Product Hits: March 3, 2025

Every week, I share three great product resources from a variety of perspectives. Let's dive in!

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​Stop Validating Your Product by Laura Klein

Laura Klein, Director of UX Design at Indeed, advises product leaders to validate customer problems rather than validating product ideas. She highlights that narrowing target markets and identifying shared pain points are critical steps for building solutions that truly resonate and achieve long-term success.

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​Managing up by Wes Kao

Wes Kao, co-founder of Maven, offers a practical guide to mastering the skill of managing up. She emphasizes anticipating your manager’s priorities, fostering open communication, and proactively aligning on goals to enhance collaboration and drive better outcomes.

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​Compound Errors by Victor Cheng

Victor Cheng, VP of Product at LivePerson, highlights how small, overlooked mistakes can combine to create catastrophic failures. Drawing parallels with airplane crashes and accounting scandals, Cheng stresses the importance of identifying and addressing issues early to prevent larger crises.

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Behind the Scenes

Hey there, it's Clement! After so many years as a PM, I’ve learned that emotional intelligence (EQ) isn’t “nice to have.”

In fact, EQ is what separates beloved product leaders from those who struggle to bring people together.

To clarify, EQ doesn’t come from being a people-pleaser, and it doesn’t come from being overly sentimental or emotional. Rather, EQ comes from a deep understanding of how your emotions and other people’s emotions shape decisions and guide interactions.

EQ ties together many key behaviors for product managers: staying calm under pressure, course-correcting when things go sideways, actively listening to others and encouraging them to share, nudging executives towards a particular direction, and so much more.

If EQ is so important for PMs… is it like IQ? Is it locked in at birth?

Thankfully no! You can learn EQ.

Trust me, I was absolutely terrible at EQ in my first year as a PM - I stepped on so many toes, and I still facepalm when I look back.

But I’ve definitely gotten better, and I know that we all can develop stronger EQ.

The key starting point for building EQ is self-awareness. We want to pay attention to our own emotions, especially in stressful moments.

Then we want to build awareness of others. When we come out of a conversation, let’s not immediately think about how we’re feeling - let’s consider how the other person is feeling too.

From there, we can self-regulate: how might we change the way we express emotions so that we can guide others to the finish line?

And how might we express emotions so that we don’t put ourselves into a difficult situation, yet still effectively convey the point?

I’ve seen PMs with incredible technical and strategic chops get stuck because they’ve forgotten that EQ matters - and I’ve seen others with strong EQ accelerate their careers simply because they could navigate relationships better than others could.

I’d love to hear your reflections! What’s an example of when EQ (or the lack of it) made a huge difference in an initiative? What did you find surprising about it? I can’t wait to hear back!

With love,
Clement

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