Check out Part 1 if you haven’t.  It’ll make this post easier to consume.

In follow-up to Part 1 I want to spend a moment clicking into INTERACTING behavior for a product leader.

So much of what product management gets done in an organization is through influence, not ownership.  Product teams are typically small compared to engineering teams.  Outside of a couple brand managers I know, the engineering, marketing, QA organizations don’t report to the product tier.

What we get done is what we influence, not what we own.

So, how we interact with the organization is I believe a very important behavior to drill into with a candidate product leader.

My model of traits for interacting are collaboration, communication, and persuasion.  I describe these traits as follows:

• Collaboration – enjoys sharing their expertise with other professionals, builds team bonding, and open to a variety of inputs from across the organization.
• Communication – adept at speaking to the audience (vs. an audience), enjoys public speaking, and articulate
• Persuasive – skilled listener, probes, questions, and strives to influence others.

For each of these traits we can build questions that test for the trait.  Think about how you want your product leader to interact with the organization at large. 

Interacting	Question	Evidence
Collaboration	How do you onboard a new employee or team member?	Gives specific examples of setting up informal meetings, other social interaction, shadowing, etc
	How do you develop your role with the many different people you interact with? i.e. clients, peers, engineering, leadership.	Gives specific examples of building team atmosphere, shares interests, shares ideas and information.
	What do you have in common with the people you enjoy spending time with at work?	I look for specific commonalities with co-workers.  Like the same comics, movies, books, teams.  Started at band (real example).  Go to movie nights.  Attend a company team sport, etc.
Persuasion	What does it take to be a good listener?	They stress understanding the needs or concerns of the person they are talking/listening to.
	A client interrupts you during a presentation and says, “all the products are the same.”  How would you convince her how our products meet their need?	Gives examples of probing to address the specific reasons for the customers concerns.  Finds the specific concern.  Addresses the specific concern.
	Have you ever had an idea for a product, application, or feature that was not accepted by your organization?	Must be a real example.  How did they achieve or attempt buy-in?

What questions would you ask to look for evidence of a communication trait?  Something like, “tell me about your most recent public speaking opportunity?”  Do you need to test for PowerPoint skills?  Do they use group polling while presenting?

Hiring for behaviors and traits helps you land the product leader you and your organization need.

What traits would you add or remove?

Stay curious!