 Hi everyone, my name is Melissa Hutchins and I'm excited to talk to you all today about how my soft skills kickstarted my career in product management. I'm also going to touch on some very valuable information I've learned along the way that people will not tell you in the job description. So a little bit about myself, I am a product manager and have been at Expedia Group for about four years now. I lead product within the lodging shopping space for Expedia.com, which is just one of the very many travel brands under the Expedia Group umbrella. I am also a product mentor for students who are mostly college age and really interested in looking to learn more about product management. On my education I graduated with a bachelor's degree in both business economics and marketing as well. So today I'm going to cover a couple of different things. I'm going to start off with telling you a little bit about how I got into product management and my journey there. Next I'm going to talk to the core PM skills, so those soft skills that are really necessary for PMs in their own day-to-day work. Next I'm going to talk about the inevitable truths of being a product manager and just what it really means. Then I'm going to go into mindset and really how important building the right mindset is for a product manager. So how did you get into product management? Long story short, it all started out of curiosity. I had little to no knowledge about product management, what it was, what product managers did when I was first introduced to it, but I was very interested and so I researched and went to a networking event called Who Wants to Be a Product Manager, which was advertised for only internal Expedia Group employees, but being the hungry post-graduate I was at the time looking for experience, trying to get my foot in the door. I managed to sneak my way into the event thinking kind of what's the worst that could happen here and just came really early and ended up checking people in and out of my name at the bottom of the list and got a front row seat, so it all worked out. By the end of the event I went up to all of the speakers, but one in particular that I wanted to to engage with, he was the SVP of Product Management at Expedia and I told him my story, I told him a little bit about why I was there, how I got there, and he thought it was absolutely hilarious and I asked him for coffee and he said yes and so two weeks later after grabbing a cup of coffee and talking a little bit more I had thought he forgot about me, followed up with him, like probably five different emails, this guy totally forgot about me, but to my surprise was emailed by my previous manager basically saying there was a role that came up and the guy that you met with, he wants you to fill the position and so here's the job description, are you interested? And so I read through the job description after I already had the role basically and this is a very, this was a very unconventional way of getting my start as a product manager, but I really wouldn't have had it any other way because it really taught me an extremely valuable lesson that I have as a guiding principle in not only my career but my life which I'll talk a little bit more later too. So now that you've heard the journey into product management, what are these core soft skills that I used and used to this day for successful product managers? So starting off with communication, being able to master the art of communicating not only communicating but over communicating exactly what you're trying to build, what needs to be done, what are your goals and always in these types of communications seeking clarity over comfort. So making sure any of the inconsistencies even if it's uncomfortable are cleared out, these types of seemingly uncomfortable moments are often the ones that have the greatest impact in the end. And by staying silent in moments of uncertainty, there's a very good chance that it could bite you and your team later down, later down the line. Organization, again ensuring your team members know what needs to be done and why we're doing it. Research, curiosity is so key for product managers and living in your user's reality is going to be a very key way to build the best product for your users. You may have a different perspective from your targeted users, but by living in their reality, it's going to ensure you're doing the best thing for them. And lastly, execution. So having a bias for action and really stepping up being the one to lead for your team and what the needs of your team are. So some of the truths about being a product manager that I personally learned along the way and things that I didn't know when I first became a product manager. So there is a lot of ambiguity. I want to strongly emphasize this. As a product manager, you are ultimately the one responsible for whether or not your product is successful or whether it's a failure. So with that, there will always be unexpected changes, challenges, whether it's in the broader organization or whether it's specifically within your team. It requires your guidance and leadership to be able to move forward. Also, if something needs to be done, it's your job at the end of the day to make sure it gets prioritized. Regardless if it's your specialty or not, you are the one who needs to ensure that it gets done. Because you are the main connector across your team and across the various rules of your team. So really pushing for alignment across all of the stakeholders involved to make sure you're avoiding any type of miscommunication or misunderstanding. Another truth that I came to know was that you are comfortable or you will need to become comfortable with the uncomfortable. So people will come to you for a very wide range of issues or problems that may not even be in your space. But with that being said, you're not going to have all of the answers. And it's okay to not have all of the answers. But being able to take action to communicate with those who do have the answers is extremely important. You need to also be okay with saying no, especially when you're in the ideation phase, which is kind of the