# The Strategic Value of Relational Work in Product Management

**Podcast:** All Things Product with Teresa and Petra
**Published:** 2026-04-14

## Transcript

Hi folks, this is All Things Product with Petra Ville and Teresa Torres.
And we're so happy you're here.
Hey, Petra.
So there's this trend that I'm sure you're seeing, where people are saying because anybody can have an idea, and now anybody can build that idea that maybe we don't need product managers anymore because we can just have everybody else in the company use AI to build things, and our engineers can review them, and we just won't need product managers anymore.
But I think what is silly about this is uh things like building who builds alignment around product coherence and who uh manages all the stakeholders with competing interests and who uh it's basically all the messy relationship work, and I know this is right in your wheelhouse, so I wanted to discuss it.
True.
Maybe I start sharing a story.
Um I had a coachy bumping into exactly that topic.
So they were describing what they're currently struggling with in their organization, and what what what they were telling me like is kind of Petra.
I set up my entire product organization in a way that modern product principles are basically taken into account with all our decisions, our processes are now well-oiled machines.
So we do the discovery and we do the delivery, and they have an amazing task board structure tracking all these kinds of things.
Um the parts of the puzzle are moving.
I know where they're moving.
I have my shipyard in order.
I hired the right uh people, I think, for the job.
They have all the hard skills.
I interviewed for all the hard skills and all the product management capabilities, but somehow something feels off.
We have too many conversations going on with stakeholders, they seem unhappy, um, they're constantly escalating stuff.
We have a lot of skip level as um escalations.
So basically, people went around people and complained to their bosses about it.
That's what skip level conversations are all about.
Uh help me to gain clarity, right?
And that's the perfect question for a coaching session, by the way, um, because gaining clarity on a topic where you think like it things feel off.
I don't know how to pin it.
Um, can a coach maybe help you with that?
That's an ideal question for a coach.
So I tried to unpack it with that person.
And what we found under the hood was really this, and that's kind of the quick moving forward to the end of the story.
Um, is that relationship work was not something that they considered as part of their leadership role?
So they were not themselves maintaining meaningful relationships with their peers, so C T O Y C M O Ys.
They were not maintaining really like human to human relationships with the senior executives, and I'm not talking about having the occasional beer or something like that.
That didn't happen because fully remote setup.
But still, I think you can create a bit of close closeness even when you're kind of a few thousand kilometers abroad via all our um Zoom calls that we usually on.
But they didn't focus on doing that at all.
They were so transactional in their work.
And the same applied to their teams.
Because in a leadership position, I think it is part of your job to help your direct reports understand what would be good networking opportunities within the organization, maybe even career-wise, and what are the relevant stakeholders that people need to talk to?
Because sometimes it's easier for you on the higher altitude to see whom people should talk to, especially in large organizations, corporate organizations, than for your product people.
Sometimes it's hard to find all the meaningful stakeholders that they should start building trust with early on when there is not even a feature request in sight.
So, and that is something that we then landed on as a topic and discussed further.
So all this relationship work, yeah, stays important these days.
I think this is um often underrated because I think for a lot of people that are strong doers, like they're good at getting stuff done, they forget that it's not enough to just produce output, but to bring people along along to make sure everybody's aligned to build those relationships.
And there's you used this term of like they're very transactional, and I think that's often required when you're trying to get things done.
It can feel like there's no time for the relational stuff.
But I think what often happens is if you aren't doing all the relational stuff at the same time, then it's actually not faster because people don't come along, you get resistance, you get competing factions, um, and it just starts to become really messy.
And people frame this as like they don't like politics, like those people are the problem, but they don't recognize that, like, actually, no, like you have a point of view and you're doing something from your point of view, and part of your job is to create the collective point of view that brings everybody along.
Yeah, part of a nonprofit that they're this has been a huge challenge because historically, as the organization has operated very relationally, but almost to an extreme where they don't get anything done.
And they brought in a CEO that's very transactional, and there's a like cultural mismatch, and they actually need the blend of both.
And so it's like this huge organizational challenge of like, how does the relational side learn how to be more transactional and get stuff done?
But how does the transactional side learn how to be more relational and bring everybody along and collaborate?
