139: Confidence and Authenticity and Saying “I Don’t Know”

Authenticity is great – if you can fake that, you’ve got it made!

Confidence is often a big challenge for product managers, because so much of the time we are in the realm of uncertainty.

But to be persuasive we need to be confident – our audience is more likely to be persuaded by a confident person.

So what do we do?

We act confident.

But that’s not authentic, is it? I don’t care. It’s effective. And authenticity is overrated and misunderstood.

More on confidence and persuasion

* Episode 73 of this podcast “3 Surprising Secrets For Confidence When Presenting“

* Robert Cialdini’s classic book on persuasion, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.

* 7 Persuasion Tips For More Influence and Better Engagement (article)

* I talk about your “luck surface area” in episode 136.

* How to pre-handle objections – a very powerful technique you should learn!

More links

* Sign up for my free weekly Secrets of Product Management meetup at secretsofpm.com/meetup.

* If you are thinking “How can I improve my PM skills and start having more impact in my work and in my career?,” it might be time to talk to me about my 12 week coaching program, which I call Product Manager Grad School. This is a personalized tutorial and coaching program where you will learn and apply the types of power skills I talk about on this podcast – from storytelling and persuasion, to the Minimum Viable Product Knowledge that’s critical for successful go to market, to the specific tools you need to crush your day-to-day challenges.

Authenticity is great – if you can fake that, you’ve got it made!

Confidence is often a big challenge for product managers, because so much of the time we are in the realm of uncertainty.

But to be persuasive we need to be confident – our audience is more likely to be persuaded by a confident person.

So what do we do?

We act confident.

But that’s not authentic, is it? I don’t care. It’s effective. And authenticity is overrated and misunderstood.

More on confidence and persuasion

* Episode 73 of this podcast “3 Surprising Secrets For Confidence When Presenting“

* Robert Cialdini’s classic book on persuasion, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.

* 7 Persuasion Tips For More Influence and Better Engagement (article)

* I talk about your “luck surface area” in episode 136.

* How to pre-handle objections – a very powerful technique you should learn!

More links

* Sign up for my free weekly Secrets of Product Management meetup at secretsofpm.com/meetup.

* If you are thinking “How can I improve my PM skills and start having more impact in my work and in my career?,...