One of the top questions I see from product managers is about trust. Specifically, many product managers want to know how to build trust with their engineers so that they can more effective lead their teams. Check out my presentation to learn more about why trust matters and what you can do to build it.

1. How Product Managers can
build trust with Engineers
By Joni Hoadley
Product Management Coach & Consultant
www.eliteproductmanagement.com

2. "Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what
to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity."
General George S. Patton

3. Many aspiring product managers think that
the role of the product manager is to be the
mini-CEO for their product. This couldn't be
further from the truth.
As a product manager, you have an immense
amount of responsibility but typically little to
no authority.
So how can you influence your team to
achieve their potential to the fullest? Start by
building trust. Once you've built trust, you
can influence and lead much more easily.

4. Having spent time in the trenches with product
teams for nearly 25 years, here’s how I recommend
product managers can build trust with engineers.

5. ASK SMART QUESTIONS.
Don't feel like you have to be the smartest person in the room, because guess
what?!? You're probably not! And don't pretend to know what people are talking
about because good engineers can smell the BS a mile away!
What you can do to build trust is to ask smart questions. When the team is discussing
the best way to solve a particular problem, use the Socratic method and dig deep so
that you can get at the root of the discussion. The Socratic method is great for
exploring complex ideas, getting to the truth of things, uncovering assumptions, and
distinguishing what we know from what we do not know. Practicing this method of
inquiry will not only help you build trust with your engineers, but it will also help you
build better products!

6. FOCUS ON THE "WHY" & "WHAT",
NOT THE "HOW".
Engineers usually prefer to have as much detail as possible about what a product
should do or what outcomes a feature should enable. Having said that, a surefire way
to get on the wrong side of engineering is to tell them "how" to do something. This is
particularly challenging for product managers who have a Computer Science degree.
To paraphrase that earlier quote by Patton, you might end up creating something
even better than you could have imagined if you let people do their jobs. And by
trusting your engineers to come up with great solutions, you'll, in turn, earn their
trust. Trust is a two-way street!

7. CONTEXT-SWITCHING IS KRYPTONITE
TO ENGINEERS.
Context switching is the ability to stop what you're doing and switch to a different
task. Why is context-switching the hardest on engineers? Because their heads are
typically in such a deep mental state of problem-solving that a typical interruption
can affect short-term memory. According to Miller's Law, the number of objects an
average person can hold in working memory is about seven, give or take two. So
every time you interrupt one of your engineers, it could take anywhere from a few
minutes to half an hour! Talk about slowing down your team's velocity! If you can
ease the burden of context-switching, they will show their gratitude with trust.

8. ALWAYS TAKE THE BLAME WHEN
THINGS GO WRONG.
This is a tough one for many product managers. When your team fails to meet its
commitments or your product doesn't achieve the expected results, you could
probably come up with a dozen reasons why things didn't work out the way you
intended them to. Maybe your lead engineer had to take unexpected time off.
Maybe an OS bug surprised the team, resulting in days of unforeseen work.
Whatever the reason, it's on you to shoulder the blame. You may not feel glorious in
those moments, but know that you are building an enormous amount of trust among
your engineers when you take the heat.

9. REPRESENT THE CUSTOMER,
NOT YOUR IDEAS.
Product Managers can get a bad rap for being Steve Jobs wannabes. I see this typically in
junior product managers or product managers who transitioned from other roles. They're
so excited to influence the product direction, they just can't contain themselves. If this
sounds like you, do a brain dump of all those ideas so that you can clear that mental
memory and start fresh by focusing on your customer needs instead. By being a zealot
about your customers -- what causes them pain and what delights them -- you can
generate a rich set of insights based on product data and customer research (both
quantitative and qualitative) to identify product opportunities. By sharing these insights
and opportunities with your team, and including them along the way, you will establish
yourself as someone who can be trusted.

10. Joni Hoadley
Product Management
Coach and Consultant
Elite Product Management
www.eliteproductmanagement.com
With more than twenty years of
experience in product management,
I'm following my passion of helping
people grow and want to help you
accelerate your career as a product
manager.
Check out my blog for other tips
designed to help you level up your
career as a product manager!