How to empower your Tech Team
Rebuilding trust between product and engineering
Why does an engineering team stop trusting their product manager? What turns a relationship that should be collaborative into a source of frustration?
The role of the product manager has evolved significantly. It’s no longer enough to just coordinate tasks, define roadmaps, or write epics and user stories. Today, a product leader is, above all, a facilitator. Their main responsibility is to create an environment where technical innovation and business priorities come together to generate the highest possible value for the end user.
In essence, the role of a Product Manager can be summed up in a single skill: empathy. Empathy to recognize engineers, value technical details, and effectively bridge technology, design, and business.
Yes, I know—empathy with the end user and stakeholders is essential. But… what about empathy with your tech team? It’s less common among product managers, yet it's key to maintaining a relationship of trust with engineering. So, how can you strengthen that relationship?
Give the technical team a voice: Not all ideas come from Product. Engineers are creative, too. Invite them to contribute to solutions and publicly recognize their work.
Appreciate technical details: Even if you don’t write code, you must show respect for the complexity of development, architecture decisions, security, scalability, or interface design, for example.
Don’t be an inefficient middleman: If you act like a “broken telephone” between stakeholders and the team, nuances are lost, misunderstandings arise, and time is wasted. There’s nothing more agile than connecting directly with the right people, deeply understanding their problems, and clearly defining the solutions.
In the end, a great product manager isn’t the one who has all the answers, but the one who knows how to ask the right questions and create space for others to propose solutions. That’s why humility, empathy, and the ability to listen are the most effective (and often underrated) tools. Put these skills into practice and you’ll see the difference.