The 10 Most Important Skills for Product Managers

Product Management is one of the most difficult roles to perform in any modern software company. Product Managers (PMs) are asked to be involved in so many processes and roles that it requires a very special person with a very particular set of skills to perform their role well.

Product is still a relatively new discipline, and there aren’t many formal training programs to getting into or excelling at product management. I’ve seen programs at General Assembly, Product School, and right here on Linkedin Learning and Lynda.com. Universities are slowly beginning to create programs, but it’s difficult to create and maintain effective product curriculum at a university level.

So at this point, many people get into product as an entrepreneur or transitioning from an adjacent discipline like UX, marketing, or customer success.

So with so few experience PMs out there, it’s important to find individuals with the skills necessary to help them grow into a successful product manager. Those skills are available in all types of people and can be screened for when considering a product management prospect.

It’s rare to find a single individual that embodies all the skills below. But in my experience, these are the most important skills (in no particular order) for a product manager to acquire and continually build upon to perform at their highest level.

1. Able to Prioritize and Manage Time

Product Managers are constantly aware of and balancing constraints. The PM is likely aware of the business goals, any sales, marketing, or financial constraints, and tasked with prioritizing the product backlog.

This prioritization needs to be based upon accomplishing the product team’s goals, and within the timeframes relevant to sales, marketing, or overarching business objectives.

Timelines often shift or become adjusted as the product team digs into development, and so the PM needs to be able to constantly be evaluating and reevaluating timelines and constraints to prioritize initiatives, releases, and more.

And not only does the PM need to be able to manage the product team’s timelines, but also her own time in order to avoid being a bottleneck. When important decisions need to be made, it’s important for the PM to understand and prioritize her own schedule to most effectively gather the data necessary to make those decisions.

2. Empathy

The PM serves as the voice and advocate of the user. In order to effectively and accurately be an advocate for the user, the PM needs to really be able to empathize with that user.

Would the user be able to figure out how this page of the app works?

Would the user really want to share their email with us in order to access this part of the app?

Without that level of empathy, it’s easy to operate on poor assumptions or build something that accomplishes the product team’s goal (quickly shipped into production, easier to develop) but does not actually best serve the user.

And not only does the Product Manager need to empathize with the customer, but she must also be able to empathize with the members of your organization. By being able to empathize with the needs and concerns of different members inside and outside of the product team, the PM will best be able to communicate what is most important to anyone she speaks to. I’ll talk more about that later.

3. Curiosity

Creating products is inherently challenging because if there was a roadmap or blueprint for exactly what to do, you wouldn’t be doing it.

So the nature of a PM’s life is ambiguity and creating something that did not previously exist. In order to survive and thrive in this world, the PM needs to be curious and pursue answers to the ambiguity surrounding them. Why does the customer feel this way? Where is the market trending? How can we do things differently?

Constant curiosity is important for asking new questions that lead to more innovative ideas and approaches. Since the product team is creating something new, the best approach is probably not obvious -- or someone would already be doing it.

By remaining curious, the PM can constantly challenge the way things are being thought about and accomplished.

4. Data Oriented

In the best product organizations, assumptions aren’t good enough. Before anything is built on assumptions, they should be tested as much as possible in order to collect data to support or disprove those assumptions.

With so many software and analytic tools at our disposal, it’s irresponsible not to operate and make decisions informed by data. The best PMs are those who insist on collecting data and interpreting what that data means for the product and business.

There will inevitably be members of your organization that, at some time or another, want to make emotional decisions based purely on assumptions. The best PMs are the keeper of a data-oriented culture, which will help your product improve more quickly.

When someone refuses to investigate or listen to data, that should be a red flag the he or she may be afraid that they are wrong. And in any case, it’s better to know you’re wrong before you build something than to let the data tell you that after you’ve wasted all that time and money.

5. Intelligent

There’s no getting around it: your PM needs to be intelligent. The PM will frequently be asked to make a decision for the product team while only having limited information at her disposal. This will require a level of intelligence (including emotional intelligence) to make that decision quickly and to the best of her ability.

