Episode 124: How Integral Are Tough Skills For the Development of Product Managers?
June 21, 2023
In this episode of Product Thinking, Melissa Perri talks with Glen Stoffel and Caryn Fried, the Co-Founders of Camp4. They talk all about tough skills for product managers such as emotional intelligence; how to deal with stakeholders; how to communicate with the rest of your team; as well as some great facilitation techniques so that you can get the work done!
Both Glen and Caryn are the Co-Founders of Camp4, an organization bringing together the world’s leading sales practitioners to advise and accelerate the growth of the next generation of Salesforce innovators. Glen is also the Co-Founder of Think it Done, and previously held leadership roles at Bluewolf, an IBM company. Caryn is both the Co-Founder and CEO at Camp4, and Co-Founded Think it Done with Glen before leaving in 2020.
The two have worked together closely for years and we can’t wait for you to hear their stories and gain some super actionable insights into product management and team facilitation.
In this episode of Product Thinking, Melissa Perri talks with Glen Stoffel and Caryn Fried, the Co-Founders of Camp4. They talk all about tough skills for product managers such as emotional intelligence; how to deal with stakeholders; how to communicate with the rest of your team; as well as some great facilitation techniques so that you can get the work done!
Both Glen and Caryn are the Co-Founders of Camp4, an organization bringing together the world’s leading sales practitioners to advise and accelerate the growth of the next generation of Salesforce innovators. Glen is also the Co-Founder of Think it Done, and previously held leadership roles at Bluewolf, an IBM company. Caryn is both the Co-Founder and CEO at Camp4, and Co-Founded Think it Done with Glen before leaving in 2020.
The two have worked together closely for years and we can’t wait for you to hear their stories and gain some super actionable insights into product management and team facilitation.
You’ll hear Glen and Caryn talk about:
- Tough skills are absolutely essential for the success of sales and running products. Glen says that what really differentiated people during the training process for running products was how they operated once they got in the room. How were they interacting with stakeholders? What skills were they putting forward? How easily and effectively could they influence people to get things done?
- Some people really struggle with soft skills, however Glen and Caryn prefer to call them ‘tough skills’. With so many technological platforms available to make us quicker and more efficient, there is a massive gap in the process: the human side. As soon as you involve actual people in whatever sales or product management process you have, that’s when tough skills need to show up. You need to figure out how to help those on your team align, agree, collaborate, be critical thinkers and be empathetic, amongst various other skills.
- The one thing that a lot of businesses aren’t investing enough time in is facilitation. Oftentimes, strong product people have great visions and immovable opinions; they can see where the dots connect and have a great vision for how their customer and employees’ experience is going to work, but they can get caught in the trap of control, rather than collaboration. If you’re an executive in an organization, it’s your collaborative skills that are the most important part of getting your ideas across.
- Your team doesn’t have to agree on the end solution, but if you can get them to agree and align on how they’re going to get there, then that’s how you make sure it’s done in their language. Try taking a brainstorming approach to things with them, get a bunch of ideas together and figure out a way to get them all to mesh in a strategic way.
- When dealing with someone who’s a little more hostile to the end goal and is more focused on their own goals, you have to take some extra time to try and build a bridge with that person; don’t just jump to an impulsive anger, it’s all about navigating a personality.
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Resources:
Glenn on LinkedIn
Caryn on LinkedIn
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Previous guests include:
Tanya Johnson Chief Product Officer at Auror, Tom Eisenmann, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, Stephanie Leue, Chief Product Officer at Doodle, Jason Fried, Co-founder and CEO of 37signals, Hubert Palan, Founder and CEO of Productboard, Blake Samic, Former Global Head of Product Operations at Stripe and Uber, Colin Anawaty, Chief Product Officer of First Dollar, Quincy Hunte, Global Transformation Product Leader at Amazon Web Services, Ellen Chisa, Partner at boldstart ventures, and Leon Barnard, Education Team Lead at Balsamiq
Check out our Top 3 episodes:
- Episode 128: Scaling Product Operations with Blake Samic, Former Global Head of Product Operations at Stripe and Uber
- Episode 132: Simplicity by Design for Product Development with Jason Fried, Co-founder and CEO of 37signals
- Episode 153: Decoding the DNA of Successful Product Management with Quincy Hunte, Global Transformation Product Leader at Amazon Web Services