Shut Up and Listen
Read on my website / Read time: 5 minutes
So you've landed your first meeting with a bigwig stakeholder. You want to make a good impression. And you're eager to establish alignment as quickly as possible. After all, you've got a product to run and goals to accomplish.
Wait. Not so fast.
The first meeting with any stakeholder is not about alignment. It's about how well you LISTEN.
Often I see less experienced product managers rush to explain themselves, showcase their amazing work, dazzle the stakeholder with their brilliant logic, all in hopes of getting that quick head nod so they can move on.
It rarely works that way.
When we talk to stakeholders, we want to get to know them as individuals so we can form trustful working relationships with them. It's important to understand what are their incentives and goals, what they're held accountable for, how they're measured, and what's important to them.
This gives us the inside scoop on their perspective and how they make decisions. We can better understand where they're coming from. This gives us a basis for having productive conversations about specific decisions or issues later. We can frame our arguments in a way that more closely resonates with how they think.
Stakeholder discovery is similar to customer discovery, but different.
When interviewing stakeholders, we can use many of the same techniques we use when interviewing customers. The goals, however, are different.
With customer discovery interviews, we're trying to understand how they do their jobs, what goals they're trying to accomplish, what may be getting in the way of accomplishing them, and what they've done to solve those problems to help us make more informed product decisions.
With stakeholder discovery interviews, we're trying to understand their jobs and how they do them so we can make a plan to get alignment and buy-in for product decisions.
Failure to do proper stakeholder discovery can lead to derailment of product plans before our product even reaches customers.
On the other hand, our ability to connect with stakeholders give us power - power in the form of being able to influence product decisions. This connection is built on the bedrock of developing a trusted relationship and key to this is understanding our stakeholder's worldview.
A stakeholder discovery interview is about learning, not pitching. It's about listening more than talking.
Not talking doesn't mean you don't speak at all, of course. And a big part of listening is making them feel heard.
Here are 11 things any product manager can do to run an effective stakeholder discovery interview.
1. Have an objective for the meeting.
Is it just a casual meet and greet? Are you interested in getting their perspective on a new project you're starting together with them?
2. Make it informal, if possible.
Try to meet up over coffee or lunch. People tend to be more relaxed.
Else, meet at a neutral site, such as a small conference room.
Some executives may insist on meeting in their office. That's ok. Do so. People are much more comfortable on their home turf. (If you're a product leader with an office, don't invite them to your office for the first meeting - go to theirs.)
Only if necessary, meet over video. This may be unavoidable for remote workers and distributed teams. Even so, try to make it as informal as possible.
3. Start with a warm opening.
For example, if you're meeting in their office, try to observe if they have any personal effects that you could use to strike up a conversation. Perhaps they have a photo of their family. "What a lovely family! I see you have 2 kids. What grade are they in?"
This works for video calls too. If they're not using a filter, you could comment on something nice in their physical background. "That is a cool looking guitar I see hanging back there! How long have you been playing?" If they have a filter or virtual background, you could comment on the fun of the filter itself. "Nice cosmic background! Are you a science nerd like me?"
4. Keep it confidential.
For goodness sake, do NOT use a notetaker!
People are less likely to be open if they're being recorded, especially in a first time meeting. The purpose of this first meeting is to form a connection - so you want to focus on making it feel like a conversation.
If absolutely necessary, take your own notes. But active listening, eye contact, staying attentive - all that is way more important at this stage.
5. Ask a question and then stop talking.
Remember: it's about them, not you. Ask them about their role. What's fun and challenging about their job. What success looks like for them. What challenges they're facing in meeting their goals. What may be top-of-mind for them. What their team's relationship has historically been with yours.
6. Start with higher-level questions to develop and understand context.
This has a higher chance of putting them at ease and making them open up. Save the more specific questions for later.
7. Ask open-ended questions to uncover more.
"Tell me more about..."
"What's challenging about..."
"Can you give me an example?"
Keep the yes-no questions merely to confirm your understanding.
8. Use Mirroring to uncover more.
Here's a trick world class negotiators use to get people to reveal more about themselves and their intentions: its called mirroring.
Mirroring involves simply repeating back the last three words or the last sentence the person said or from anywhere in the conversation.
This does two things. One is that it sends a message to the other person that I heard every word you said word for word, and I'm proving it because I just repeated it back to you. The other person feels listened to and now we have a connection.
The other thing it does is it communicates, "I still don’t get it, though. I need a bit more." It encourages people to go on with a further explanation – they're going to add more words. They're going to connect more thoughts in their head.
Watch Chris Voss's Masterclass for a great explanation on using this technique. (I don’t get paid by Masterclass or Chris Voss to share this. I just like his Masterclass a lot and think it has useful skills for product managers.)
9. Confirm understanding by parroting back or misrepresenting
To confirm your understanding of important points, parrot back what you think you heard the interviewee say and ask them to confirm.
This may get them to further expand on their perspective in an effort to make sure they're being clear. (Most people want to be helpful and want to feel understood.)
It's also a good way to keep them engaged – they know you're listening.
A simple technique is to say, "Let me play back to you what I think I heard, but please keep me honest in my understanding..." and then proceed to parrot back.
You could purposely misrepresent what they said and see if they correct you. It can uncover more details about the topic being discussed. You need to do that carefully, though. If overused it may lead them to believe you're in fact NOT listening and cause them to disengage.
10. Embrace the silence.
Doing so will allow them to think and respond. This can be hard for chatty product people. But it is the most powerful communication tool in your arsenal.
11. "Who else should I be talking to?"
This helps uncover if they need someone else's input before buying into anything.
And it can go both ways. For example, a CMO may rely on the perspective of her Marketing Director. On the other hand, the VP of Finance may not make any decision without the approval of the CFO.
That's all for today. I hope these techniques help you form strong relationships with your stakeholders!
