I have a friend who used to join me to the theater quite a lot when we were younger. After a few times, she said that going with me to a theater show is extra fun because one of the characters comes home with you. As an actress, I kind of absorbed the characteristics of the characters I saw on the stage and mimicked them all the way home. It works best at comedies 🙂

But it’s not always that fun. For example, when I talk to people with accents, my accent sometimes unknowingly changes to be more like theirs, and it could be offensive although that’s not my intent at all. I have to pay special attention in such situations to keep my original accent and avoid an unpleasant situation.

I once heard someone who described herself as a chameleon – she changes herself (unknowingly in most cases) according to the people she is with, and it felt accurate for my case as well. I am a chameleon.

But honestly, we all are, and it goes beyond just outfacing qualities like accents or gestures.

Think of who you are with your close family vs. at work. With your high-school mates vs. with the parents of your children’s friends. We all have different identities, and we present them to different people as part of who we are. They are all us, it’s not a show, but we choose (consciously or not) to show different sides of ourselves according to the company we are with or the circumstances.

I still remember my surprise when over 20 years ago I saw my cynical, somewhat distant, strict boss with his 3-year-old son. He kneeled over and spoke in a warm, soft, cheerful voice that I never heard before. It wasn’t artificial, it was just a side of him that I never saw and was very far from his professional identity that I was familiar with.

But he has both (and more) in him, and so do we all. The chameleon quality is how we survive in life and in society. This is how we belong to the various communities we have in our lives. No one likes to be different.

The chameleon quality also helps us as product leaders.

We are in the heart of so many relationships and communities, in and out of the company, and we need to be productive and blend in all of them.

Here is how the chameleon quality can help you at work – both outside the company – with customers, investors, analysts, and so on – and inside the company with your managers, peers, and employees.

Connect With People

Everybody knows that being a “people person” is an important quality for product people in general and for product leaders specifically. We need to work well with other people because that’s our only way to make an impact and generate results. Otherwise, we are left with making presentations and writing documents, that are not real results, they are just means to an end.

While you can work well with people without a deeper relationship, connecting at a deeper level always helps. Ever noticed how the effectiveness of a certain relationship with someone abroad – say sales, marketing, another team lead – improved dramatically after you met face to face? That’s because the relationship is now at a different level, you were able to see beyond the work identity of that person.

The chameleon quality comes in handy here because it allows you to show the sides in you that are similar to the other person, and thus create a better connection. For example, if you have a mutual hobby, or a similar family status and challenges (work-life balance or anything else, it doesn’t need to be extremely deep), it creates a better foundation for the relationship. 

People find it easier to connect to people who are like them, that’s why it’s so difficult to create a diverse work environment and that’s why it requires special attention to make it succeed. 

Try to find aspects of yourself in the other person to connect more easily and keep good relationships with your peers and customers.

Understand What They Need

This is an important ability that you must adopt for internal communication and not just for your customers.

As product people, we are trained to understand what people need, even if they don’t tell us directly (which they usually don’t). We ask ‘why’, explicitly or implicitly, and try to read their minds.

The chameleon quality here can help you get into their heads. This is a more conscious effort than just connecting naturally with people, but you most likely have it in you to some extent and can improve it with practice.

To practice it, start telling yourself what the other person needs from their point of view. In any conversation, try to shift your perspective and tell their story as if it was yours. What do they care about? What are they worried about? Why? 

With customers, it goes far beyond your product, it’s about who they are. With your managers, peers, and employees, ask yourself what could cause them to say what they say. Where are they coming from?

Try to be as least judgemental as possible. Be willing to see their point of view even if you disagree with it, or even if it’s not in your favor.

Remember that otherwise you are just making yourself blind, you are not changing their reality anyway.

Speak Their Language

Understanding other people is great, but it’s not enough. To make a real impact they must understand that you understand them. 

I see many product people expecting other people – both customers and people from within the company – to understand them better. Unfortunately, that’s not helpful in most cases.

Product management and product leadership are hard partly because of that reason – we need to make sense in the various points of view that we hear, and asking others to come our way without a reason is bound to fail.

To move other people in the right direction we must speak their language, and we must talk about what’s in it for them. People wouldn’t join you – buy your product or support your project – for you, they would do it for them.

If you understand what they need but speak about it from your point of view, or even just with your language that is different from theirs, you need them to be extremely committed to doing anything in order to go with you. You added friction to the process, where you shouldn’t.

Leading people to where you believe they should be going should speak to them, not to you, as they are the ones who need to move.

If you find yourself arguing about your terminology and fighting to justify what you want to do, try to shift perspective and talk about it in their own words. It’s not always easy (because you must fully understand and work with their point of view), but it’s almost the only way to generate results.