In this episode of the How to Succeed in Product Management Podcast, marketing professor Jeff Shulman and The Product Management Center advisory board members Red Russak and Soumeya Benghanem welcome Kevin Shah (T-Mobile) and Lisa Huang-North (Microsoft) to discuss why product managers need empathy when communicating with customers and while building their career, as well as finding the balance between being empathetic and product success.  

Support for How to Succeed in Product Management is brought to you by Apptentive, which enables product managers to measure shifts in customer emotion and gather actionable feedback across the mobile customer journey. To learn more, go to Apptentive.com/UW.

What to Listen For:

• 00:00 Intro
• 03:53 Empathy also matters in how you manage your career
• 07:36 Do you understand where you are in your personal journey?
• 10:13 We suffer from survivor bias
• 13:33 The lack of empathy to certain stakeholders or groups can show up in the execution
• 16:12 Don’t focus on the persona and characteristics, focus on the needs and problems
• 22:15 Data communication depends on the channels already established
• 24:48 What’s important to users vs what’s important to the company
• 27:16 Try to understand where the misalignment is happening
• 28:06 Come back to the pain points you’re trying to address
• 31:03 Feeling empowered and having an authentic PM mindset 
• 34:10 An executive does not understand the customers as well as the PMs do
• 38:53 Myth: “I’m not a great sales person and that’s why I think I’ll be a great PM.”
• 43:02 Best relationship between sales and products are centered around culture
• 44:56 Product managers are artists and creators 
• 49:19 Logically group your community and dedicate different efforts on each segment 
• 56:17 Empathy is your superpower  
• 57:49 Recommended resources for PMs to get better at being empathetic
• 01:01:16 Drawing a balance between empathy and profitability 
• 01:04:23 Product management is a contact sport and also a team sport
• 01:09:45 Own the job and be resolute with your standards  
• 01:11:34 You don’t have to love something, but you have to be really curious about it