For as long as I can remember, I’ve been passionate about dancing and product management. I started dancing in my bedroom when I was little, then I took classes and then I took more and harder classes. After a while, I started giving classes and occasionally performing dance shows. I did it for almost 15 years now and during this time my passion kept growing both for dancing and for product management.

Even though these 2 activities seem very different, I feel there are a lot of things dancers and Product Managers have in common.

They Adapt to Change

Dancers will continuously adapt to new songs, new types of music and new partners. When I was giving dance classes, I would dance with my partner to show the move and with my students to correct their moves. I was adapting to each person’s level and style. I was also switching multiple times from ‘man steps’ to ‘women steps’ as I was playing both roles and constantly adapting to the group’s needs.

Just the same, PMs are swimming in ever-changing waters. The needs of the users evolve, business stakes evolve, the market evolves and everything happens very fast. A good PM knows how to constantly keep an eye on these changes and analyse them in order to take the right decisions and build a product that is relevant. They also know how to motivate the team and help them adapt and look for better ways to build the product.

Change can feel uncomfortable at times and it is important that the PM acknowledges that and finds ways to navigate through it, all while helping their teammates do the same.

They Truly Listen

Dancers will listen to the music to the point of decomposing and analysing the instruments and every break in the rhythm. In addition to listening to the music, dancers listen to their partner and use empathy in order to connect with them. Listening to the music and to the partner are two key factors that will both ensure a great dance and a great synergy with others.

Listening to others and using empathy will become even more important when more dancers are involved in choreography. I have learned this while preparing a show with 5 other dancers and where coordination was key to the success of our show. The success depended on us being a team way more than on each of us being a great dancer. We understood early that constantly observing each other and listening to each other and to the music will guide us to being a real team and performing a great show.

The same goes for PMs. Truly listening is one of the hardest things to do but it’s crucial for being a good PM.

A human being has an average of 500 thoughts per minute. When someone is talking, our spontaneous answers pop right in and stop us from truly listening. A few years ago I used to work very closely with a CTO on building a SaaS product. Every time he started explaining tech strategy or tech concepts, I interrupted him with new questions. I have a degree in engineering and I felt I could understand very quickly where he was going, so I didn’t want to waste our time when we could go faster. We had a good working relationship and he called out at multiple occasions that I was constantly interrupting him. I finally realised that I wasn’t truly listening and I wasn’t showing the respect he deserved for his knowledge either. Realising this didn’t make me change my behaviour overnight, but made me more aware of it and helped me become a better listener over time.

This is a warning call to all PMs: focus on listening. Listen to your team, as they all have skills and knowledge you cannot gain by yourself. Listen to your users because if you don’t, your product won’t be solving real user problems and will not be relevant. And listen to your stakeholders: by listening you will earn their trust and convert them into powerful allies.

And never underestimate the power of listening as truly listening will make you a better communicator. So take all the time necessary to do it.

They Use Trust

Dancers trust themselves, they are aware of their strengths and weaknesses and they take challenges. They also trust their partner above and beyond. Even though it can seem like a fun and light activity, dancing can become dangerous if partners don’t trust each other. This is even more true when preparing a show including acrobatics. With my dance partner we had to establish very candid communication and give a lot of feedback in order to make it work. We were surprised by how easy the acrobatics becomes when trust is established, even for the most spectacular acrobatics.

Just the same, trust and open communication are key for PMs and their teams. Great PMs trust their experience and their guts but they also trust their team. They lead the product by showing they know what they do and by empowering their team to do it. They give a voice to every member of their team and trust them with critical ways of putting their skills to use.

This might seem easy to do, but it is not. Trust is not easy to earn or to give. As PMs, we want to keep things under control as much as possible and giving responsibility to others doesn’t come naturally.

So the battle between trust and control arises.

When dancing, the man is usually guiding the moves so we might think he has all control. Well, this is not completely true. Even though the man guides the moves, their partner brings their own style and flow.

I’ve been in situations when one of the partners tries to force control. This will convert the dance into some non fluid chain of movements and a quite unpleasant experience for both partners. But what’s worst is that if one partner pushes too hard to control, they can get hurt or hurt their partner.

Just the same, in product management, the PM guides the moves: they define the product strategy and prioritise the roadmap with the work to be done. But when getting down to doing it, they need to trust their team. Just like each dancer bring their style and their own listening of the music, team members bring their skills and their ideas into execution. If the PM tries to control all this, the team will feel limited, unmotivated and useless. This will also deprive the product from great ideas that arise from collective intelligence. So everyone will be losing. Good PMs know how to balance control with trust and how to empower their team to give their best every single day and deliver a great product.

They Are Continuous Learners

Dancing has taught me a lot of things about myself and about my learning process. It was one of the first activities that allowed me to introspect the way I learn, to accept it and use it to my advantage. It wasn’t an easy path though. Most of the time a dance teacher would show a new move, I would feel I was imitating it in the ugliest way possible. I could also observe that I was exaggerating the movement, which at times made me angry at myself. What I observed in time, was that exaggerating the movement at the beginning is my way of finding the right balance and the right move afterwards. These are the steps I need to take and iterate upon every time I want to learn a new move. Being aware of it helps me learn in a quicker and more effective manner.

Just the same, good PMs build, step by step, the best learning loops for their products. They list product assumptions and test them in order to de-risk product direction early and often. They advocate for learning and running lean experiments as a means of building a great product. For each product or business assumption, they choose the experiment that will provide the most insights with the least effort involved in order to shorten feedback loops and accelerate learning. They also know that learning is done step by step and they build processes to guide it.

They Are Passionate

‘Great dancers are not great because of their technique. They are great because of their passion’. (Martha Graham)

It takes so much work but also so much passion to get to the perfect move, to the graceful spin, to that synergy between human beings and music that creates pure magic.

And passion is as key in product management as it is in dancing. Great PMs are passionate about their product, about the users, about achieving success as a team. Their passion and energy that comes from it are palpable and contagious for everyone around.

Conclusion

I feel dancing made me a better product manager by helping me develop all the traits I mentioned above and many more. But there is one other essential aspect that gives meaning to all this and makes us better at what we do: having fun.

Don’t forget tomorrow when you go into the office or into the next remote meeting: smile and have fun!