Introduction
Today, I want to emphasize the importance of influence. Being recognized as a product manager is one thing, but being recognized as someone credible, respectable, and trustworthy is a significant milestone for many PMs in their career.
What is influence?
Influence is your ability to lead your product and stakeholders towards a particular future state. It is your ability to convince someone why we as a team need to go this direction over another. It is whether or not the people you work with respect your vision, strategy, and persona.
Without influence, you could be the most prestigious, strategic, or empowering product management ever, but your words will fall on deaf ears because at the end of the day, no one works with someone who does not influence their lives.
What does this mean for product managers?
It’s simple enough really.
If you have and can exercise enough influence over your stakeholders to support your product’s vision and strategy, then you’re good to go.
If not, then you’ll need to take some measures to build your capacity to influence others towards your and your product’s interests.
How do I become more influential?
To build influence, a product manager can generally focus on three things:
- Relationships
- Communication
- Value
When it comes to relationships, you’ll want to invest time in building genuine relationships with your stakeholders. Understand their goals and concerns so that you can speak their language (a very important skill to develop).
- Engage stakeholders regularly
- Be a team player
- Network internally and externally
As far as communication goes, keep your message clear, concise, and compelling. Adjust it with respect to their interests and concerns; no one really wants to make an effort to understand or even listen to something that they have no clue how it affects thme.
- Speak in language they understand
- Use multiple channels (don’t rely on just emails or meetings)
And finally, demonstrate the value you offer them. Show how your decisions lead to positive outcomes. This in turn will build their trust in you, which will net you allies for future initiatives and efforts you have towards your vision and strategy.
- Present measurable outcomes
- Collect and show off success stories
- Proactively seek feedback and iterate
Can you help me?
It depends if you’re ready to help yourself. Cheesy, I know, but a universal truth with ANY coach or mentor is that the coachee or mentee has to be ready to invest in him or herself. Their painpoints have to be so significant that they are forced to do something to relieve the pain.
If you’re sick and tired of feeling disregarded by your peers, let’s talk. Click the 1-on-1 Coaching button at the top right of this page to reach out to me. Answer a few questions, and I’ll reach out to schedule our most important call: a discovery call.
In about 15 minutes, you’ll learn a bit more about me. I’ll learn a bit more about you. Together, we’ll make sure you’re in the right place before we go any further.
So, if you’re looking for help influencing your peers, reach out! If not, no worries! But, if one day you ever need someone to talk to about it, you know where to find me.