Why is empathy important for Product Managers?

4️⃣ To know what to build, you need to know your users. 3️⃣ To know your users, you need to understand them. 2️⃣ To understand users, you need to listen to them. 1️⃣ To listen to users, you need to let go of your sense of self and view the world from users' perspective, i.e., empathize with them. The process of building starts with empathy for users.

Empathy is probably the number one most important skill for Product Managers. Your job is to validate what you can build that is valuable to customers and is viable for your company to create a business around. You can't validate either of those if you do all of your analysis based on your own thoughts, beliefs, and opinions. You need to uncover unmet needs and pain points of customers and the only way to do that is to try and put yourself in their shoes.

Empathy allows product managers to put themselves in the shoes of the users. By understanding users' pain points, challenges, and motivations, product managers can create products that truly meet their needs. Empathizing with users helps in designing products that are not only functional but also enjoyable and intuitive. This user-centric approach leads to better user experiences, increased customer satisfaction, and higher adoption rates.

To effectively build products that address customer needs, product managers must cultivate empathy for their target users. By actively using the product from the customer's perspective, product managers gain direct appreciation of the actual user experience. This allows to deeply understand customer pain points, validate user feedback, and emotionally connect with improving the product experience.

Understanding and developing empathy for others' points of view is probably one of the most pivotal characteristics of a good product manager, and empathy for users is of the highest importance. Empathy for users enables a product manager to understand the needs of users, their pains, and potential alleviation for their pains. That enables product managers to develop products that users actually want.

A product manager can develop empathy for their direct and skip-level managers by actively seeking to understand their perspectives, challenges, and priorities. Regular one-on-one conversations and active listening help build this understanding. Empathy towards managers fosters better collaboration and aligns product goals with organizational objectives, enhancing overall team performance and product success.

Half the job in product management, is empathy! One thing I've found helpful in my role, is reaching out to said stakeholder and grasping what their team or they are trying to achieve this month, quarter and year. Understanding that perspective is key to building a strong rapport and that can be leveraged later down the line when working towards a solution that fits not just one but multiple stakeholders.

Understanding and developing empathy for others' points of view is probably one of the most pivotal characteristics of a good product manager. Empathy for internal and external stakeholders enables the execution of a product roadmap, developed based on empathy with the users. Without having an empathy with development team, designing a realistic timeframe for delivering the features won't be possible. Without having an empathy with sales and marketing, it's impossible to develop a good product marketing plan.

The bottom line: One main role of a Product manager is to make everyone equally "unhappy" :) There has to be compromise between all parties, when it comes to mutual solutions! Understanding where others are coming from is crucial. In one project, I smoothed out tension between marketing and engineering by seeing both sides and finding a middle ground. Empathy isn't just a soft skill; it's a powerful tool for bringing people together and reaching common goals.

In any organisation (small or large), the Product manager has to work with multiple teams which often don't report to him hence empathy i.e. influencing without authority skill is important for the PM to align all the stakeholders with Product roadmap or organizational objectives.

When one talks about empathy in Product Management, the first thought that comes to mind is to empathize with customers. But how often do we actually talk about empathy for Product Managers? Product Management is a very demanding role, with a high workload, continuous meetings and balancing priorities. Hence, to be a successful Product Manager one needs to remain calm, collective and reassure themselves with positive affirmations. What has worked for me is a Daily Gratitude Journal.

In my experience, us PMs often forget to extend empathy to ourselves. The pressure from the company, stakeholders, and other disciplines can wrongly place the entire "failure" burden on the product manager. It's crucial to secure support from your manager and set realistic expectations. Don't ignore your own needs when fingers are pointing at you; be vocal about your needs and weaknesses. Empower yourself to push back when expectations become unrealistic or toxic. 💪

Product Managers should also be empathetic towards themselves as individuals. Empathy helps them handle their emotions, stress, and workload effectively while maintaining a healthy work-life balance. It allows them to recognize their strengths, weaknesses, and areas for growth, seeking feedback and support from others when needed. Self-empathy is crucial for Product Managers to create products that are personally fulfilling and rewarding in their professional journey.

