Mastering Influence: A 5-Step Guide for Product Leaders

The Challenge of Influencing Decisions

As product leaders, we often find ourselves in situations where we need to influence decisions and prioritize effectively. Whether you're a design leader, founder, or product manager, the ability to guide teams towards the best outcomes is crucial. But how do we move from having strong opinions to actually shaping better decisions?

This article presents a simple yet powerful 5-step process that will help you navigate the complex landscape of product prioritization and decision-making. By following these steps, you'll be able to align teams, gather evidence, and make choices that drive your product and company forward.

Step 1: Draw the Circle

The first step in influencing decisions is to establish a shared context and goal. This is what we call "drawing the circle."

The Power of Inclusive Thinking

Consider this analogy: When you're at home with your sibling, it might be you against them. But when cousins visit, you and your sibling unite against the cousins. If neighborhood kids challenge you, suddenly it's your whole family against them.

This illustrates an important point: We can choose where we draw the circle of inclusion. In a work context, no matter who you're disagreeing with, there's always a larger circle you can draw that includes both of you.

Finding Common Ground

When approaching a decision or prioritization discussion, start by identifying the shared goal. For example:

• "What we really want is to make a great product that our customers love."
• "It's crucial that we achieve our revenue targets to secure our next round of funding."

By framing the conversation this way, you're no longer trying to convince someone that you're right. Instead, you're both inside the circle, working together to solve a common problem.

Changing Your Mindset

This approach isn't just about using the right words; it's about adopting the right mentality. When you enter a meeting thinking, "I need to convince this person I'm right," you've already drawn the circle around yourself. But if you approach it as "We're both in this circle together," the energy of the conversation changes dramatically.

Step 2: Assume Everyone Sees Some Truth

Once you've drawn the circle, the next step is to acknowledge that everyone involved likely has valuable insights to contribute.

The Parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant

Consider the famous parable of the blind men and the elephant. Each man touches a different part of the elephant and comes to a different conclusion about what an elephant is like:

• One feels the leg and says it's like a tree trunk
• Another touches the ear and claims it's like leather
• A third grabs the tail and insists it's like a rope

The lesson? They're all partially correct, but none has the complete picture.

Applying the Parable to Product Decisions

In product discussions, we often encounter a similar situation. Different team members bring unique perspectives based on their roles and experiences:

• Designers focus on user experience and aesthetics
• Sales teams prioritize revenue targets
• Engineers might emphasize technical feasibility or debt

None of these viewpoints are entirely wrong, but they're also not the whole truth. As a product leader, your job is to synthesize these perspectives into a cohesive understanding.

Acknowledging Different Viewpoints

When approaching discussions, explicitly recognize the value each person brings:

• "As a designer, you're great at spotting usability issues."
• "From your sales perspective, you have unique insights into customer objections."

By acknowledging everyone's contributions upfront, you create an atmosphere of mutual respect and openness to different ideas.

Step 3: Be a Detective

Now that you've established a shared goal and acknowledged everyone's valuable input, it's time to dig deeper into the various perspectives and proposals.

Asking the Right Questions

The key to this step is asking probing questions that help uncover the reasoning behind different viewpoints. Some powerful questions to use:

• "What would have to be true for us to believe that we should do Feature A?"
• "If you're advocating for Option B, what would convince you that A is actually better for our shared goal?"

These questions shift the conversation from defending positions to exploring underlying assumptions and criteria.

Exploring Extreme Scenarios

One effective tactic is to discuss extreme scenarios where the decision would be obvious. This helps establish common ground and clarifies the factors that truly matter.

For example, let's revisit the prioritization options from earlier:

1. Infrastructure rewrite
2. Redesign onboarding
3. Add a new AI feature

Infrastructure Rewrite Scenarios

• Extreme performance degradation leading to customer churn
• Upcoming marketing push that could be undermined by a buggy product
• Engineer morale so low that there's a risk of mass resignations

Onboarding Redesign Scenarios

• Planning to add a large number of new users in the near future
• Evidence that the product has good retention once users understand it, but many struggle initially

AI Feature Scenarios

• New technology could dramatically improve the core value proposition
• Competitors are adopting similar features, risking customer loss if we don't act

By discussing these extreme cases, you can often find agreement on the principles that should guide the decision, even if there's still disagreement on the current situation.

