Team Communications for Product Leaders
By: Abhishek Chakravarty
Tags: Product, Communication, Product Management, Leadership

Team Communications for Product Leaders

Lets get the basics right

Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place — George Bernard Shaw.

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You’ll often hear from both anthropologists and sociologists that the ability to communicate and collaborate effectively is perhaps one of the biggest gifts that human beings possess. These character traits set us apart from every other species on the planet and are in large part responsible for our successful campaign to the top of the food chain.

And while this is true in a broad unstructured anthropologic sense, human beings are actually not that great at structured communication.

Actually, the vast majority of us are quite the opposite of great. We are not naturally effective communicators where structured articulation is important. Additionally, our diverse cultures and experiences often mean that what may seem structured to one may not seem so to another.

If you work at a large company, take a look around. Don’t you see a lot of people communicating with each other all the time to get stuff done? Yet, everything seems to take so long! Despite everyone talking to each other — miscommunication and confusion thrive as a team or a company grows.

Are your people really listening?

Leaders in large companies often present business results, strategies, other key updates in their weekly/quarterly/monthly communication broadcasts that are quite well attended. (Sometimes, an attendance sheet is passed around to ensure quorum!) But how many people attending the meeting might actually be listening to what’s being said?

Emails

We get so many emails every day and we send so many emails every day. What percentage of those emails actually drive business outcomes? How many were totally unnecessary? How many should have been a simple phone call?

So you see, lack of communication isn't the problem here. Its the lack of structured & effective communication.

This problem drives a lot of waste in organizations. Teams misunderstand deliverables or requirements, work on different timelines, don’t know or can’t distinguish between what’s critical and what’s not. A lot of these, a lot of the time are direct consequences of miscommunication. And yet in all the hustle of getting things done no body pauses to think about it — until its too late.

Communication inefficiencies are not a phenomenon isolated to any one particular function. But for the context of this article, lets focus about the Product Management function . If you are building products and/or leading teams, the lack of effective and structured communication can be detrimental to the outcomes you are driving. The ability to communicate and present thoughts clearly is pivotal to success — for you, the team and the organization as a whole.

Communication Tips for Product Managers

The effectiveness and success of a Product Manager hinges on their ability to communicate and present information succinctly both up and down the organization. In a typical workday, the PM is involved in several different strands of information exchange with various stakeholders. These strands can be classified into 3 broad groups —

Discussions with immediate product team members

with immediate product team members Presentations to the broader organization

to the broader organization Transactions: or transactional Emails to keep things moving and get things done.

Discussions with your Team

Your team is the core group of people that are building a product alongside you. Its also likely that these people don’t actually report to you. In such cases, Mutual trust will be the cornerstone to enable effective communication and align on expectations.

Here are my top 2 tips to improve discussions and communicate effectively within your team.

Provide Context & Clarity: When you are communicating with your team, context is everything. I was a software developer early in my career, and if there was one thing I hated the most, it was being asked to do something without any context around it. Sure I’d do it anyway, but only after I was done working on all the other requests I had some context about. PMs should ensure that team members understand the task at hand, the importance of it and the context of why it is important. Use a whiteboard: In my experience working with team members from different countries and diverse cultures — its best to provide context and communicate ideas using a whiteboard( actual or virtual). Writing things down as your team talks through ideas crystallizes key points and keeps the discussion focused. No body is guessing what’s being said (perhaps the speaker has an accent or a poor audio connection) because its up there.

Here are some more notes on connecting with your team, getting things done and leading by influence.

Presentations to the broader organization

Like an entrepreneur, a Product Manager is always making presentations — to the management to & to broader organization — and they should, that’s part of the job. You’re sharing your new product concepts, business case, product strategy & roadmaps, success stories from customers etc.

A key reason behind all these internal presentations is to get management mindshare and the needed investments to your products. Like I said, in any organization, the PM is like an entrepreneur selling his ideas to the management to get funding so they can go build the dream.

3 tips on creating & delivering effective presentations

Know your Audience: Take a page out of how you create products based on what your customers want, and not what you want. Similarly, before you present, take some time to understand who you are presenting to, what they care about, what information will benefit them. What’s the best way to engage with them? For instance, when speaking to a large audience of peers or delivering a training, it might be okay to ask questions to your audience to make things interactive, but that might backfire if you are presenting your product report card to the top management and investors.

Take a page out of how you create products based on what your customers want, and not what you want. Similarly, before you present, take some time to understand who you are presenting to, what they care about, what information will benefit them. What’s the best way to engage with them? For instance, when speaking to a large audience of peers or delivering a training, it might be okay to ask questions to your audience to make things interactive, but that might backfire if you are presenting your product report card to the top management and investors. Plan & Prepare: There is a general theory that some people are naturally good story tellers. While that is somewhat true, telling an effective story takes considerable planning and preparation. You cannot and should not wing it. First you must put a lot of thought and planning into crystallizing the central idea of your presentation. Next, You must prepare to deliver it such that your idea is then shared effectively with your audience (this is the hardest part). You must also prepare to handle both expected and unexpected questions that people might ask.