And um, I think this is also there's a lot of parallels with product trios and just everybody staying in their lane and doing their work is very transactional.
But how do you move to a more relational collaborative approach?
Yeah, and I think this building common ground that you were kind of saying, or finding the shared goal.
This is, for example, another thing that I always advise people to do.
So if you struggle to build relationships, then find the shared goal.
So understand how other people are motivated and how other people are rewarded and compensated and all these kinds of things, how the success is measured, and then look at what the company currently does.
And more often than not, I think you will find a shared goal if you move one level higher goal setting-wise, oftentimes.
And maybe it's not that structured in your organization, so maybe there is no perfect designed KPI tree that you easily can move up a level and see, like, ah, clarity, that is why sales is kind of behaving like that.
So oftentimes it's a bit of digging.
Um, but then you will find this common ground, or you can build the common ground by using shared goals that everybody's having.
Um, and this moralest thing that everybody should be aligned to should be the company's mission.
So go find that or the company vision, because everybody is employed at this particular organization, right?
So that should mean a thing.
Um, yeah, but I think that is a big part of the relationship work that will not be automated by AI anytime soon.
And hopefully, some of the time that all of us have been freeing up because of AI doing some of the repetitive work and some of the pattern finding work and some of the yeah, communication streamlining work, um, we could all use for relationship building because it is indeed an investment because humans are not like AI, it's not enough to say like good morning, Claude, and then that's basically the relationship building for the rest of the day, right?
So sometimes you need to remind their birthdays, and sometimes you even need to send a card, and sometimes you even need to send a present.
So people want to be seen and understood and heard, and all these kinds of things, and for that to be true, you have to spend some time with them.
Yeah, I think um there's a skills gap sometimes here that shows up a lot in business because I think in business we're often rewarded for being right, and so then it encourages this mindset of I have to advocate for my point of view.
I have to, if my way wins, I get rewarded.
So I have to advocate for my way to win.
And I think there's um I think this a lot of this originated in Chris Argerus's work.
Are you familiar with Chris Argyris?
He I don't want to get too much into the theory.
I think Peter Senge popularized this, but I think it originated with Chris Argyris, where he talked about a theory, the theory of the organization.
And he talks about theory X versus Theory Y, terrible names.
But it's about this idea of like advocating versus exploring, or Peter Senge frames it as dialogue versus discussion.
And it's this idea of like when you're trying to align as a team, are you taking the time to explore the different perspectives and really mine the group for what do people know?
What do people understand?
What are the different points of view?
What are the pros and cons of those different points of view?
How do we co-create a team point of view versus everybody coming together and just advocating for their point of view and like trying to win the conversation?
And I feel like this is a skill.
Like we teach this a lot in our courses to try to get product trios to collaborate better.
Because like I think in school, I think in a lot of business we're taught, like the person who wins gets rewarded.
And so we engage in this very transactional advocating way instead of this more like relational exploratory, let's collaboratively build a better perspective.
Yeah, that it's actually where impro theater has this nice yes and thing.
And not the yes but thing.
And it does help indeed a lot in these kinds of situations.
And it's so funny, a lot of people in my bubble are using it, and they oftentimes say, like, this is not a yes but it's a yes and I'm building on your idea.
And that definitely does help with that scenario as well.
And that's relation, that's relationship work as well.
To say, like, I see your idea, I like your idea, I think I understood your idea, and now I want to build on your idea.
I think that's actually quite a good thing to do when you want to build a relationship or a stronger.
Yeah, you know what's funny is I had to understand this like dialogue versus discussion distinction, this like transactional relational thing before the yes and was helpful to me.
I used to hate when people brought in improv because it felt like, oh, that's what theater nerd kids do, and I don't get it.
And it like it really didn't land with me at all.
And I see so many people use yes and, whereas what they really mean is yes but.
And so I was like, I don't this this doesn't work for me.
But now that I like have read Peter Senge's work and Chris Argerus's work, and I feel like I have a richer understanding, I see the intent of yes and.
But I think for a lot of people, just that phrase and that concept doesn't get them there.
And I think that's sort of what I was resisting to.
Yeah, I understand where you're coming from.