Step 4: Turn it into a Data Question

Once you've explored different scenarios and perspectives, it's time to seek evidence to inform the decision.

Seeking Evidence

For each potential option, ask questions like:

• "How can we know if this is true?"
• "What evidence do we have to support this assumption?"
• "How can we quickly get signal on whether this is the case?"

These questions naturally lead to ideas for gathering more information:

• Conducting customer surveys or interviews
• Analyzing existing dashboard data
• Performing ad-hoc data analysis
• Talking to customer success or sales teams
• Running small experiments or prototypes

Examples of Data-Driven Inquiries

Let's apply this to our prioritization examples:

Infrastructure Rewrite

• Has performance actually been degrading? By how much?
• Is there a correlation between performance issues and customer churn?
• What do our top customers say about the current performance?

Onboarding Redesign

• How many new users do we expect to add in the next quarter or six months?
• What's our current retention rate compared to industry benchmarks?
• If we manually onboard users, do they show significantly higher engagement?

AI Feature

• Have we run any quick experiments to test the potential impact?
• What do our most valuable customers think about proposed AI features?
• What are our competitors doing in this space, and how are customers responding?

Embracing Uncertainty

It's important to recognize that data will rarely provide complete certainty. The goal is to reduce uncertainty and make more informed decisions, not to eliminate all risk.

Step 5: Make it a People Question

Even after gathering data and evidence, there may still be disagreement. At this point, it's crucial to shift the focus to who is best positioned to make the final call.

Identifying the Right Decision-Maker

Consider factors like:

• Who has the best combination of context and relevant skills?
• Who is most invested in the end goal?
• Who can remain clear-headed and unbiased?

As a product leader, you don't always have to be the one making the final decision. Your role is to ensure the best decisions get made, which often means identifying and empowering the right person for each specific choice.

Nominating Decision-Makers

Be willing to nominate others when appropriate:

• "This decision is primarily about technical infrastructure, so I nominate our engineering lead to make the call."
• "Since this initiative is focused on improving customer experience, I suggest we defer to our design lead's judgment."

By doing this, you demonstrate trust in your team and ensure decisions are made by those with the most relevant expertise.

Learning from Decisions Over Time

The process doesn't end once a decision is made. It's crucial to revisit and learn from the outcomes of your choices.

Documenting Decisions

Whenever a significant decision is made:

• Write down the context, options considered, and reasoning
• Note who supported which options and who made the final call
• Set reminders to review the decision after 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, and a year

Multi-Layered Learning

When revisiting past decisions, consider what you've learned about:

1. Customers and their needs
2. Your product and its key levers
3. How you measure success
4. Your decision-making process
5. The quality of individual judgment within the team

This ongoing reflection helps refine not just your product strategy, but also your team's ability to make good decisions over time.

The Bigger Picture: Beyond Individual Decisions

While it's important to make good individual decisions, the true value often lies in the processes and culture you develop along the way.

Consider the story of Facebook's growth team. When tasked with solving a growth problem, they not only found solutions but developed a data-driven, experimental culture that became a core part of the company's success.

As you apply this 5-step process to your decision-making:

1. Draw the circle
2. Assume everyone sees some truth
3. Be a detective
4. Turn it into a data question
5. Make it a people question

Remember that the relationships you build, the learning processes you establish, and the wisdom you accumulate as a team are often more valuable than any single decision.

Conclusion: The True Gift of Effective Influence

Mastering the art of influence isn't about always getting your way. It's about creating an environment where:

• Teams are aligned on shared goals
• Everyone's perspective is valued
• Decisions are made based on evidence and expertise
• The team continuously learns and improves

By following this process, you'll not only make better product decisions but also build stronger, more collaborative teams. The true gift is waking up excited to solve problems with people you respect and enjoy working with, rather than dreading daily conflicts.

As you face the countless decisions that come with product leadership, remember that your legacy will be shaped not just by the choices you make, but by how you make them and the team culture you create along the way.

Article created from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z5FCYDeZXs