process. The product manager must empathize with each individual to understand the why behind their motivation and anticipate related challenges. A strong product manager knows exactly how to create an environment for the team member to share their motivation.

  1. Reduce future frustrations with custom communication

Frequent meetings, lack of documentation, conflicting interests, and unrealistic deadlines frustrate. These are the common issues that cause team friction. To avoid roadblocks that slow development, product managers must reduce their individual team members’ frustrations. That’s why it’s very important to customize their communication to each individuals’ needs.

  1. Increase engagement with storytelling

While storytelling is a popular tactic when pitching a new idea or advocating for customer needs, it should be used for influencing product development. By doing this, product managers can memorably communicate a clear and focused mission.

  1. Get vocal about individual triumphs to build trust

Trust requires vulnerability, it takes a long time to build and takes only seconds to lose. For product managers, this can be tricky to navigate with different cross-functional personalities.

  1. Alignment with decision-makers to gain insights

Every company has a different decision maker. The product manager needs to identify and develop a strong relationship with them. This is crucial because if the decision maker does not agree with the product – no matter how wonderful the team might think it is – the product is going nowhere.

The best way to do this is with consistent alignment so you can understand their needs, gain deeper insights and make decisions together. Without alignment, you run the risk of building the wrong product and never launching.

What do you think about these tips? If you have other suggestions for how product managers can quickly build influence, feel free to share it here!

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