The Introvert Product Manager
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The role of a Product Owner or Product Manager requires a lot of communication. It’s your responsibility to
Align stakeholders,
Communicate with the team,
Communicate with management on roadmaps, strategies, and sometimes detailed progress.
Your responsibility is to move the product forward in many directions.
On top of that, you need to facilitate various workshops like
Outcome alignment workshops
Customer interviews
Interview synthesis meetings
User story mapping or customer journey sessions
Persona development workshops
Provide product development updates
And so on …
A Product Management role seems very suited to extroverts since there’s so much human interaction to manage. Introverts, on the other hand, might find this role to be more difficult.
But both introverts and extroverts can excel in this role, depending on factors such as the company, product, and other people.
What is introversion?
When people say that somebody is introverted, they usually just mean timid or shy. That’s not necessarily true.1 Introverts can be outgoing and communicative, and extroverts can be timid and nervous. The difference between introverts and extroverts is their energy management.
Extroverts gain energy from being with people. They find conversations with and the company of many people inspiring and refreshing.
Introverts “recharge” by being by themselves. Introverts can be just as social or “outgoing.” It costs them more energy to be around many people, so they gain energy by retreating, thinking, or being in a quiet environment with fewer or no other people.
What’s a Product Manager’s job all about?
Let’s see if being a Product Manager actually requires extraversion. As I mentioned earlier, a typical day of a “product person” involves a broad spectrum of responsibilities.
Below is a post by John Cutler2 from Amplitude showing the various responsibilities that you might face.
While you might argue that no one should do all those things, it’s a pretty exhaustive list of things you can do, so let’s put them into context. I mapped parts of this “to-do list” to the number of people involved and the energy required.
On the one end of the spectrum is workshop facilitation. This includes many people, and you’re active all the time, so that’s pretty exhausting – at least for me.
You can also do stuff alone that doesn’t require much energy, like writing requirements, responding to e-mails, scheduling events, or gather quantitative data.
Some tasks require lots of energy but involve very few people, like one-on-ones with co-workers or customer interviews. They require you to be active and focused, but there are rarely more than 2–3 people involved.
How you structure your week and how often you are involved in which topics determine how your energy levels are going to be.
The number of people and the energy required don’t define which tasks are more valuable or important; introverts are just better at some tasks than extroverts, and vice versa.
How to better manage your energy
Try the following strategies to manage your energy levels during the week better. I will go into a bit more detail below.
Clustering
Balance
Regular breaks
I found some of them in the great book Make Time (*) by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky, inventors of the Design Sprint.
Clustering
Grouping many events of the same type together might be beneficial. I often find it quite daunting to have several workshops or interviews spread across the week. It often bugs me to know that I have another intense meeting of the same kind a few days later.
So whenever possible, I try to have them all on the same day or even afternoon. That gives me the added benefit of focusing on one major topic each day.
Contrast & balance
If I have an intense event on one day, I try to block the other half of the day for “deep work” that doesn’t need as much energy. This could be writing user stories, answering emails, overseeing customer support messages, and the like.
Free time in between
To regain energy, it’s also important to have short breaks throughout the day, which is important for everyone. You could check your emails or Slack between meetings, but that’s rarely valuable because you cannot really process those messages. You would be taking away the energy you might need for the next meeting.
It’s also beneficial to relax your eyes once in a while. Use your breaks wisely and stare out the window for a bit while focusing on your breath as a little mindfulness exercise. This is much more valuable than responding to someone half-arsed.
Introversion is not a crime
I hope I could show you that being on the introverted side of the spectrum is in no way detrimental to excelling in a communicative job. In fact, some benefits of being introverted pay off to be a conscientious and thorough product manager.
What’s your take on this? Are you rather introverted or extraverted? What has your experience been in your job? Write me personally by hitting reply or leaving a comment.
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Zimbardo, P. G., Angermeier, W. F., Brengelmann, J. C., & Thiekötter, T. J. (1978). Lehrbuch der Psychologie. Berlin, Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/johnpcutler_all-in-a-40hr-week-lol-activity-6841351658195304448-edvj