Leveraging trust to win as a Product Manager 🤝

Trust is a little bit like humor. We know what it is there quickly, we miss it when it isn’t present, and it has disproportionate effects on our behavior. We also ascribe extremely powerful effects to it. If you ‘hit it off’ with someone it can lead to incredibly positive outcomes.

When you sit down and have a good laugh with someone it can lead to lifelong friendship, or even romantic partnerships. When there is no trust, just like humor, it severely limits what is possible between two humans.

Trust is a currency. As Product Managers, we are leading without authority in a role which is deeply concerned about ‘the hard things’. The Product Management role is concerned with outcomes, not output. It can’t hide behind ‘busy work’. It can’t also shine through excellence in execution, since that is necessary (but often not sufficient) for success. It also needs to support teams through a ton of failures. Since the uncertainty of building successful products is often only disambiguated through trying – and failing – a bunch of times.

But most importantly, PMs are asked to lead without authority, take responsibility for the failures, and attribute successes to the team members. It can be a lonely role, too. So what makes this role bearable? Well, the main factor is the shared (voluntary) struggle with a highly functioning x-functional team. The idea that we engage in a challenging problem with a group of highly skilled individuals, all bringing together their perspectives to find a solution. Despite all the odds, and despite a lot of failures, we keep engaged because all of us have a shared goal in mid: to improve the users lives and fix a problem, or achieve what has never been achieved before.

Trust plays a major role in how we can strengthen this x-functional relationship. In some ways, it is something that has an ‘all of nothing’ character. If there is no trust, nothing is possible. If there is trust, the sky is truly the limit. If we don’t focus on it, we gamble with the project.

Here are some behaviors which I found useful to help increase trust within a team, and restore trust once lost:

1. Start small when it comes to human-to-human interaction
   When interacting with others, I like to start small. Maybe the ask I have is urgent, but that isn’t often the best path to create a trusting relationship. Listening, caring for what the other person needs are more effective ways to start the interactions. Often we miss the forest for the trees. Sincerely asking: “How are you Today?” or “How is the family?” are ways to signal you care for the other person beyond the current urgency.
   
2. Create a ‘safe to fail’ environment
   As Product Managers we are in charge of building successful products. Now that isn’t entirely true. Since the most time we actually won’t be successful. The majority of the time we will fail. So, that makes puts us in charge of failures 10x more often than being in charge of success. In that sense, developing a way to build ‘safe to fail’ working structures is key. Celebrating successes, and building a process where learning is valued above succeeding are main ingredients to create a successful team. What can help here is to praise the effort, not the outcomes.
   
3. Leading with a principled approach
   Nothing erodes trust more than to see a leader not obey their own principles. It enrages people. It creates a cynical mind. This is why people reject bureaucracy. Rules made by individuals who themselves are above the rules. The stuff revolutions are made of. So think long and hard about the principles you create, since you will be asked to visibly obey them. This is tough, but also one of the most effective ways to build trust.
   
4. Create a working x-functional working model
   Product Managers aren’t the experts. They bring together experts to help find novel and clever solutions to hard problems. We need to ensure we have a working relationship across many functions. This is tough, and many books have been written about how to create a good relationship between team members – even when stakes are high and different perspectives need to be resolved. Without it, the PM is useless.
   
5. Continuously evolve
   Product Managers need to be open to evolve at all times. This isn’t a bug, this is a feature of the role and the process of PMing. The working model, the goals setting, the metrics, all will evolve. The x-functional product teams are at the helm of the changes. They see them first, they are asked to build a vision for the future, immersing themselves into the changes. The only way I found working here is to stay on top of skill building. I spend 203 hours a week reading trends, business books, and doing online courses. This helps me learn new things constantly and bringing them into my work.

Here are my concrete actions to meet the objectives laid pout above:

• Listen more, speak less. Practice active listening.
• Constantly take in feedback. Practice an open door policy. Provide opportunities for safe feedback without fears of retaliation.
• Develop principles and visibly obey them. Include others in the creation process, and then visibly obey them. This is nothing less than your integrity which is on the line here.
• Spend a lot of time iterating on the working model, and make sure team members trust it.
• Learn, always. Read books, and share with the team. When you find something interesting, summarize and share with the team.

Building trust is an ongoing process, and something which is critical in all business ventures and for all roles. I am lucky I have been working in trusting teams for the majority of my career, but I have also seen the opposite.

Take Action 🎬

📅 Book a private coaching session with me to grow your PM career. I will share my 15+ years of experience as a Product Manager, all my learning and pitfalls, with actionable tips and concrete lessons to model after.

📚 This is the ‘trust bible’ for business leaders, where Stephen M. R. Covey has built a framework on how to create, restore, and grow trust in teams and organizations. The Speed of Trust, is widely recognized as a landmark work in how leaders help drive success int heir businesses.

📚 A book which helped me is Dale Carnegie’s classic How to win friends and influence people. It truly changed me to my core, helped me build more meaningful relationships with others, inside and outside of work. It also helped me see how to become more humble as a person, something which had tremendously positive effects on my life and opened me up to learn a lot more.