Intelligent individuals are also better able to encode experiences into their memory so that future decisions are better informed by those past experiences, too. The PM is constantly running point on making these difficult decisions, and you want someone intelligent that you can trust to consider her options holistically.

6. Able to See the Forest AND the Trees

Often, the PM is the direct line of communication between the high level needs and concerns of the C-Suite and the day-to-day activities of the product team.

That means in any given day, the PM will need to be able to dig into the intricate details of a project, while also being able to zoom out and see a greater picture. She will constantly be bouncing between the two to ensure the day-to-day is mapping to the overall product strategy and vision, while also meeting timelines.

This is much easier said than done. When you get close to a project, it’s easy to get hung up on small details that seem much more important in the moment than they may actually be in the grand scheme of things.

The best PMs are able to context switch back and forth and evaluate whether the small, specific decisions she is making are aligned with the overall goals of the product team and the organization.

7. Persistent

The Product Manager is going to face as much or more opposition as anyone else in the product team. That is the nature of being the main point of communication to all functions of the business as well as often the voice to the customer.

By nature of wanting to move as quickly as possible, get the best product in the hands of customers, and serve the business as well as she can, the product manager is guaranteed to face constant adversity and conflict.

Therefore, she will need to be persistent, confident, and resolute in her role to ensure that the product team is able to work effectively while also achieving the goals of the organization. It won’t be easy, but it’s what the organization desparately needs.

8. Creative

With so much ambiguity and adversity constantly surrounding the PM, she will need to be creative to work herself and her team through tough situations.

That creativity may be in the way of timing, prioritization, messaging, framing, and more. There will frequently be new challenges from engineering, to personnel, to timelines, and it will take creative solutions to solve.

To often we think of “creativity” as a skill for visual artists or engineers, but every individual in your organization should be encouraged to express their creativity -- including your product managers.

9. Humble

While many PMs are seen and treated as leaders of the product team, good PMs need to remain humble and remember that the product team has a flat hierarchy. Technically, the PM does not have direct authority over anyone on the team, and so she must operate knowing that she must constantly receive buy-in from the rest of the team.

PMs will often receive the brunt of both praise and criticism when things are going well. The best PMs will shoulder criticism while passing on the praise to the rest of the team.

Product is a team sport, and it takes the entire team (and some amount of luck) to actually pull off creating a product people love to use. If a PM believes it’s all about her performance, the team will suffer for it.

The PM will often have more information than anyone else on the product team, and will therefore often be looked to for making recommendations and decisions. But at the end of the day, much of the actual work of building is outside of the PM, and her role comes down to a whole lot of communication.

10. Expert Communicator

At the end of the day, the most important and most frequently used skill for any PM is communication. The PM will be constantly taking all of the skills above and utilizing them through communication with someone else -- either inside the product team, outside the product team, or even outside the organization.

And for that communication to be effective, the PM needs to tailor her message to the person she is speaking to.

It’s not uncommon for a product manager to speak to someone within marketing, sales, legal, accounting, engineering, and the CEO all within the same day. Those individuals all have different concerns and level of detail necessary.

I would go as far as saying that many of the above skills are useless if the PM is not able to communicate effectively with others inside and outside of the organization.

Conclusion and Next Steps

When hiring product managers or when trying to grow as a product manager yourself, it’s important to consider these 10 skills. Some can be taught, and many are very difficult to teach. Great product managers can come from anywhere, often with no PM experience at all, but possessing these skills are a good leading indicator of success.

I’ll say it again -- the most important skill is communication. The core of a product manager’s role is playing diplomat inside and outside of the organization, and that comes down to the PM’s ability to communicate.

This week I released my latest course on Linkedin Learning, Communication for Product Managers. The most effective PMs understand what message to share with which person at the right time and for the right reason. In this course, I talk about those subtle but important distinctions.

This course reviews the roles and responsibilities of the typical product team and explains the nuances of communicating with each group of stakeholders, including senior leaders, company partners such as sales and marketing, and customers themselves. The course includes real-life scenarios that show these communication strategies in action during phases of product management—including customer discovery, road mapping, and sprint planning.

Check out the preview of the course below. It's a great starting point to improving as a communicator.