Dealing with Difficult Emotions in Product Management

Why Difficult Emotions Matter Particularly for Product People We may not like difficult emotions like confusion, frustration, anger, envy, sadness, and worry, but we all experience them. This is especially true in times like these, with the Coronavirus pandemic causing many people to be concerned about their health and jobs and the wellbeing of family members and friends. For us product people, however, difficult emotions are particularily relevant. Here is why: We routinely interact with individuals who have different perspectives, interest, and needs, such as users, customers, stakeholders, development team members. Users don’t always have the same wants and needs as customers, and the ideas of the stakeholders and dev team may diverge. This can lead to friction and conflict, which gives rise to difficult emotions.We are responsible for their success of our products. While I really appreciate this entrepreneurial aspect of our work, it can bring up tension, stress, and frustration when we are trying to progress our products towards agreed goals but are in danger of missing them, be it a sprint goal, product goal on the roadmap, or a strategic user or business goal.We have a rich and creative but equally challenging and multi-faceted job. It ranges from carrying out product discovery and strategizing work to managing the product backlog; from talking to users to meeting with marketing and answering questions from the support team—to name just a few examples. Having to attend to so many different tasks can be challenging: It can create difficult feelings like restless and irritation. Negative emotions, however, are not only unpleasant. They influence how we perceive reality and how we communicate. When you feel hurt or grumpy, for instance, your thoughts are likely to show a negative discolouration, and you might interpret what others say as criticism rather than take it as their observation. This can lead to misunderstandings and damaged connections, as well as wrong analysis of feedback and data and wrong product decisions. To put it differently, learning to skilfully deal with difficult emotions increases our mental wellbeing, strengthens our connections with stakeholders and development team members, and improves our ability as product people to make effective decisions. A big shout out to Marc Abraham who, according to my knowledge, was the first person to bring attention to challenging feelings like frustration in product management. Becoming Aware of Difficult Emotions To constructively deal with difficult feelings, we must become aware of them and learn to accept them. This might seem trivial, but it is a crucial step that is sometimes hard to take. There are three reasons why this can be the case: Self-view: If you firmly think of yourself as a gentle, kind person, then you might find it difficult to accept that at times, you too can feel emotions like anger, ill-will, and envy.Mental State: If you are very busy, rushing from one task to the next, then noticing difficult feelings will be harder. In fact, you might not become aware of them until they have grown so big that they can’t go unnoticed any longer.Work Environment: If you work in a male-dominated environment, then tuning into your feelings may not feature very high on your agenda, especially if you are male. The male-dominated workplaces I have experienced were largely characterised by ignoring difficult emotions, rather than acknowledging them. But ignoring and suppressing unpleasant feelings won’t make them go away—trust me, I’ve tried this more than once. Instead, it will affect your mental well-being and impact your ability to make the right decisions. In the worst case, an emotion will eventually grow so big and powerful that it overwhelms you and that it causes you to act it out, thereby possibly saying or doing something you will later regret. Therefore, bring awareness to how you are feeling, and allow difficu