3 key characteristics of great Product Managers

#1 Great PM's have great interpersonal skills.

As a product manager, you are the central point between business, development and your customers. To deliver effective digital solutions, you need to put the customer at the heart of design and development. This enables you to translate customer- and business needs into usable features for your product that significantly increases the experience with your brand.

Strong communication, negotiation, and presentation skills can be especially beneficial to ensure you are achieving your goals and to keep your stakeholders informed and happy. As a product manager, you have the responsibility to reduce your time to market and keep up with the rapidly changing customer expectations.
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#2 Great PM's are curious and observant.

A product manager is much more than the one that oversees the product and makes sure that all other people do their work. Because you are working closely with the prioritisation of new features, iterations and testing of the product, you are essential in the process of deciding what the product should look like and which items on the backlog are crucial in delivering an awesome experience.

If you are curious and observant and can translate that in the rightful prioritisation of opportunities for your customers, you can play a key role in managing products that deliver valuable outcomes for all types of stakeholders.

#3 Great PM's are comfortable with saying no.

One of the most important characteristics of a great product manager is saying no. It is very easy to fall into the trap of believing that you are responsible for keeping everyone happy, or that your role is planning customer requests, but product managers set boundaries and do what is best for the products and its users.

Saying no can be challenging, especially when it's to a different variety of stakeholders; customers, leadership, marketing, sales, everyone may have a personal agenda about why certain features need to be prioritised. Therefore, product managers need to have strong interpersonal skills and be emotionally intelligent when setting boundaries. To do so, there are different no's that can be applied; the not yet, the data-led no, but also the hard no.


The enrolment for our Digital Product Management Bootcamp is open! If you want to chat further about a role in product, don't be afraid to reach out. We'd be happy to jump on a call and discuss your learning - and career possibilities.