The 5 Personality Spectrums of Great Product Managers
I came across a hilarious Reddit thread posted in the r/ProductManagement group this week called “Product Confessions” and it had some juicy stuff.
The topic was PMs fessing up to things PMs are supposed to do, but rarely actually do.
Some interesting confessions:
“I have never used any framework in my product career”.
“Our job is not to manage a product but to manage organisational dysfunctions”
“Fortune 100 Company and haven’t launched a damn thing in years.”
“I haven’t conducted a customer interview in 2+ years.”
“Never wrote a PRD before.”
However, I think the most interesting confession was this one:
Jaded? Yes. Accurate? Maybe.
The wide variety of confessions got me thinking that being a PM means living between extremes.
Balancing leaders, stakeholders, and customers.
Balancing being too solution-driven with being too “high-level”.
Balancing being too hands-on, and too hands-off.
Balancing internal ceremonies vs. keeping up with external trends.
Balancing being organized with being flexible.
Every Product Manager lives on a spectrum, between control and chaos, clarity and confusion, structure and flexibility.
The best product managers find the midpoint.
Let’s break down 5 spectrums that Product Managers need to balance.
1️⃣ Hands-on vs Hands-off
PMs that are too hands-on:
Do everyone’s job for them
Micro-manage every team and meeting
Project-manage every part of delivery
Feel like nothing progresses unless they intervene
🔨 Fix: Empower others. Rotate who runs team syncs. Partner with your Engineering Manager or PMM to take things off your plate.
PMs that are too hands-off:
Don’t understand the details behind what’s being shipped
Deflect accountability when timelines slip
Are distracted or unresponsive when the team needs input
🔨 Fix: Sit in the details. Ask the “dumb” questions. It’s not someone else’s problem, it’s your product.
2️⃣ Overly-Specific vs Vague
PMs that are too specific:
Write PRDs that prescribe solutions
Leave no room for design or engineering creativity
Think their ideas are best
🔨 Fix: For your next PRD, describe the what and the why, not the how. Bring half-baked ideas to spark collaboration instead of consensus.
PMs that are too vague:
Have no clear POV on the problem or personas
Struggle to communicate goals and constraints
Give vague feedback that confuses the team
🔨 Fix: Ground yourself in the problem space before kickoff. Clarity is leadership, you can’t outsource or skip past this step.
3️⃣ Disorganized vs Inflexible
PMs that are flexible, but too disorganized:
Send PRDs last-minute and/or lacking sufficient detail
Pivot impulsively
Miss DMs or clarifications
🔨 Fix: Time-block deep work for PRDs and responses.
💡 Try: Feed your product strategy and past PRDs to an LLM, then ask it to challenge whether a new idea fits the broader narrative.
PMs that are organized, but too inflexible:
Treats the roadmap as fixed
Dismiss feedback that threatens the plan
Struggles to iterate on new learnings
🔨 Fix: Bake capacity for addressing customer feedback into sprints. When last-minute priorities hit, use LLMs to compress the research cycle.
4️⃣ External vs Internal
PMs that are too external-focussed:
Chase competitive parity
Over-react to every customer request
Don’t know their own team’s strengths
🔨 Fix: Reconnect internally. Understand who’s on your team and what they’re great at.
💡 Try: Keep customer notes or a whiteboard to cluster feedback, and act only when you see a pattern.
PMs that are too internal-focussed:
Live in meetings and status updates
Rarely talks to customers
Hasn’t seen a competitor demo in months
🔨 Fix: Join a sales call. Partner with user research to set up interviews. Watch past interviews to get reconnected. Run monthly, if not weekly, competitor research sessions.
💡 Try: Try automating competitor research with tools like Zapier or Relay.app.
5️⃣ Taking Orders vs Going Rogue
PMs that are order-takers:
Just do whatever leadership says
Wait for direction instead of forcing clarity
Bring no original perspective
🔨 Fix: Default to “let’s investigate this” until you find customer or market evidence.
Leaders respect PMs who bring data, not deference.
PMs that are too “rogue”:
Build features that don’t fit company goals
Operate in a silo
Don’t collaborate well with other teams
🔨 Fix: Re-align. Listen (actually listen) to all-hands calls. Socialize your roadmap with peers and senior leaders. Build bridges with peer teams, your product doesn’t live in isolation.
The Takeaway
Every great PM lives in between, constantly balancing and recalibrating between these spectrums.
💬 Which end of each spectrum do you tend to fall on most often, and what’s your plan to rebalance?