 Hello. Welcome and thank you for joining this webinar with Product School on how good PMs are good diplomats. I am so happy, delighted and humbled to be back. So thank you and shout out to Carlos and the whole Product School family, including yourself. I'm very grateful that you're here with me, giving me a chance to teach some of the things that I find to be really important to break into product and also to feel your product growth. I love doing that. I love coaching and mentoring. So thank you for being here and giving me the chance to do that. So let's kick right into it. All right. So good PMs are good diplomats. Let's open up with a question. What do the CEOs of Google and Microsoft have in common? Giving y'all a moment to think. Sacha Nadella and Sundar Pichai were both product managers. One product leaders and rose to the top to become CEOs at some of the biggest and most fantastic tech companies in the world. They also happen to have a reputation of being good diplomats. So what does that mean? What is a diplomat? Consulting Google, I was able to modify just a bit to my liking, but I think this captures it well. A diplomat is a person who can deal with people in an empathetic and effective way. So dealing with people in the sense of dealing with your customers, dealing with your teammates, understanding them, empathetic in the sense of listening really, really well, understanding multiple perspectives so you can synthesize them, make decisions and bring people together to move towards a common vision, common goal and solve a problem in a very effective manner. Ultimately, product managers, product leaders or driving outcome or driving results. So this is a way to go about it with good diplomacy. And I looked to those two stories, highly recommend. If you haven't seen some of the coverage on their career and how they rose into becoming a CEO of some of the most amazing companies out there, you'll see the story of diplomacy within their backgrounds. All right. So what are some of the ways that you could apply good diplomacy? I'd like to start off with asking for help. I think that this is underutilized, underleveraged. I can't overemphasize this. This helped me break into product management and I feel for many of you, that's what you're looking to do in this audience of product school webinar folks. I'm happy and delighted to help out and also share a story on how that was effective for me. So reading out the Steve Jobs quote, I've never found anybody that didn't want to help me if I asked them for help. Now, I didn't have exactly the same track record. However, I do find this to be generally true. It does matter. And how you ask for help, why you ask for help and letting the other person understand it well, and when you ask for help. So thinking about the ways that you can approach somebody to reach out, even called emails, LinkedIn messages, whatever it might be, think about your approach, how you go about it and when you go about it and giving people the appropriate context where it makes sense to say, Hey, oh, understand why I, why I could help this person and how it's going to make me have some kind of value feel good about it and really invest my time and attention into helping this other person. Well, I was lucky to break into product in this manner. So understanding who I could ask for help from to learn the product craft surrounding myself, the right people that understood that the more I knew about it, the more effective I could be at my job being an engineer and developing consumer facing products for mobile apps and helping them understand the ecosystem. It was a great win win. It was a good relationship, both ways, or we're both leveling each other up. So that was one of the ways that was super effective for me to break into product in general. But also this is something that carries on into your career. This applies well beyond breaking into your career, but also to do an effective job, understanding what questions to ask, who to ask them from. And that's effectively asking for help. You're going to collaborate with so many people along the way on the products that you're going to be delivering, elevating customer experiences. That requires help from a whole bunch of other people that you're going to have to rally and bring together along on a common mission, vision and goal. So asking for help can't understate that. That's one of the most most effective ways to be a good PM. And that happens to be a very diplomatic skill set. Leading with influence and most product organizations. That's exactly what you're doing. Product people don't typically have engineers reporting to them, designers, the folks that go off and do and execute. So leading with influence is exceptionally important. Here's an African proverb that I really enjoy and give credit to a former teammate of mine that brought that to my attention. I think about it a lot. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. So product managers, product leaders think long term and think about ways to deliver the greatest results and outcome. Going beyond what any one individual can do, including yourself, including your 10 acts or engineer, doing it in a way that moves people together within your product development team, across multiple product development teams, across third party partners, etc. Leading with influence in a way that moves them where they understand why they're doing what they're doing, the purpose, understanding how that relates back into broader mission vision of the company, the organization, helping them be better at their jobs and be better at the things that would help them with the way that they're reviewed, understanding how to lead with influence in a manner that helps people move towards a common vision goal. That's an exceptionally important skill set to have as a product manager. And naturally, that's what great diplomats do, leading with influence. So another example or part of my career that I want to share is one of the more effective ways to lead by influence is going for the objective truth. Being a product manager, that as you're asking for help, as we talked about in the earlier slide, it's asking great questions, understanding the truth of your product, your customer, and being able to communicate that well to your team to help them ID together with you to co-create and come up with solutions that are far better than the things that you do alone from anyone individual. That influence carries on and rubs off on other folks. So lead with influence, great product managers do that, and great diplomats have that skill set. Listen and communicate well. So I hinted at that, and here's a quote from Adelaï Lama. When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know. But if you listen, you may learn something new. And that re-emphasizes that learning approach and asking for help and asking the right questions. Being able to gather as many perspectives as you possibly