Communication for Product Managers
You can have the greatest idea in the world, but if you can’t communicate your ideas, it doesn’t matter — Steve Jobs
This article is going to be about common misconceptions about communication and why it is one of the most important skill you should possess as an aspiring product manager.
So, what do you think, is Communication Easy?
Do you feel?
- It is just a matter of language
- Eye-Contact doesn’t play a significant role
- The Same kind of tone works everywhere
- Pace of speaking is not a big deal
- Body Language doesn’t impact the opposite person
If you have any of the above thoughts, let us try to clear them and see how changing few habits and thought-process can actually help you in enhancing your communication
- It is just a matter of language
Most of the people understand the meaning of communication as only a language (majorly English, when it comes to corporate), but it is more than that. Have you felt anytime that “Oops, I should have given the thought before speaking the next set of sentences”. Every wording, and statement that you make decides the +/-ve impact on other people.
As a product manager, we are connected to multiple stakeholders, and our daily routine involves a lot of communication with them. We should communicate in terms of the language that they understand. What exactly do I mean by this? Whenever we are meeting with tech. leads or engineers, we should have some technical knowledge to explain them the context and understand their pain-points rather than just putting the feature in front of them. Similarly, whenever we are meeting with business or UX stakeholders, try to communicate in the language that they understand better, that is use only those terms and definitions that are part of their daily routine and job.
2. Eye-Contact doesn’t play a significant role
Maintaining Eye-Contact is one of the most difficult task while communication. Either we blink a lot, or not even look in the eyes of person with whom we are talking, and many such instances. This shows lack of communication and your ability to explain ideas and thoughts.
Eye-contact has to be back and forth between the stakeholders, who are involved in a communication. Maintaining proper eye-contact shows our attentiveness and interest in the topic of discussion. But there is a check in this. Make sure your eye-contact doesn’t look like a stare that conveys hostility. Also, one of the important advantage of clear eye-contact is to show various emotions such as empathy, anger, happiness, and many more that are associates with our statements.
3. The Same kind of tone works everywhere
Tone of voice in communication is how we use our voice to spread across. An optimistic tone is a sign of positive result, and vice-versa with the pessimistic tone. Our tone should be different with different type of stakeholders like firm and easy-going with our juniors, respectful with our seniors.
There are various kind of tones that we should adopt:
a. Informative: Informative Tone conveys information, and our knowledge of the topic that is under discussion. Informative Tone can create a long-lasting impact on other stakeholders
b. Questioning Tone: Questioning tone shows your alertness and curiosity to understand the discussion.
c. Worrying: Worrying tone shows your concern on any point of discussion.
There are many other tones, that we should look around. Main point is to explain not same kind of tone works everywhere.
4. Pace of speaking is not a big deal
Have you ever thought of why the person is speaking so fast or so slow. Both are annoying if you are not able to follow the conversation.
It has been observed that we deliver data instead of proper communication, if we are communicating in our second language, mostly in our business conversation, which eventually change our routine habit also. Average speed of speaking is around 150 words/minute but is it the same case to listen 150 words/minute? We should always make sure whatever we are communicating should be clear to the listener not in terms of context but also the pace.
We as product managers communicate with multiple stakeholders in a day, and we should be flexible enough to change our pace according to the opposite person.
5. Body Language
We perform multiple activities in a day and our body is flexible enough to get in the posture we want. Our body language conveys emotions and the current state that we are in. There is a very good example in poker where you can see other person body language and understand if he/she is going to bluff. Body Language is something we don’t care about while presenting ourself in front of the opposite person.
There are various examples of body languages:
- Nervous: Putting hands on head, Biting nails
- Bored: Yawning, No eye contact
- Engaged: Confident stance, Good eye contact, and many more
I hope, now you must have understood various aspects of communication, and how it can help you in affectively conveying your thoughts.
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