Christopher Global

Many Product and PMO leaders underestimate the value of personality in their role. Experienced professionals often don’t believe being likeable is relevant to their role. Many leaders may push for likeability but are not very likeable themselves. Why is this important and why does it become a factor of your success?

Natural-born leaders are likeable. To be a leader, people must want to follow you. Period. In terms of product management, likeability is demonstrated in your ability to negotiate and align your release strategies with corresponding business and customer roadmaps. Product managers often fail here because when they lack the relationship aspect, they focus on visioning technology and operate in a silo. When PMs fail, they focus on administration and tracking dev team activity. On the surface, it appears as though these individuals are just doing their jobs, right? 

The problem is both roles require input from customers and stakeholders (internal or external) to deliver quality products. This is why we have requirements. As managerial leaders, we expect people as professionals to work out their conflicts. However, truth be told we simply don’t let it bother us until it somehow bothers our performance. When it does, we use our managerial authority to force a handshake between the teams. By then, it’s too late. A forced handshake like a metal boomerang. It works, but when it circles back and you catch it, it’s going to hurt!

Help Product and Project Managers to develop likeable personality. It won’t be easy. A likeable personality is a culturally learned skill. But if you can emphasize this in your one-on-ones and you will notice higher quality, cross-functionally aligned lifecycles through your organization.