Product managers are required to be proficient at a great number of skills in order to do their jobs at maximum effectiveness. Business acumen, financial analysis, market analysis, organizational skills, and more. One of the most important skills is who you build yourself to be, or simply who you are. Charisma is the term used when your charm appears natural and effortless. Brand is the you that others interact with and experience. That could be the character which you build, or the genuine you. How you perceive yourself and how others think of you are not the same thing.

As they say around the water cooler, when nothing repeatedly goes right, it might be you. This is why brand is so important. It can color everything. While this post is aimed at the career PM, it’s equally applicable to anyone in their personal life.

WHY BRAND MATTERS

Why does brand matter? If you’re already in a job, your brand can open or close doors and opportunities to you. If you’re changing jobs, it can be the difference between a good recommendation, a tepid recommendation, or a poor one. It can even make the difference inside a company for other peoples’ decisions to decide to get involved with anything you’re involved in. Team is everything. Without a good team you’re a solo operator. You might be ok with that but growth comes with teams and exposure to projects and opportunities which give you the space to shine and stretch. These opportunities are rarely individual contributor roles. The best ones expect cross-functional efforts. Growth into PM leadership requires great skill at working with other PMs and other teams or business units. Brand matters because a poor brand limits your opportunities and access to high-quality people inside your company who can help you succeed. A players aren’t looking for C players to drag along and slow them down for half the credit. People with a terrible brand will at best get C players to work with them or people that can’t say no to a project once assigned. That is not the path to greatness.

FAULTY CORRELATION

I love a good 2×2 matrix. Maybe it was my exposure to consultants early in my career. When they work they can make a very clear point. Unfortunately I can’t use one here. I’d love to create a chart that illustrates how people with great brand have the most successful outcomes. In some cases that might be true. The truth is, however, that highly dysfunctional people can also be very effective. No one may like them, and you may not want to work with them, but they can still get things done. Obnoxious PMs can still get people to finish projects. The trouble with that is, people will still dislike them and may never want to work with them (again). This can also cause strong people on your teams to shadow quit (i.e. never work with you again), or actually quit. Long-term effectiveness may be severely impacted. A high-calibre PM will always be grooming A and B players to be in their stable for future projects. It helps the PM and it helps the player employees with visibility and evidence of impact for future recognition and promotions. This is a virtuous cycle for both you and your team. Success breeds success.

UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTH

While many people posture to be seen in certain ways for their benefit, hiding who you are is actually difficult because it takes constant effort to not be yourself. The uncomfortable truth is, everyone is watching you; especially as a product manager. It’s because a PM is a leader of projects and products who carries the authority of the customer voice. This is true even as an IC PM. It’s also human nature. Since you lead you are a leader and people are watching you. There’s no escaping. This makes brand especially important. Are you collaborative? Are you effective? Or are you a taker and a spotlight hoarder? Are you a leader and the go-to person for any customer doubts? Or are you someone to be feared and not questioned? Remember you can help define your brand but you don’t own it. What other people interpret you to be is what your brand is. “Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.” (Jeff Bezos) If you don’t like what you’re hearing, work to change it. You build or erode your brand on a daily basis.

A hot mess of a person won’t be fixed with a button up shirt.

I value authenticity. I also respect people I don’t always agree with and aren’t always the most jolly people to be around. It’s because these people are authentic and deliver results. I don’t have to always agree with you to be your colleague and respect your brand. Some of the best people I’ve ever worked with had peculier combinations of habits, senses of humor, sociability, fashion sense, etc. What they had in common was commitment to excellence, respect for work and colleagues, and the ability to work with others. If you need to you can shape your personal brand, but please do it authentically. You can only sustain being unauthentic for a short period of time.

THE DRESS FOR THE JOB YOU WANT FALLACY

There’s nothing wrong with wearing clean, work-appropriate clothes, or dressing up a bit more than necessary. That alone won’t change anything unless your only weakness was your dress code which is pretty unlikely. Brand comprises who you are, what you say and don’t say, your actions and more. A hot mess of a person won’t be fixed with a button up shirt. 

