The team’s most important soft skill

Learning the power of visual thinking

Good ideas come from many sources and become great ideas as they interact with each other.

The best ideas come from the push and pull of many and often contradictory points of view. To distill a great idea, the team must become good at giving and receiving input — often harder than it sounds.

Effective communication is difficult for many reasons. People might feel like their ideas aren’t good enough or won’t have an impact. Debating conflicting directions are out of many people’s comfort zone. It’s easier to execute — but great ideas are born out of discomfort.

Effective communication between roles is critical to shaping the direction of a product because it combines inputs from different focal points to arrive at a solution.

The team might be overlooking things that could alter the product roadmap, like a designer’s research insights or an engineer’s ability to automate data entry.

Being heard is also important to prevent getting discouraged. The worst scenario is to disengage because you feel like your voice doesn’t matter.

To be heard as well as to hear requires good communication. Too often, feedback is written or verbal, which can be challenging to comprehend and interpret. People don’t read the full text or miss part of what is being said — leading to misinterpretation.

Accompanying verbal or written communication with visuals enhances the sticking power of a message. People’s ability to interpret and memorize an image far outweighs their ability to retain written and verbal information.

Academics explain the power of visual communication through a phenomenon known as the picture superiority effect. It holds that images are more likely to be remembered and are comprehend faster than words.

Visual communication is the product team’s most important soft skill.

You don’t have to be a great artist to communicate visually. Getting your point across can be as simple as a flow chart or a hacked-together grouping of elements. It can also be as comprehensive as an interactive prototype.