Chekwube Uchea: Ever Imagined A Good HR as Your Product Manager?

As someone who has worked as an HR professional in product-led tech organizations and is currently a product manager (PM), I’ve learned that there are specific skills that PMs must possess that HR professionals already possess. Having someone with a good HR background as a PM is a plus for the employees and the organization.

Here are some skills that a good HR professional already possesses:

Empathy: Empathy is the ability to understand what others are feeling while imagining yourself in their position. A good HR professional is an empathetic leader. He/she uses empathy in communicating with employees through active listening or non-verbal cues, offering emotional support while solving problems. Since HR professionals already have empathy as a skill, it’s easier to function as a PM when relating with the engineers, UI/UX, etc., and feel the users’ pain points when trying to build a product that can address their challenges.

Stakeholder Management: By stakeholder management, I’m talking specifically about senior management, the CEOs, Founders, and Investors. Stakeholder management is identifying key stakeholders, understanding their expectations, thinking of efficient ways to build trust, and developing excellent communication strategies for easy collaboration. This was an essential skill I was forced to learn early in my career as an HR professional. It’s a must-have skill for every PM as it makes a lot of things like buy-in of initiatives or ideas easier and faster. An HR professional has probably built this skill over the years just like I did, making an HR a valuable PM.

Employee Management: This encourages healthy professional relationships while supporting employees to do their best to achieve the organisation’s goals. Of course, provide them with the necessary tools to do this. Investing the time to learn about the people you manage has helped me in my career in employee management. If you’re not willing to do this, you’re not willing to effectively manage employees. Things like one-to-one sessions may seem like a waste of time to some, but these sessions help you understand the employees and learn how to manage them better.

HR professionals spend most of their time learning and managing their employees, and this is one of the skills that every PM must have to manage employees so they can release a great product that will benefit both the users and the organization. How can you effectively communicate or manage those building these products if you haven’t taken the time to learn or understand them?

The Act of Influencing People: When you influence someone, you change that person directly or indirectly. Influencing people is a skill that every successful leader needs to learn. One can influence people in different ways: negotiating, inspiring, empowering, etc. I particularly like the inspirational style of influencing people, and I’ve applied this style over the years. Maybe that’s why I have a large following on my LinkedIn platform. As a PM, even though your role has a manager title, no one reports to you directly, not the software engineers, UI/UX, growth managers, etc.…your best bet is to learn how to influence these people to get their jobs done promptly. A good HR professional is your go-to person when looking for a PM.