Traits of a Great Product Manager
Question: What are the traits of a great product manager?
This question is common on many online discussion forums.
The answers posted are an endless list: adaptable, analytical, aspirations, balanced, charisma, coding, cognition, collaborative, confidence, creativity, curiosity, decisive, desire, eagerness, empathy, execution, honesty, humility, influencer, innovative, insight, inspire, intuition, iterative, knowledge, leadership, learner, mindfulness, ownership, passion, patience, perseverance, persuasive, poise, pragmatic, presenter, proactive, resilience, resourceful, responsibility, technical, thinker, versatility, vision and more…
Blackblot has identified four distinct Schools of Thought in Product Management:
The Product Manager title became grossly misunderstood under the Generalization approach and a catch-all phrase for many shifting responsibilities, including tasks offloaded from other corporate functions.
And as a result, product management and product manager have become euphemisms for nearly anything and everything at many startups and companies.
Describing the skills required of a product manager is highly dependent on the perceived type of product management.
In PMTK, the Product Manager is a highly strategic role responsible for managing the market problem that the product solves.
The traits required of a PMTK product manager are Intelligence and strong command of the English language.