Day 6/30: Empathizing with your users
💜 Empathy is a must-have skill for product managers
Product managers work with a lot of different of folks in the course of their day-to-day work and throughout their careers:
Users
Customers
Teammates
Stakeholders
There are two major types of empathy:
Cognitive empathy: knowing how someone is feeling and what they might be thinking
Emotional empathy: a state of being emotionally attuned with someone
We can strive towards stepping into the perspective of the folks for which we’re solving problems.
Some life experiences that I theorize have shaped my capacity of empathize, which admittedly can be overwhelming at times:
Travel and see what life is like for other people around the world in our myriad of cultures and societies.
Talk with people and be genuinely curious about them. What are their likes? Dislikes? Hopes? Dreams? Fears?
Read widely.
Listen to a wide variety of musical genres, styles, etc.
Learn about cognitive biases and reflect on my own.
Be present whenever you’re having a conversation with folks.
Empathy is a beautiful, human phenomenon that lets us create solutions to ease the pains of day-to-day life.