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