There is a general theory that some people are naturally good story tellers. While that is somewhat true, telling an effective story takes considerable planning and preparation. You cannot and should not wing it. First you must put a lot of thought and planning into crystallizing the central idea of your presentation. Next, You must prepare to deliver it such that your idea is then shared effectively with your audience (this is the hardest part). You must also prepare to handle both expected and unexpected questions that people might ask. Keep it short: There is a reason why a TED Talk is 18 minutes long. It was chosen by TED creators based both on neuroscience and strategy. 18 minutes is long enough for a speaker to deliver an idea, but short enough that you can listen, digest, and understand the key information. That’s why as a listener , Ted Talks are so riveting and stay with you. Likewise, when creating and delivering your own presentations, keep it short and sweet. Try to follow the TED formula of 18 minutes. Have a central idea, and return to it a few times in your presentation. Don’t let your audience veer of course, take them for a guided tour instead, bringing them back to the central idea time and again.

Take a look at this video from Chris Anderson from TED where he talks about the secret to great public speaking and presenting ideas.

Get Better at Business Emails

Emails are still the most widely used tool across organizations, and they are the epitome of structured business communication. Despite the proliferation of brilliant workplace instant messaging tools such as Slack , MS Teams etc. — Emails continue to assume a pivotal place in org wide communication strategies.

And while used ubiquitously across the globe, getting work done primarily through emails can be frustrating. There is an inherent wait time involved with each email that you send, waiting (hoping?) that you get a timely response. And if your response “‘time expectations don’t match that of the recipient’s— you get frustrated and anxious.

Writing good emails is an art, and writing good business emails even more so. Here are few tips that I’ve learnt over the years as well as tested for effectiveness in my own quest to get better at managing emails.

“URGENT” emails don’t mean anything. Email is not instant messenger, and the first order of business is to acknowledge that. As a mental model, I think of emails as non blocking, asynchronous threads that you can initiate for different tasks. If you have a question, but its not urgent or isn’t blocking task execution, send an email. If something is urgent and blocking execution, pick up the phone and call them first. “URGENT” emails don’t mean anything.

Email is not instant messenger, and the first order of business is to acknowledge that. As a mental model, I think of emails as non blocking, asynchronous threads that you can initiate for different tasks. If you have a question, but its not urgent or isn’t blocking task execution, send an email. If something is urgent and blocking execution, pick up the phone and call them first. “URGENT” emails don’t mean anything. Email like you Tweet — Don’t write long drawn emails. Instead get to the point, ask the question clearly, quickly and succinctly. Have a clear CALL to ACTION, early in the email. Use Salutations, but don’t overdo it.

— Don’t write long drawn emails. Instead get to the point, ask the question clearly, quickly and succinctly. Have a clear CALL to ACTION, early in the email. Use Salutations, but don’t overdo it. Minimize Recipients — Think what happens when a professor in classroom poses a question to the entire class? For the first few seconds, there is silence — everyone waits for somebody else to respond. Its the same with emails - if you ask a question and copy 10 people hoping somebody would answer, expect longer response times! This happens because people default to waiting for somebody else to respond and a lot of time is wasted. Instead think about who can best answer your question and just send that person an email.

— Think what happens when a professor in classroom poses a question to the entire class? For the first few seconds, there is silence — everyone waits for somebody else to respond. same with emails - if you ask a question and copy 10 people hoping somebody would answer, expect longer response times! This happens because people default to waiting for somebody else to respond and a lot of time is wasted. Instead think about who can best answer your question and just send that person an email. Ask Pointed Questions: Pointed questions are a great way of getting a response quickly because they are clear and they are difficult to answer in a confusing, ambiguous manner.

Pointed questions are a great way of getting a response quickly because they are clear and they are difficult to answer in a confusing, ambiguous manner. Summarize threads: If you are adding somebody new to an existing email chain, please summarize the email chain / latest situation before you assign them a call to action. Its almost never a good idea to say “See Email Below” if you want quicker faster responses. People will postpone.

Here’s a nice article from Harvard Business Review on crafting work emails. Again, the idea is to keep emails short , to the point and use them strategically to get things done.

If you search the internet, there is a lot of advice on how to get better at structured communication — but there is also a lot of noise. People trying to sell communication courses etc. But it doesn’t have to be that complicated, and you certainly don’t have to spend money to learn the basics — and just the basics will get you a long way.

Leadership is a lot about communicating effectively. These ideas that I have shared have worked for me and helped me grow in my own leadership journey and continue to do so. As a Product Manager , to now managing other Product Managers, I’ve seen these simple ideas really unclog communication bottlenecks. And when ideas flow effectively and in a structured fashion across the organization it will elevate individual, team and business outcomes across the board too.