A guide to becoming a product manager

 Product Management is not about being a CEO. As a product manager, you are responsible for managing and designing user-facing features and user experiences and you can best do that with the help of a product management course. But you also need to stay calm and communicate with your team. The product management course walks through the skills, problems, and pitfalls that you’ll face as a product manager. It helps you understand what it takes to be a successful product manager and what skills and resources you need to get there.

1. Be a good manager

You know that saying, “Don’t manage me, manage the team”? This applies to a Product Manager. It’s not just a case of talking to your management team about your goals, and expectations.

Product Managers need to work with the rest of the business to get the best out of their team. But you don’t want to be a micromanager.

Be open to talking to your management team, and sharing your objectives. If you’re a PM that is looking to move into a leadership role, make sure you get to know your management team well, and that you’re seen as someone who’s an expert in the products your team is working on.

2. Know your product

You’ve got to have a deep understanding of your product, and the problems it aims to solve. This is where you as a Product Manager will need to draw on the skills you have as a product leader to effectively communicate with your product teams, about what works, and what doesn’t.

If you’re struggling to know what to do, then make a point of asking for an introduction to someone with deep knowledge of the product in your team. Getting a high-level overview of the product you’re managing, can be hugely helpful.

If you’re a PM that has been out of the job for some time, or who wants to be a Product Manager that has a very different range of skills from the rest of your product team, then work to get in front of the right people.

3. Understand how to work across the company

PMs spend the majority of their time at your organization’s headquarters, so you must develop a good understanding of what’s happening at the company, and how to get the best out of your team.

Don’t expect to be able to call your team out of meetings if they don’t understand the context of a situation, or don’t have a plan for how they’re going to achieve a goal. There’s a good chance that your boss is going to get quite frustrated if you do.

4. Know how to sell yourself

As a Product Manager, you’ll need to be able to sell yourself, to your management team, and to your team. When you get an email from your management team asking you for an update on the project, it’s your job to respond with an update on what your team has been doing so far, and what you’re expecting to achieve next.

It’s fine to put yourself in a position to get to know your team’s personalities. If you know what the expectations are from your team, then you can build your own set of expectations around what you need to do, and what you can achieve.

5. Be curious

Product Managers need to be curious. It’s the quality of your curiosity that can set you apart as a Product Manager.

As Product Managers, you’ll be expected to have deep knowledge of your products, and the markets that they operate in. This means that you’ll be doing a lot of research.

It’s not uncommon for PMs to spend around 40 hours a week researching their product. You need to be able to do this. It means you need to make time to read about the things you don’t know about.

Don’t be shy about asking your team for advice. If there’s something you don’t know how to do, then find out. You’ll need to ask your team for help, but it’s a good opportunity to show them what you’re capable of.