The most important role a product manager plays for the team is chief communicator. 80% or more of a product manager’s job is communication.

With that in mind, we see five (5) common communication failures in product managers.

1. Sharing

2. Reading the Room

3. Negotiating

4. Clash of Philosophies

5. Communicating Appropriately

Let’s dive in …

Sharing.

Product managers need to share responsibilities, information, goals, etc. The list is long. The product manager can not hoard information; if they do, people will not trust them. Not sharing information is a failure of communication.

Reading the Room.

Product managers need to constantly be aware of how the room, both literally and figuratively, perceives them and what they are saying. This can be as simple as realizing the executive has gotten bored and started reading their phone. Or it could be the looks of confusion or anger as something is presented.

Reading the room can also mean watching how people change their behaviors. For example, did a formally cordial partner seem to stop responding or got a touch more curt.

Note: Don’t get hyper-sensitive, but be on the lookout for people’s loss of trust in you.

Negotiate.

Product managers must negotiate constantly. The larger the company the more negotiation that will occur. When we negotiate, often everyone gives up something, which means negotiations can leave parties feeling hurt.

PMs need to be aware of when a negotiation might be necessary or left one party feeling they didn’t get a fair outcome. This will lead to a lack of trust, which will create a number of communication problems.

Clash of Philosophies.

Product managers must contend with people across functions who look at problems from distinctly different points of views. This means we may have to explain our goal to one party very practically and to another more emotionally. Right and wrong aren’t always black and white.

Communicating Appropriately.

How we communicate to the CEO is different from how we communicate to the engineer(High-level vs. Detailed). If you walk into the room with 3 VPs and feel you must give every little detail before getting to the point, you will fall flat. But flip it, if you walk into a discussion with engineers and don’t acknowledge an edge case that scares them, your message might fall flat.

Practical Application

Now, let’s apply this to behavioral interviews. Next time you get asked about a failure, try leveraging one of these communication failures, I am sure you can shape a strong story around one of these concepts.