As a Product Manager, you are likely to face many difficult conversations, for example, stopping work that fails to align with top priorities, giving feedback, negotiating roadmaps, and apologising when you took your eye off the ball.

Mastering difficult conversations can g...

• The "What happened" layer. What's the story here?
• The Feelings layer is uncovering how you really feel.
• The Identify layer ask what does this say about me?

Conversations fall apart when we say, "I am right, and you are wrong." This is because we have more information about ourselves than we have about the other person. We know our intent, but we judge their intent based on their action. We also base our deduction on what suits our pre-conceived idea...

Feelings are at the centre of a difficult conversation. Ignoring emotions can cause resentment, anger, and broken relationships.

There are three steps to expressing feelings in difficult conversations.

• Get better at uncovering your feelings. Reframe feelings to s...

In the identity conversation, you start to worry about what the conversation says about you.

Three core identity-related questions we think about:

• Am I competent?
• Am I a good person?
• Am I worthy of love?

You are more likely to ...

1.  Start from the third-person perspective.

It helps you create distance to have a broader point of view and to express yourself more objectively.

2.  Listen more intently

Use the SOAR framework

• Make...