Communicate and Be Heard
Battle tested learnings from product leader and speaker extraordinaire, Parul Goel
Parul engaging the audience at a Mind the Product event
Imagine if someone came up to you after a big presentation and told you, “This was the first time I ever understood this topic.” Wouldn’t that feel great?
That is the exact feedback that Parul Goel got after she gave a demo about Dispute APIs at a company all hands meeting. Anyone that can make such a boring topic (sorry Parul!) interesting and easy to understand must be a deft communicator.
Parul wasn’t just born with a silver tongue. She’s worked at it for years. As a third grader in India, she argued the merits of television in a debate about whether television was a boon or a menace to society. In high school, she came to the US as a cultural exchange student and went to different Rotary clubs to talk about her life in India and experiences in the US. Despite all her experience as a speaker, her accent still made it harder for people to understand her. Whenever she tried to order vodka at a bar in college, she would get water instead!
Parul developed a thick skin and focused on the goal to getting her ideas across. Today, Parul is a product leader that speaks regularly at conferences and hosts her own podcast called Unseen Battles. I was excited to interview Parul and learn about how she became a great communicator.
Before we start, let’s address some myths about communication.
Myth #1: Communication is public speaking.
Public speaking is a form of communication, but not the only one. There are many mediums for communication, including email, chat, phone calls, video calls, in-person meetings, and larger meetings like conferences or all hands meetings. Each medium has its own reason for being, and top communicators know what to use and when.
Myth #2: If I talk a lot, I’m good at communication.
Wrong! Communication needs to be purpose driven. Parul communicates either with the purpose of moving initiatives forward (i.e. gather requirements, update on status, escalation, etc.) or building and strengthening relationships, (i.e. spending time with people I work with so that I know who they are, what is important to them, and who I am and my values with them). She is intentional about why she communicates so that everyone gets value out of the interaction.
Myth #3: Communication takes too much time.
Communication can take up your calendar if you let it. As PMs, we especially know the pain of being in back-to-back meetings all day and not having time to focus and get things done. Parul manages her calendar by making communication efficient. She picks a few mediums to reduce the number of channels that she has to monitor and lets her team know how they can reach her and what her usual SLA is.
Product management is one of those roles that needs good communication skills to be successful. If you look at exceptional product managers you have come across, they were probably excellent storytellers. Because as a PM, your success not only depends on making prioritization decisions, but also selling these decisions to others. And this is true regardless of whether you are a Product Owner or a Chief Product Officer.
If you’re ready to communicate and be heard, let’s dive in.
Lauren: Thanks for joining me, Parul.
As we talked about earlier, there are many mediums for communication. How do you decide what type of communication to use and when?
Parul: What mediums I choose to communicate depends on the culture of the company, the goal of the communication as well as the size of the group.
Email: I use email for sharing information or setting context with a group. I assume that people might not get to my email within 24 hours. So if I am looking for a quick turn around, I would send the email but then also message the person to bring it to their attention.
Chat: I use chat in two ways. One of them is if I need someone’s attention urgently. In my experience, most people are more responsive on chat than on email. The second is the complete opposite of the first - when I am informally chatting with someone. While chat is instant, it also gives other people to prioritize and respond relative to whatever is in front of them.
Phone Call - I use phone calls if I need to reach someone urgently and they did not respond to my chat or message. The other time I would pick up the phone is when I know the topic I want to talk about is nuanced and won’t translate well on chat or email.
Video calls - Video calls, in my opinion, are the best proxy to meeting in person because I can still read the body language of others and pick up cues about how the message is being received. People are also less likely to multitask when they are on a video call. But we are working from home. That means I am not always presentable. So there are meetings I don’t join via video. And I also let others decide whether they want to turn on their camera or not.
In-person meetings - In a small group, I prefer open discussion and context setting before getting into the slides. In larger meetings, where I have a specific goal like getting the group to make a decision, I kick off the discussion with the slides to ground the group and give them a common focus while keeping the tail end of the meeting less structured.
Conferences - Toastmasters has instilled in me that as a speaker, what I say is the most important thing. Slides should help reinforce the main message of the talk but are secondary. While I usually have slides for my talks, I try my best to make them as simple as possible so that the audience can continue to focus on the talk rather than reading the slides. This usually means strong visuals and fewer words. Last year, I saw two great presentations at conferences without slides. The content was so well done, they did not need slides. My goal is to get to that!
Lauren: I love how thoughtful you are with each medium. Do you think the way that you communicate changes throughout your career?
Parul: When PMs are first starting their careers, they usually start as Product Owners. At this stage, the main goal is to share information such as customer problems statements and product requirements with the Engineering team, but also to inspire them to be invested in the product.
As you grow in your career, influencing vertically and laterally becomes a larger part of your role. How do you communicate the criticality of your initiative and ask for support? How do you get the attention of the right people? To be able to do this successfully, PMs need to be able to understand the other person’s context and make the conversation relevant to them.
Lauren: That makes a lot of sense. Regardless of career stage, what are some ways that PMs can grow their own communication skills?
Parul: Here are three ways that have helped me.
Find people whose communication skills you admire and observe how they do it.
Communication skills, especially public speaking skills build over time and need practice. I highly recommend Toastmasters to get better at them. It is an international public speaking club where you can practice and get feedback in a safe space. You can probably find a few clubs near you. Attend meetings as a guest (they are free) and find the right club for you. And if you join, be an active member so that you can practice at every opportunity. I like to share the story of a fellow Toastmaster. When he joined, he was a beginner and he really struggled with public speaking. But he participated in every meeting and every contest irrespective of how hard it was for me. And the improvement in him was just phenomenal. If you put in the work, Toastmasters will work for you.
One tactical tip I would offer is to focus on what feeling you want to inspire in your audiences, and create content that will help you inspire that feeling. For example, if you are presenting to your leadership where you want them to leave the room feeling reassured vs. where you want to highlight the need to action, you will use different words and different tones. So figure out what impact you want to have first, and then create your presentation.
Lauren: That’s really smart to start with the impact and work your way backwards. Almost like how PMs start with what need to solve for users first, and then work with designers and engineers to figure out how to build it. :)
For managers, what are some ways that they can help their teams improve their communication skills?
Parul: I’m a big believer in growing my team members.
Create a safe space for them to present in larger forums or meetings with more senior audiences so that they can practice these skills as they do develop over time.
By observing them and giving them constructive feedback
I also try to help my team find and finetune their natural style. For example, someone on my team was a great storyteller but she had a tendency to focus on the details rather than the big picture. So my goal with her was to help her leverage her storytelling skills to help the audience connect with the larger mission.
Lauren: Thank you, Parul, for sharing your battle-tested learnings on communication. When I’ve seen you present, I have been impressed by your ability to make your content relatable through personal stories and your command of the stage by working in pauses, making eye contact and using the stage. To experience Parul’s storytelling in action for yourself, check out her podcast, Unseen Battles.
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