Webinar

Empathy in Product Development

"Your office community won’t trust you if you don’t listen. Facilitate, find common ground, fill the gaps between people"

Paul Ortchanian

IPL’s webinars series has been efficient in enhancing Product Development skills & introduce a concept live by an Industry-expert speaker. One such exemplary webinar was held on 25th of June ‘19 by Paul Ortchanian, the Founder and CEO of the Bain Public. Having lead startups and multinational companies, Paul has hands-on experience in Artificial Intelligence, product management, and machine learning . It was an honour to host him at this engaging webinar. Paul brought his immense knowledge and deep understanding of the product platform and helped us in understanding the significance of Empathy in the domain of Product Management. A Product Manager is a capable problem solver by nature and those problems could be of two categories; i) User Problem – The biggest challenge as a Product manager is how to convince others to buy what you want them to buy or do what you want them to do! Decoding user is as challenging as it can get! ii) Business Problem – Another challenge as Paul says is to constantly deal with the number of people that try to obstruct you while you attempt to move your Product in the right direction. Be it the team you work with or the executive level people. When you are working as a Product Manager in association with the B2B type of environment, you will find that the ‘Empathetic method’ come in handy while leading the sales team.

A Product Manager also assesses the Product roadmap and keeps the focus on building great products while running the decision-making process that ensures all perspectives get heard & considered.

So, what facilitates you to move forward to build great products along with your team? ‘EMPATHY’

Empathy has no script, there is no right or wrong way to do it. It is all but judgments. As mentioned in the webinar, ‘lead with your ears, not with your mouth!’

Sometimes people leave no room for a change in perception, which ultimately means an unsuccessful business.

Few reliable methods to inculcate Empathetical practices in Product development:

Build a rapport with the team by involving them in the solution-finding process.
Ask them questions like
i) What's wrong with this idea?
ii) What can you suggest for making it better?
iii) What did you notice?
iv) What specific issues need a fix?
Get the person to respond, similar to Surveying where data is collected based upon people’s opinions & make them feel heard, make sure your team’s opinions are heard & considered.
As a Product Manager, you must try to fill the gaps between people. It makes people feel more responsible hence resulting in getting the work done more productively.