Product managers often deprioritize self-empathy (I myself frequently fall short here due to constant demands). Wise product managers remember compassion for themselves to drive sustainable excellence. By observing personal burnout cues of fatigue or fading innovation, wise product managers actively renew through tactics like mindful breathing, taking walks, or other restorative habits that replenish their wells. These micro self-empathy habits compound, upholding long-term passion, focus, and mental clarity to offset overload.

Não seja tão duro consigo mesmo... na cadeira de gerente de produto, lidará com muitas pessoas, muitos stakeholders, preocupações e considerações, tomadas de decisão... enfim. Reserve um tempo para você... faça o que gosta, esteja com quem gosta e aproveite o momento.

Few techniques that I have found helpful to develop empathy: - Use products/features often to understand first-hand the pain points or gaps and/or get a sense of how solutions are solving the pain points. It can be your product, competitors’ or ones in analogous spaces. - Listening to the users articulate the pains or facing them during user research studies or interviews is another way - Tracking and going through NPS or CSAT feedback also gives unfiltered qualitative data to go through

You develop empathy by active listening in customer discovery sessions, by conducting market and industry research, through speaking with your Customer Success and Sales team. Try to put yourself in the shoes of the customer and use the existing products in the market and note down the challenges you are facing and what is the missing need in the market that needs to be addressed immediately.

Any product manager can learn to develop empathy with sufficient time, effort, and practice. Fortunately, simple tools and frameworks exist to help product teams become more empathetic. One simple way involves nothing more than a focus on collecting and reviewing customer input. When you stop to actually learn from your customers, you are practicing empathy in action. Another way to build empathy can be found in developing user personas. User personas are models or archetypes of generalized groups within your user base. When you consider the attributes and needs of a persona group, you are practicing empathy toward that set of users. These techniques and many others are simple, effective, and proven ways to develop empathy.

To cultivate empathy, product managers must practice listening intently over talking, especially when engaging customers and stakeholders. Specifically, product managers should focus on grasping what others express by asking clarifying questions. Capturing customer quotes and paraphrase key messages back helps to demonstrate interest in the stakeholder’s vantage point. This reflective listening approach affirms each person while expanding the product manager’s ability to really stand in another’s shoes.

Técnicas de pesquisa etnográfica em geral: * Entrevistas etnográficas; * Observações; * Investigações contextuais; * Imersão "walk in their shoes";

When it comes to tactical feature design and delivery, Product Managers are often the brokers of functionality. An understanding of the situation, derived from empathy, will inform the research, the design, the prioritization, the testing, the selling process, the deployment, and the measurement of success of any feature or "great idea" that crosses our desks. A strong understanding of either the Job To Be Done or the user pain point, from different perspectives, with an understanding of urgency, value, alternative options will undoubtedly drive better decisions. At the end of the day, better understanding will lead to better decisions over time.

Product managers cultivate empathy through ever-deeper user research in discovery phase, then embed themselves alongside engineering in design and development phase. Product managers should channel early customer reactions from trials into compelling launch success stories while in launch phase. Constantly product managers should debrief lost deals and won opportunities, to identify gaps & strengths and continue to evolve product or service they own.

To create a successful product, step into your user's shoes. In product management, empathy means grasping the problems you're solving and devising solutions. By truly understanding your audience, defining a unique value proposition, and clarifying the vision, your team can develop solutions that meet user needs rather than relying on internally generated ideas. This is crucial in B2B, where the risk of prioritizing solution development over user education is high. It's easy to get lost in crafting solutions without understanding user requirements first, leading to mismatched products. Prioritize user needs with empathy, ensuring your team's efforts align with users, for a more successful and customer-centric product development approach.

Empatia...: * Para evitar viéses cognitivos; * Para entender profundamente seu cliente; * Para abrir espaço para que outros contribuam; * Para não se apegar a hipóteses; * Para transformar sua visão de mundo; * Para rir de si mesmo; * Para criar ambientes corporativos saudáveis; * Para co-criar; * Para aprender de maneira compartilhada; ...

Product managers need empathy to understand user needs, stakeholders, facilitate effective team communication, handle feedback constructively and create products aligned with market expectations. Empathy is essential for success in product management.