From Good to Great: Developing a Diverse Skill Set as a PM

You can’t become an exceptional PM by just being good at one thing.

It’s >16, across these 4 major areas:

1. Major Outputs
2. Hard Skills
3. Soft Skills
4. Career Skills

Here are the deep dives to help with each of these areas.

When people ask me what skills should they work on…

Usually, my first question is: “what are you good and bad at?”

Your superpowers are great things to rely on:

• Great at PRDs? Showcase them
• Fantastic at Strategy? Circulate widely
• Corporate Politics Mastermind? Network

Then, everything that’s a weakness is something to work on. PMs can’t afford to be weak at any one thing. Let’s take an example in each category:

Major Outputs

↳ A PM that can’t write great roadmaps isn’t going inspire their team.

Hard Skills

↳ A PM that can’t identify and validate risks every time will ship a lot of insignificant stuff.

Soft Skills

↳ A PM that can’t say No to the CEO and execs will be liked during delivery time, and canned during results review time.

Career Skills

↳ A PM that doesn’t know how to rise up the ladder can be the most impactful person in the company and still stuck in their level.

Mastery of a successful PM career requires just that much breadth.

You can’t be totally T-shaped.

At least in these 16 areas.