41: Why Do PMs Need Facilitation Skills?

In this episode of the How to Succeed in Product Management Podcast, marketing professor Jeff Shulman and The Product Management Center advisory board member Soumeya Benghanem welcome Liang H. (Airbnb) and David Kim (Stealth Mode - Edtech Company) to talk about facilitation skills. It isn’t just about facilitating meetings, programs, or teams. Facilitation, in general, is about a PMs ability to hold together the different roles involved in developing a product. It is the ability to successfully collaborate with multiple teams and departments and make it as seamless as possible. 

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
• 02:01 Why facilitation skill is important for PMs?
• 09:17 Define facilitation 
• 12:23 What meetings PMs get to facilitate?
• 15:37 Failures in facilitation and the lessons learned
• 26:26 There is always an aspect of competitiveness
• 37:14 Feedback: the closer to the customer, the better
• 43:47 What role do people play in the collaboration?
• 48:53 Processes that can help facilitation for product
• 51:39 2 tips for facilitators during facilitations