Your product ideas and analyses are only as valuable as your ability to put things into action. And putting things into action is all about working with others in the organization. This process involves a number of soft skills, like communication, persuasion, negotiation, and evangelism. People often cringe at the mere mention of the term soft skills. This is because far too often these traits are perceived as non-quantifiable characteristics that are useless in driving results. The truth about soft skills is that they can be the make-or-break factor for a business.

1. www.productschool.com
Building with Empathy
by Google Product Manager

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6. Building with Empathy
Prachi Agarwal
Oct, 2020

7. My Background

8. A product manager should
have empathy in order to
build great products.

9. Agenda
1. What is empathy (to me)
2. Empathy towards your users
3. Empathy towards your team
4. Empathy towards yourself
5. Common pitfalls

10. What is Empathy?

11. Perspective
taking
Communication
Recognizing
emotions
Non-judgementEmpathy
4 attributes of Empathy - Theresa Wiseman

12. Why is it important?
● Emotions drive human behavior including making key decisions.
● Research shows that feelings based approach to building
products leads to more creative and innovative solutions.
● Using only quantitative data to create a product is very limiting.
1
1 Head versus Heart: The Effect of Objective versus Feelings-Based Mental Imagery on New Product Creativity

13. Focussing on three types of empathy:
1. Empathy towards the users
2. Empathy towards the team
3. Empathy towards yourself

14. Empathy towards end users
1. Empathy towards users can be built with user research.
2. Motivates the team to build the best experience.
3. When was the last time you spoke to your customer?

15. Research helps build empathy
1:1 conversations
● Make them feel
comfortable
● Ask open ended
questions
● Keep asking why
● Don’t be afraid to
have these
conversations in
non traditional
settings
Focussed group
discussions
● Participate in
discussions that
have a diverse set
of users.
● Moderator should
encourage
everyone to speak
and understand
what is truly
important to each
of them.
Observe the user on
the job
● Observe how they
are getting the job
done today.
● Observe how they
are using the tools
today.
● Other tools include
reading customer
feedback.
Building a journey
map
● Helps bring end
user to life and
helps build
empathy
● Need multiple
discussions to put
this together

16. Example
Before, sometime in 2017
Now

17. Example #2
Source: JTBD, HBR
“Jobs aren’t just about
function—they have
powerful social and
emotional dimensions.”
Jobs to be done framework, Clayton Christensen

18. Empathy towards your team
1. Working with empathy helps you receive and give feedback more
effectively which leads to building a better team.
2. Product manager is a curator of ideas.
3. Emotions fuel negotiations.

19. Empathy towards yourself
1. Don’t be to hard on yourself
2. Practice mindfulness

20. Common pitfalls
1. Research is important to build empathy. But research = empathy
2. Don’t release features based on qualitative insights only.
3. Empathy vs sympathy

21. “It’s important now more
than ever, to build our
products with empathy.”

22. Connect with me:
LinkedIn - @prachiagarwal19
Twitter - @pagarwal5
Resources:
Customer journey template
Brene Brown - Empathy

23. www.productschool.com
Part-time Product Management Training Courses
and
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