So I was introduced to the concept when I was still working with an engineering team.
So really like me being the product manager of this engineering team for this engineering team.
Um we struggled, we just struggled in discussions because oftentimes what people meant was yes and.
But the yes, the acknowledgement, so the act part of the conversation got lost.
So and then it was more a clarity thing than it was in new age improv kind of thing.
Yeah.
So to us it was suggested by a scrum master at some point, because he said, like, I think there is more agreement in this room already than all of you think.
And just by acknowledging that you say yes to whatever the person arguing for before you actually jump on their idea was saying, that would already help.
So that's how I was introduced to the concept.
And I think that that's why it immediately clicked and it brought so much clarity to our team's conversation.
I think there's um a big difference in how it's used and where the emphasis is.
So if I say yes and my emphasis is on the yes, this is what you just said that resonates with me.
And then I move to the and and I want to add some additional information to the conversation, it feels really that ethos of improv and this idea of exploring different perspectives.
But if the emphasis is on the and, the yes can feel really dismissive.
Yeah, you're right.
Right?
Yeah, you're right.
And it it really becomes a yes, but.
Yeah.
This took us down on this command at this point.
It's a rabbit hole, Teresa.
This was not intended.
Sorry, folks.
But I think I think if you zoom out a little bit, I think the key here is it's so easy to fall into this trap of like in our own brains when we develop our perspective, it feels like our perspective is reality, is ground truth.
And we forget that like other people have a different perspective.
And our perspectives, it's not that one is right and one is wrong.
It's that we have different experience, we have different knowledge we're bringing to the table.
We've developed our point of view from a different base foundation.
And the whole point of taking the time to really explore the other perspectives on your team is to build a shared foundation, right?
Like, how do we pool our knowledge?
How do we pool our experience so we leverage all of it and then develop a better point of view?
And like if I think about relational that way, like, oh, we're gonna like share our experiences and knowledge enough that we can move forward.
Then to me, the doer in me is like, okay, I get it, because that makes us do better.
Right?
It's not let's go have a beer together and be friends.
Yeah, no, no, no, no.
Yeah.
If that's needed, sometimes feel free, be my guest.
But that's that's not why we do it.
And I like beer.
Yeah, but it's so weird.
And for me, it has a lot to do with curiosity as well.
Yeah.
Because I think you need to be genuinely curious about where the other person, your stakeholder, your boss, your peer, your colleague, your co-worker, is coming from to build a real relationship with them that is one that still holds when there is conflict.
And then conflict is less personal because then you already have this.
It's weird that I say when you have a personal connect connection, conflict becomes less personal.
But I think if you have a personal connection, it's easier to look at the shared goal to find common ground, um, even in times of conflict.
So I think this curiosity thing about humans where they're coming from their perspectives, their diverse perspectives, maybe that's an another important part in all this relationship building exercise.
I think like the key here is it's hard to be curious when you're advocating.
True.
Right?
So you have to like let go of the advocating part and lead with curiosity.
The thing I want to highlight though is this is actually genuinely hard to do.
And it's because, again, in business, we're often rewarded for being right.
And so there's all these incentives for us to advocate.
Yeah.
And so it's a little bit of like, I just want to acknowledge it.
Counterintuitive.
I feel like we can just say, like, hey, be relational.
And you're swimming upstream when you're doing that, right?
But it's a little counterintuitive because if you do it really well, it actually helps you with the transactional stuff and with getting stuff done.
Yeah, and people that I'm coaching on that particular topic oftentimes are afraid of being perceived as slow.
Because it slows you down to some extent to do the relationship work.
But in the long run, I think it doesn't.
Yeah.
Yep.
I agree with that.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, I think we uh explored this pretty well.
We'll put links.
I think the Peter Senge book is the fifth discipline, and I'll put a link to Chris Argerus' work for anybody who's interested in the theory.
Um, but I think really yes and the yet we can put a link to some yes and stuff.
Um and I'm really curious if anybody has had this thought about where the emphasis is.
Um, because I think that really was the crux of why I struggled with it originally.
But yeah, it's a it's a great story, great perspective.
Thank you to Lisa.
Thanks, Petra.