What are some of the best ways to begin becoming a more influential Product Manager?

Influence is interesting because it's very much a function of if others are willing to accept your influence.

Here are some things I'd recommend doing to get started, but ultimately, your influence depends on the openness of others: 

• Gain trust from others. To me, this comes from doing your work well, being reliable, and being honest and transparent in how you work. 
• Start to get involved in bigger and broader things outside your scope. Easy ways to do this include asking questions in broad team meetings, volunteering to mentor others or to be part of interview loops, planning social events for the team, or volunteering to fix a wonky process that you feel passionately about making better.
• Celebrate and amplify the work of others. Because it's a good thing to do, people will appreciate it, and everyone needs more celebration in their lives. 
• Connect the dots. Creativity is often not about creating something net new, but taking something people are familiar with and applying it in a wildly different context. Get into the habit of asking yourself "How could this work be connected to other work being done around the company?" "What inspiration can I take from other competitors or analogues to make my work better?" "What is one team doing that we should be doing as well?" 
• Take on bigger problems. As you start to get more familiar with your space and in your work, you will be able to tackle increasingly difficult problems or opportunities. In product land, this may mean taking over more features, more product areas, or more/new teams. 
• Pay attention to what's happening in the industry. Staying updated on the latest trends and frameworks in Product or the industry I am working in is a forever-thing I am working on - the more you know, the more you can apply it to the work you're doing. 
• Develop a perspective. Most of the really influential PMs I know have a perspective based on the unique experiences that they bring to the table. When you are approaching problems, ask yourself what you think or how you would solve it. Even if you don't share it with others, this practice will help you get more familiar and comfortable with your own thought process. If you feel like you have a good handle on this, consider publishing your thoughts on LinkedIn, Medium or some other blog. 
• Ask questions. It's the easiest way to start to understand more, get your name out there, and to help others start to understand how you think.

Lots of ways! Here are two that I find myself talking about a lot.

First, get really good at spotting ambiguity and make it your job to remove it. Ambguity comes in lots of forms. It can be engineers not knowing what to do next, ambiguous next steps coming out of a meeting, or teams being unsure what commitments they are making to each other. In all of these instances (and many more), ambiguity slows down teams. So whether it’s big or small, make it your job to take any ambiguity you see and make it clear for the team. One great way to do this is to become a great note taker. It’s almost a secret weapon at removing ambiguity. You’re forced to clarify statements for the notes, you’re responsible for summarizing what happened in a meeting, and you have to write clear next steps with people assigned to them.

The second way is to practice the skills and craft you want to master. Professional athletes practice their craft for hours per day, and you should too. That means finding things you need to improve on and find ways to get repetitions. It sounds silly but very few people do it. Have a tough conversation with a peer? Practice until you’re happy with the way you’re phrasing your feedback. Have a big presentation? Practice it 50 times. Working on being a more influential writer? Go through 10 drafts of an important memo and get a great writer to coach you. You get the idea. One nice side effect is that you start to meet other like-minded (and growth mindset) people along your journey to get better at your craft.

Watch the video response on Loom, or read the transcript below:

So I think the best way of becoming a more influential product manager is to stop trying to be an influential product manager.

And what I mean by that, is that influence comes from competence. It comes from successful delivery, doing good work and shipping. Good work is going to build your reputation, and that reputation earns you capital. And then you can use that capital to influence others in the organization, but especially when it comes to product, you're judged by what you ship.

That means that your first priority needs to be shipping something good. And you do that by focusing on what's in your area of ownership, what are you responsible for? Become an expert in that, and then use that expertise to ship something impactful and then do it again and again. Naturally what's going to happen is that your scope is going to start to expand.

As your scope expands, you're going to do the same thing, become an expert, nail it, ship something solid, the scope expands again.

Now the key thing in all of this is that as your scope is expanding, you're making sure to be focusing on the right thing. That could mean delegating to other folks on your team.

It could mean at some point hiring there's lots of different ways to handle delegation. The key here is that you are making sure that you are shipping in the most impactful area where you can.

Oftentimes that means as scope becomes available to you, and you feel ready to take on that scope, that you expand into it and ship within that scope.

And then this naturally leads to influence because you have to start working across the organization as your scope expands. And as you build more and more impactful things, you're hitting more and more of your organization, more and more of your business.

So a natural progression for that is that you influence other people by what you are doing, by what you are shipping. Other people will come to you with questions because they will recognize, "that person is being successful. I want to have some of that too. How can I learn what they're doing? How can I be part of that success?" 

So don't worry about influence, worry about your team's success, and worry about shipping a product that works.

Two area that are highly understated but very relevant as you grow into more senior roles and develop your influencing skills

1. Concise, clear and consistent communication - very few people can use a few words to explain their ideas with cartoon clarity.
2. Listening and repeating - pay your highest attention in conversation, repeat to drive clarity and refer the anecdotes/ learnings in future communication. It will drive organization's trust in you.

Product Management, or to a large extent-most managerial roles, are dependent on influencing people with/without an official heirarchy. Specifically, to become a more influential PM, one must have high level of empathy and always seek to find common ground with your stakeholder--it doesn't matter if the stakeholder is the CTO or an Engineering Manager or a newly-minted dev.  

For most,It takes a lot of time to train the empathy muscle and hence this is a learned capability

Thought leadership is one of the most valuable tools as a PM.

There are many ways to build a thought leadership portfolio. Here are some of the ways I use and coach others:

1. Attend industry conferences and make connections

2. Attend meet ups and be a speaker

3. Lead talks/panels with other industry leaders

4. Publish blogs/share content on social media/record short videos on your POV and share on social media

5. Become a published author

With all these methods of becoming known, it makes it easier to carry influence within your org and with other leaders.