phase of figuring out what exactly your product's going to look like, what are the requirements? There are going to be a lot of different ideas thrown around. Some of them are going to be good ideas and some of them may not be in the best interest of your users. So you have to be able to prioritize what's going to be ultimately best for your users. Also when building a product, making sure to ask what may seem like an obvious question or might seem like a stupid question is imperative. Even though it feels daunting or intimidating, there are most likely multiple people that have that same question. So you need to be able to take the initiative to get those questions out of the way and achieve clarity there. Also, this is a point that's very relevant if you're a PM within tech. Even if you don't consider yourself very technical, which I personally didn't when I started as a product manager, you are curious to learn more about those concepts that are going to be very relevant and learning about how they will impact your product. So now moving on to mindset, which is one of my favorite topics and how important of a role having the right mindset is going to be for your product management career. So cultivating the right mindset, there are really two concepts in order to do this. The first one being curiosity, which I've talked to in some of the previous slides, as well as growth. So switching from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset, these two components are so important to have an overall successful, really setting yourself up for success with mindset. So curiosity, getting a little bit more in depth here. Expanding your network is important, very, very relevant to not only the work that you're immediately doing, but just really expanding your network of influence throughout the organization. And this is often done through pushing beyond what in your mind is comfortable and really pushing those comfort zones. Taking a genuine interest in the work of others is a core component to this. This not only strengthens relationships, but also builds respect and trust of your team members and other coworkers. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten told by one of my engineers that he or she gained a lot of respect for me by taking an extra step of wanting to learn more about something that I didn't necessarily need to, but having that interest really gave much more of a respect amongst the team. Also creating an environment that not only shows your curious, but spreads curiosity across the team. And usually from what in my own experience, curiosity is often contagious. And so by asking a lot of questions, encouraging feedback, asking for the other team members' perspectives on maybe a pitch that you're going to make or really getting their thoughts. And this plays into having a very diverse set of perspectives in the room. So having a lot of feedback, having a lot of diversity amongst the decisions being made, or that play into the decisions being made, I think ultimately provides for the best customer experience. A real world example of this is something that I've, or a conversation I've had with so many of my engineers by asking for a high level explanation. As a product manager, you are the ones representing the product. And so you are the key point of contact for that product. So say you're in a meeting with leadership and they ask you a question that falls outside of the product realm. Even if it's not your specialty or even if you are not the expert, maybe your engineer isn't in that meeting to answer that question. And so being able to provide high level details shows not only that you have a very well-rounded understanding of your own product, but it shows that you made the effort to understand technical concepts and how important they were to your product. So learning equals growth. Here, I want to emphasize that as a product manager, you're going to be wrong. So being able to embrace being wrong as a gift instead of failure is very important and also being open to learning from those whose knowledge and skill sets exceed your own. Striving for progress and not perfection. This is why we have MVPs or minimum viable products is to introduce a product that has a set of requirements enough to be able to test and get an accurate gauge for the success of that product. And lastly, in moments of uncertainty, being able to put yourself in your customer shoes is so, so important because you are their number one advocate. There's nobody that's going to advocate more on your customer's behalf than yourself. So you need to be putting yourself in their shoes because they're always number one in your eyes. An example of this goes to when you're actually testing the product. So test and learn. You've built your product. You're ready to test it. You test it and the initial results were not what you were expecting or were not what you were hoping for. The way to move forward from this starts with first analyzing the data. So going through all of the metrics for success, identifying any gaps that exist or that need to be filled. And by utilizing this data, you learn what worked, what didn't work, what needs to be improved. And then you can continue to iterate based on those learnings to eventually build a better product. You improve the product based on learnings is the key takeaway here. Now, I want to close out my last slide with one of my favorite quotes. And I'm not going to try and talk like Yoda. I would not put you all through that. But he said, you want to know the difference between a master and a beginner. The master has failed more times than the beginner has ever tried. And I think this is very relevant for growing product managers and learning to embrace failure and discomfort because that at the end of the day is ultimately what's going to make you better. So thank you so much for tuning in. I hope this information was useful. Please, if you have any questions, I'd love to continue the conversation and hear more from you all. Feel free to also connect with me on LinkedIn. And a big thanks to the Product School for having me today. And until next time.