Managing Feelings — the underrated inefficiency in product management

When I was deciding to transition into product about 5+ years ago, I spent a lot of time researching what product managers do in their day-to-day. After 5 years of working in product, I’ve recognized that one of the least talked about aspect of being a PM is also one of the absolute worst inefficiency we have in our role — managing co-workers’ feelings and ego.

As a PM, one of our primary responsibilities is “getting buy-in”/ “alignment” not just among stakeholders, but also with the team.

In traditional matrix organizations, where engineering has its own separate reporting structure and roadmap, and product operates orthogonal to engineering, this is often code word for managing feelings and not hurting someone’s ego (“this was their baby, and you’re trampling on it”, “why do you want to change this product — it works fine and customers still use it”). Each PM needs to manage a wide range of feelings from that of fellow PMs to engineering and leadership.

*Managing feelings is not the same as empathy-driven leadership and work. Empathy among co-workers is desirable and allows us to be sensitive to the person’s needs, unrelated to the needs of work. Managing feelings is having to navigate feelings in the context of work deliverables, often in order to assuage egos, try to “win” trust (credibility should only be a function of your competence, nothing else), or manage power dynamics.

This resistance to new ideas or new ways of building products isn’t limited to revisiting legacy products, it also applies to green field ideas and in startups as much as in large organizations. Sometimes, the need to manage feelings is explicit — you can tell someone is visibly upset that you didn’t take up on “their idea” or you scrapped “their feature”, at other times it’s more subtle, as others try to disprove your proposals, or sabotage deliverables, add scope or even require a series of decks and meaningless “alignment meetings” which have no real outcome.

You find yourself taking on the burden of trying to convince others pre-maturely, why they should get behind the product, when all of your energy would likely be better spent talking to customers and refining your product idea, finding PMF and proving that the business case works.

Why I’ve stopped managing feelings

When I take a step back and think about what my job really is as a product manager or leader, it’s to deliver value to our customers and make money.

Managing feelings makes it harder to spend my time delivering value to customers, making money for the company and retaining top talent.

1. When we try to manage feelings, we are beating a dead horse — feelings are not dictated by metrics or data, they are emotions, often illogical ones.
   Providing data to professionals trying to make decisions with their “feelings” (this is not the same as empathy — a very very important distinction) as opposed to data, are fundamentally undermining their own competence at their job. Data we provide them will not help in persuading them, but we will lose precious time in doing the right thing by my customers and company.
2. People on your team who want their feelings managed also contribute to a lack of transparency and trust to the team. Competent workers find ways to ignore or circumvent these coworkers, and often the product and the customer loses out.
3. If you spend time pandering to coworkers’ feelings when they’re simply refusing to get on board and no data will convince them, they can’t agree to disagree and give it a shot for the team, you will lose your top talent who do put their team, the customer and your product above their own thoughts and feelings.
4. Managing feelings has no tangible outcomes. All of the time you spend “getting alignment” will never be quantifiable in your own performance reviews, in your team’s overall performance and cadence. It is a thankless job for which you will not deliver more, be paid more, be liked more and be more valuable to your company. In other words, no metric you are assessed on is served well when you spend energy and time trying to manage feelings.

If you want to be an efficient product manager, stop managing people’s feelings. Goes without saying, you should not expect others to manage your feelings either.

You all want to build something impactful for the customer. You have the same goals. That should be the only lens everyone on your team uses for product opinions, feedback, ideation and debate.

How can you stop managing feelings?

If you are a leader in charge of hiring and firing, my first advice would be to remove people who require feelings to be managed from your team. This is going to sound like a very unpopular opinion, but we don’t come to work for fun, every person has a purpose and employees are paid to serve that purpose. Many of us are actually passionate about what we do. It doesn’t matter how competent these people are, their net impact is severely diminished by your team’s collective effort to navigate their feelings. If you are not a leader, see if you can recommend removing these people from your team. Find tangible examples of diminished impact to your team and business.

Often, however, you won’t be the one making these decisions. Your organization perhaps does not constantly assess effectiveness at work and will not consider someone’s inability to get on board without throwing a tantrum as grounds for termination or change of team. How do you stop managing feelings then?

1. Be a straight-shooter: Don’t hmm and haww around the problem. Set up a call with this person. Tell them you’re sensing they are on the defensive or offensive. Why? How can you move forward. If they’re competent and love the work, they’ll tell you what the problem is, you’ll find a way to resolve it, you’ll move on.
2. Tell your team to stop managing feelings: Set an example before your team — ensure your actions don’t demonstrate throwing tantrums will be rewarded. Reward genuine talent. Give them shout outs. Call out people who are acting out by asking them for data evidence. “You feel this button should be green? Can you show me the data?”
3. Refuse meetings with no outcomes: If your organization supports this, you should absolutely use it when it comes to managing feelings. “We have gone over this several times in the past weeks, are we expecting to derive a different outcome from the one we agreed upon? If not, I’ll skip this one, I could use the time.”
4. Don’t set up meetings to appease: Suffice to say, don’t make it worse by trying to win over some one who is not on board. Don’t spend hours trying to find the right words on the deck, or even creating a deck — if the business case and customer validation was not enough, nothing else will be.
5. Be customer-obsessed: It’s absolutely ok to tell someone who refuses to get on board that what they “think” or “feel” about a product decision is immaterial. The only thing that matters is what our customers are telling us. It is also equally ok to tell them you’re NOT doing something because customers don’t want it.

Managing feelings in any role is an inefficient use of time, and usually those who require their feelings managed are either incompetent in their role, or are political — neither of which deliver results and value to the customer.

If you want to create a culture of competence, be accountable to your customers and create revenue for your company, stop the culture of managing feelings.