Bringing self-compassion into product management

Encouragement to shift your perception of what ‘high performing’ looks like

Photo by john crozier on Unsplash

Product management is hard. One day you’re receiving praise for how great your product and team is, the next day you’re being questioned on product decisions that you made and it seems like all you’re getting is negative feedback from customers and stakeholders. When so much importance is placed on demonstrating empathy, PMs face diminishing returns if we’re unable to show empathy for ourselves.

Hard skills such as OKR development, KPIs, and technical expertise can only take product managers so far without practicing the most under-appreciated soft skill that I want to shine a light on: self-compassion.

I’m particularly passionate about this topic because the role of a product manager is inherently and undeniably relational. This is a team sport. As a PM, you lead and motivate an interdisciplinary team to create experiences that solve for a diverse range of customers and stakeholders. In this post, I’ll write some reflections on a research and data-backed class I took called mindful self-compassion. I want to share how I’ve been able to apply this to my daily life as a product manager.

You might be thinking “there’s no way this is going to help me be a better product manager.” Or that self-compassion is a form of weakness or self-pity.

Eye-roll 🙄 Gif from Giphy

Well, there have been decades of research that supports that self-compassion encourages embracing risks, resiliency, and overall fulfillment. Here’s how these benefits have shown up for me as a product manager:

• More risk-taking: and less fear of failure. Through befriending and encouraging myself, I’m able to take risks. For example, in my every day I’m saying and questioning more things that I otherwise might have been afraid to vocalize. The way this shows up for me is to support myself in speaking authentically, even if it might be an unpopular opinion or I dress rehearse a negative outcome. (s/o to Brené Brown — vulnerability is courage).
• Greater resilience and…