I’m approaching this as a discussion topic and hope to provide some insights to welcome deeper dive questions, if the interviewer wants to spend time on this question.

The biggest grey area for me is people. On one hand, it’s to understand what they’re saying and this can be users or the team I’m working with, or even other PMs. Anyone. A lot of me understanding communication involves understanding the context and the motivation of what is being said. There’s a lot to unpack there, and I’m still learning. And equally, with me communicating. It’s important that what I convey is received in the way that I intend it to. But that isn’t so easy when the other party has a vastly different mental model to mine.

I strive to understand and identify the yellow flags and to keep improving on communication and negotiation. All of my success as a PM requires communication. It can be to inform, inspire, convince, collaborate, instruct. Improving on this, will make me and the product team more successful.

Similarly, I need to keep myself informed of the world around me, especially in the context of my products and my teams and company. I also need to understand the strategies and vision that leads them, and how they change and why. This finger on the pulse helps inform my decisions and ensure that they are aligned with the bigger picture.

It’s always a curiosity as to how others solve problems and what I can learn from them. It’s a bit like learning from watching. I love those product and strategy tear-downs. It helps the creativity nugget.

First Step: Explain your understanding of Product Management Role and about your interests, PM role requirement, and your alignment 

PM Role – I believe the Product management role is all the about the interpersonal skills and an understanding of the cross-functional set up with an aim to achieve the growth of the Products and constantly improve the offerings

My strengths and Weaknesses – I have a unique combination of strong tech, Data, Project management skills, and business understanding. I have been a developer followed by an MBA degree and Project management certifications which help me currently to contribute better to the PM role

Constantly Improving – It is a dynamic business environment where businesses are coming up the new offerings and making life simpler by solving the increased digitization. New ways for reaching out to the customers, increased digitization, new tech innovations which are in turn constantly redefining the Product management role.

Answer –

1. To make sure that I am improving as a PM, I will constantly revisit my skillset by learning new things that are required for a better contribution to my job
2. Constantly follow the tech innovations – far a faster market adoption and improve our product in terms of new features, improving the existing ones
3. Regularly review the customer pain points in the current product journey and strive to solve them
4. Read the Business news and new product releases from well-known companies – if any new product release can solve the existing product problem
5. Abreast with the market trends – being receptive as much as possible and welcome the new ideas from the subordinates and the coordinates
6. Communication – To understand the pulse of the team and meet their expectations, networking lunches and the events would motivate the team to think innovatively and contribute to my skillset as well with the supplementary ideas
7. Networking
   1. Inbound – With the internal stakeholders to check their pain points and understand the levers which are required to be pulled to connect the dots and possible next steps
   2. Outbound – With consumers, Competitors, Sourcing clients to understand the pain points and make the solution better