Issue #3 | Stakeholder Management, an underrated skill for Product Managers

Nailing down the skill of stakeholder management early on in your product career can really facilitate your growth as a Product Manager

Early on in our PM career, we are fascinated with learning about our product, industry, technical know-how, product frameworks and tools, business models etc.

Yes, these are really important to understand BUT we also need to keep in mind, the core of our role includes ‘management’ which involves dealing with different stakeholders (people) in order to align everyone towards the common goal and keep the ball rolling all the time by eliminating the roadblocks.

Who really are ‘Stakeholders’ ?

Before going deep dive into how to manage different stakeholders, first understand who these stakeholders are?

Product Stakeholder is any individual or group of people who have,

• interest in your product and its success,

• major involvement in decision making process,

• and are impacted by the product directly or indirectly

In a nutshell, people who have stakes in your product, either by being involved or impacted with the creation of the product.

Possible stakeholders at any Product-Led company will include,

• Engineering team (Developers, QA, Product Owner)

• Designers

• Product team (PM, BA, Finance, Sales, Operations etc.)

• Customer care/success

• Sales & Marketing

• Top Management

• Customers & End Users (in B2B case)

Why stakeholder management is so important?

Seen from above explanation, these stakeholders naturally plays an integral part in the development of our product. The success or the failure of your product can be quite easily determined by how effectively or poorly you manage your stakeholders.

Considering the amount of complexity and number of moving parts when it comes to different types of stakeholders, it becomes extremely important to manage them in a way that lets you gain their trust and confidence in you and when you are able to achieve that, you open a plethora of resources at your disposal such as their expertise, knowledge and experience to use it as a base to make informed and crucial decisions necessary to steer your product in the right direction.

It helps you with the execution and delivery of your product in a timely manner. As an early PM, you are mostly judged on how well you execute your product.

How to manage your stakeholders effectively?

There is no one-size fits all strategy to manage the stakeholders effectively but below points I found quite helpful for me which i learned and observed,

• Empathetic: Developing empathy for your stakeholders will put you in far better and stronger position to manage their impact and influence on your product. Putting yourself in their shoes and understanding from their point of view can make a huge difference, rather then critizing or condeming them for doing something wrong or not getting things done on time etc.

• Become genuinely interested in your stakeholders: Understand people whom you are dealing with day in day out. Learn what they are interested in. Ask them how their day is going? Be genuinely interested in those conversations. Try to develop some meaningful relationship with your stakeholders. Everyone likes to talk about what they want and are interested in, so talk to them about those things. It will make them feel comfortable around you and will lead to better co-operations.

• Be a good listener: I can’t talk enough about the importance of being a good listener. No one likes being cut off during conversations. It leaves a bad taste and in doing so you might not be able to understand completely other person’s opinion, create a feeling of disrespect or even lose out on some amazing idea which you would have discovered, if you would have listened completely or properly.

• Be clear about what you need: Lack of proper communication can lead to wrong, incomplete and untimely deliveries of the features or product that customers dont value. Make sure you are delivering clear requirements to your stakeholders. Each stakeholder can have different way of thinking and gathering information. Make sure you understand what suits them best.

• Understand the root of the problem: It’s a human behavior to jump to solutions. Don’t fault your stakeholders to speak about solutions. It’s your job to find the root of the problem.

  For eg., if the sales guy comes tomorrow with a solution/feature for a problem that customer is facing, try to understand the root of the problem first. Think about how the sales guy made that decision. Is the problem the right one to solve or is there a different problem that needs attention. When you break down the problem and situation clearly to the sales guy, whatever decision you gonna make, it will come with a justification.

• Be honest with them: Honesty is a quality that can lead to developing trust quite quickly. Everyone likes people who are honest. Poeple don’t like to be deceived, tricked or lied for any reason. You can develop a healthy relationship with anyone just by being honest to them, so use it to your advantage.

• Praise and appreciate their efforts: Always praise and appreciate the efforts of your stakeholders and be genuine about it as well. It will make them feel important and motivate them. This creates a healthy culture where your effors are being appreciated. Humans love gratification be in the form of money or compliments.

Golden tip: Read the book ‘How to win Friends and influence people’. Really amazing book with lots of practical examples that could make huge difference in dealing with people effectively.

Make sure you consciously work on how to manage people effectively right from the start of your PM career because it surely takes time to master this skill effectively. I am also learning this everyday and with more experience, you get better at it, so start early.

I hope you now realise how important stakeholder management is and what could be the points to keep in mind to get better at it. Kindly like and share this article to your friends or someone who might find it useful. That would be really great 😁