can, especially through your stakeholders, executive team, legal team infosack, customer service, data science, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. More and more, as you grow in your product career, you're expanding your relationships and conversations across the entire organization in order to build the best product and service possible for your customers. So effective listening, understanding as you ask for help, as you lean into the questions and get them answered and how that leads to better questions and better answers that help you understand how to build a better product. A good chunk of that, the majority, I would even say, is listening. So something in my career, product managers, product leaders, are going to be in a bunch of meetings. That just comes with the territory. When I speak, typically, it's a summarize and confirm perspectives. And most of the time, if I can help it, I'm listening and I'm speaking last. And that's also another shout out to Sona Pachai and Sacha Nadella. That's a common quality that they have around being good diplomats, being the last person to talk. It's a very effective approach. So listen well, be the last person to talk. And that works really well when you're able to synthesize all those perspectives, communicate that outwards. And ultimately, how does that lead towards a decision and an action that helps you drive the outcome that you're looking for? And then how do you communicate that? That's a very important skill set as you grow as a product manager into a product leader. And of course, what about to say, it's a great attribute of being a good diplomat. Driving a win-win culture. Here's his quote from Jeff Bezos. Above all else, line with customers. Win when they win, win only when they win. So I say drive a win-win culture. And I pull this quote in, because this is a customer centric mindset that can rub off as well as you lead with influence as you combine it with driving a win-win culture. I like to work back from the customer. That's a very popular methodology coined by Amazon, working back from the customer. So having this mindset where you got your end customer for an Amazon, that would be e-commerce of your shopper. And folks would align to that within the team, the organization and the folks that you collaborate with. So that's a common ground, and that's more easily understood. However, I want you to think beyond that, I want you to think as every teammate, every engineer that you work with, designer, marketer, et cetera. Think of them as your customers and treat them as such. Be a servant leader. Find ways to make their experience better in terms of working with you, collaborating with you, and help them work towards the goals that they have. What are they on the hook for and how can you help them towards that without looking for anything in return? Typically, what that leads to as a byproduct for you where I found in my career, they're more willing to help you for the things that you're collaborating on now. And they're just a bit more excited to see you in general as you catch up in the hallway or on Slack. They're more excited to share their insights and the things that you learn through these conversations, through these collisions, as we like to call them over at Zappos and the holocracy side. These collisions are invaluable. They help you ideate and cross pollinate and innovate on the customer's behalf. So driving this win-win culture, it has so many benefits and compounds with the other attributes of being a good product manager and being a good diplomat. So think beyond your end customer and treat everybody that you work with as a customer and perhaps they'll do the same for you. All right. Elevate others. As you go into product leadership, this is exceptionally important. And it's just re-emphasis and bring it to another level. When you go about helping other folks reach their goals, typically, they move on up and perhaps as a byproduct for you. And typically, they're doing that for others. And when you scale this leadership, you're scaling your impact. When you scale your impact, the further that you can grow along in your career and take on more responsibilities. So here's a Ben Franklin quote that I absolutely love. Tell me and I forget. Teach me. And I may remember. Involve me. And I learn. So going back into some of the concepts that we talked about, particularly around building a women culture and having that spread through the people that are on your product development team, but also the folks that you just collaborate with, take every single opportunity to evangelize the product discipline, help people understand why and how you go about the things that you do, your decision making, what decisions are made, the context behind it. And you're influencing your, your leading by example in that manner. And also, you're going to be able to help people make better product decisions, even at the lowest levels as product engineers and product designers are doing their work. The mental models and the frameworks that you can provide context on on your prior decisions, that rubs off and helps them do a more effective job and think in a customer centric manner, where hey, how can I solve this customer problem in a way that drives impact for the business? That's an amazing way to elevate others and typically in the organizations that I've seen, it's also something that folks are evaluated on. So being able to craft that story and help people along the way elevate themselves by product of elevating you and non seeing that scale out when they're helping out others. That's one of the best ways to actually accelerate the growth trajectory of your career. So good PMs elevate others and good. It's good diplomacy. This is the last quote that I'll end with. This is from Tony Shay, huge influence in my life and in my profession, my career. People may not remember exactly what you did, or what you said, but they always remember how you make them feel. That's what matters the most. And product managers focus on the things that matter the most. So being human centered, being very customer centered, and understanding how to make them feel better about your product, your service, that leads to better business outcome, and treating your coworkers, the people that you collaborate with as customers and doing the same thing, making them excited to see you and talk to you and work with you. I think that's just fantastic trait and characteristic of a good PM. And naturally, just being a good diplomat. So want to be good PM. There's many ways to go about it. Be a good diplomat. I feel like that's certainly a core attribute and that can carry you far. Thank you very much. Hopefully, I made you feel welcomed and made you feel like you learned something today. And very happy and delighted to have that opportunity to talk with you. So thank you very much. I can't wait to see you again. Have a fantastic rest of your day. Cheers.