FACETS OF BRAND

Let’s get more specific. What are some of the specific facets people mean when they say brand? There are quite a few. Remember that while there are many, brand from other people’s mouths can be as simple as, “She’s great”, or “He’s unreliable”.

Here are a few different examples that brand can be attached to. These are a mix of what I’d consider positive and negative brand attributes to consider.

* Baseline skills. Do you know your core work domain? Do you know the market? Do you know how it all fits together? Are you listlessly floating waiting for someone else to tell you what to do?
* Work demeanor. Do you show up to meetings on time? Do you pay attention and ask relevant questions? When called on do you always need to have the question restated because you weren’t actually paying attention? Do you never turn on your videos or speak out loud?
* Work outputs. Do you deliver quality results? Are they on time? Do you have excuses for why you don’t have quality work?
* Customer knowledge. Do you know your customers intimately? Do you know a handful by name with detailed understanding of their environments and needs? Do you generalize what other people say instead? Do you have a list of evergreen questions you can ask any customer at any time if you run into them? Do you document and share your learnings with peers and engineering?
* Attitude. Do you create, test, and validate new ideas? Do you tear down other people’s ideas? Are you positive? Are you passive? Do you arrive at work ready to try?
* Working style. Are you proactive or reactive? Do you respond or ignore requests for action? Do you make yourself available to help others?
* Information flow. Are you an information source or dead-end? Do you inform, share, or hide information helpful to others?
* Business acumen. Do you know how your entire company operates, at least with respect to your product? I’m not saying you should also be an accountant or HR expert. Do you know the business model and how your company actually makes money?

THE ONE WORD BRAND

People can be harshly efficient with their assessments of you. It may be unfair, I understand. It can also be informative. While you may wish people would take the time to get to know the real you, this simply won’t happen. Everyone is busy and most are simply not invested in getting to know the real you. Your brand is the shortcut to public perception of you. Ask those you trust to tell you your one-word brand. Hopefully you’ll hear something like Dependable, Trustworthy, Reliable, or Hard-working. If you hear something altogether opposite or negative, you may want to work on the source of those within yourself.

YOUR IMPERFECTLY PERFECT BRAND

Fortunately real people aren’t perfect. You don’t need to be every positive attribute in the dictionary to be a great work colleague and asset (and person). As a PM, you want people to follow your lead and trust that you’re taking them in the right future direction. In some ways their success depends on you. In more ways, your product success depends very much on your ability to get the right team assembled to help you realize your vision. A core component to getting people onboard is you, and your brand is the shortcut to what they can expect out of you. That is why it’s so important. Long term, your brand is the lubricant or the sand in the gears to opportunities for growth opportunities and promotions.

Not all brands will sound like a holiday movie and that’s ok. I’m not suggesting you should try to be a naive children’s cartoon character. People are complicated in real life. Also, you don’t need to be popular to have a strong positive brand.

E.g. “Jerry is demanding but always delivers” is not a bad brand. Now maybe Jerry isn’t the most pleasant and you will probably work hard if you’re on a team with him, but he delivers successful outcomes. If I was a young PM I would want to be on a team known for successful products so I could become associated with success.

E.g. “Padmashree isn’t warm and friendly but she’s always on time and her work is unparalled.” This is someone I’d be very happy to have on my team. Geat work is hard to come by. I don’t need to be everybody’s best friend, but at work I do need high quality. I’d take this any day.

Brand is ultimately the expression about how people feel about you. If you’re getting brand feedback you don’t like, think deeply as to what you’re hearing. You might not be comfortable hearing it but working on it will help you. Differentiate as well what can be changed and what cannot. If you’re a serious person, you will probably never become a bubbly socialite. This isn’t a career stopper. If you’re known for being late and unprepared, this is a career inhibitor. You can work on this. You can actively change your brand, and a great brand is an accelerant to a great career.

ABOUT LUKE

Luke Congdon is a career product manager living and working in Silicon Valley since 2000. His areas of focus include enterprise software, virtualization, and cloud computing. He has built and brought numerous products to market including start-up MVPs and billion-dollar product lines. Luke currently lives in San Francisco. To contact, connect via luke@lukecongdon.com or https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukecongdon/.