The role of a product manager can vary greatly depending on the industry, stage of company, as well as team. The skills highlighted below are a great foundation for strong product sense, no matter where you go.

Empathy

Empathy is understanding and sharing the feelings of others. Kristine shares a quote with us.

"Empathy is seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another, and feeling with the heart of another."

It's worth noting that there is external / customer empathy as well as internal / team empathy. Kristine tells a story about one of her first proposals, and mentions how discussing the project with key stakeholders helped her to understand their perspectives, which made it easy for her to rescope the project in order to get buy-in from the team. Knowing what motivates people is an important soft skill for any PM.

Balance

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Kristine breaks it down into various forms.

Strategic vs. Tactical

Use strategic skills to identify mission, goals, value and industry trends. Use tactical skills for execution. What resources are available? How will it get done? What are the risks?

Likeable vs. Holding Firm

Learn respect, trust, affection of stakeholders. Keep in mind, however, that you are on the hook for your product's success. So, don't be afraid to say no.

Follow Your Gut vs. Follow the Data

Compile real evidence to shape intuition, and use intuition to accerelate the decision making process. However keep in mind that intuition needs evidence to back it up.

Jack of All Trades

Kristine describes product as the intersection of UX, technology and business. Even though the saying is "Jack of all trades, master of none" - the second part isn't true for most product managers. Kristine proposes the concept of T-shaped skills, and says that most PMs have a deep expertise in one area, and broad knowledge of other areas.

PMs constantly ask these questions:

1. Do our users want this?
2. Does this align with our mission?
3. Is it feasible?

These questions can't be answered by the PM in silo, but the PM will be expected to find out answers by leveraging expertise on the team.

"Be humble. Be confident in your ability to find out what you don't know."