When you’re a software Product Manager, using soft skills is critical to success as you work to make things happen between groups and individuals with agendas, perspectives and personality types that are at odds with one another. CEOs and executives find themselves faced with the same challenge. It’s a case of same planet, different worlds, and you’re the lucky one whose job depends upon making those worlds mesh.

Yet the use of these same soft skills is so often ignored and neglected by the management team. It’s easy to forget about them when urgent items such as deadlines, bugs, costs and sales cry out for attention.

Imagine how much better it would be if the software engineers thoroughly understood the requirements that the business consultants submitted, with both sides understanding the limitations of their own perspective while respecting that of their counterparts. Well, if you’re one of the lucky ones who can say this is true of your company today, I’ll lay you money you can easily name other places you have worked where nothing of the sort ever happened.

The price we pay is poorer software, and nobody has the luxury of letting the product fail to achieve its potential, lest the competition pull ahead of you.

So here are a few suggestions to help you harden your soft skills and put them to use for the good of the software product and ultimately your career.