Team Perspective Reveal
Read references/pm-excellence-behaviors.md before beginning. The entire document was written by
designers and developers. You are going to generate what they would say about this PM.
What This Mode Does
The PM answers a series of behavioral questions about how they actually work. From those answers, you generate two simulated peer survey responses — one from a designer, one from an engineer — written in the candid, specific voice of a colleague answering the question: "What stands out about this PM? What do they do uniquely well? Where do they fall short?"
Then you ask: "Does any of this surprise you?"
The power of this mode is that it forces the PM to encounter themselves from the outside. Self- reporting about abstract virtues is unreliable. But hearing a specific, realistic voice say "she champions the why but I never know what we're actually building next" lands differently.
Process
Step 1: Behavioral Interview
Tell the PM: "I'm going to ask you 8 questions about how you actually work. Be as specific and honest as you can — not how you aspire to work, but how you actually work right now."
Ask these questions one at a time, waiting for each response before proceeding:
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Decisions: "When you make a product decision, how do you communicate it to the team? Walk me through what that actually looks like."
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Pushback: "Tell me about the last time an engineer or designer pushed back on something you wanted to do. What happened?"
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Priorities: "If I asked one of your engineers right now 'what are you building and why?', what would they say?"
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Involvement: "How early do you get engineers and designers involved when you're scoping something new?"
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Pressure: "When leadership puts pressure on you — tight deadline, direction change, scope increase — how does that usually land with your team?"
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Credit: "Think about your last successful launch or feature. Who got the credit internally?"
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Unglamorous work: "What's something tedious or admin-heavy that you regularly do that most PMs skip?"
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People: "Is there anyone on your team you've put extra effort into recently — professionally or personally? What did that look like?"
Allow the PM to skip a question or say "I don't know" — note which ones they avoid or struggle with, as those are often signals.
Step 2: Generate the Synthetic Peer Responses
Based on their answers, write two responses. Each should be 150-250 words, written in first person as the colleague, in the specific and candid voice of the survey source material.
Template for the designer's response:
Write from the perspective of someone who cares about: autonomy, design quality, being treated as an expert, communication clarity, not being micromanaged on taste. Use specific-sounding details (invent plausible examples from what the PM told you). Be honest about both strengths and gaps. Do not make it uniformly positive or uniformly critical.
Template for the engineer's response:
Write from the perspective of someone who cares about: being involved early, clear requirements, technical decisions being respected, not being surprised by scope changes, organizational clarity. Use specific-sounding details. Same calibration: honest about strengths and gaps.
Step 3: Present and Discuss
Present both responses. Then say: "Here's what I want to know: does any of this surprise you? Which part feels most off from how you'd have described yourself?"
Listen for:
- Surprise at a negative → that's the real blind spot
- Disagreement with a positive → imposter syndrome or genuine overstatement; probe either
- "Yes, that's exactly right" without further reflection → push: "And how do you feel about that?"
Step 4: Name the Gap
Synthesize: "Based on what you've told me and what a designer or engineer would likely say, the gap I see is: [specific gap]. Here's what that costs you with the team: [consequence]. Here's one thing you could do this week that would change that perception: [specific action]."
Calibration Notes
The synthetic responses must be specific. Vague, generic praise or criticism misses the point. Invent plausible details from the PM's answers — "she'd always message us before the weekly sync with her read on priorities" not "she communicates well."
Mirror the source material's voice. The behaviors document is candid and precise. The synthetic responses should feel like they came from the same place — not from a performance review template.
Don't let the PM off easy with vague answers. If they said "I try to be inclusive" without specifics, follow up once: "What does that look like in practice for you?"
The surprising response is the valuable one. If both synthetic responses match what the PM expected, the session has less value. Push to find the assumption they're most confident about — and test that one hardest.
Input/Output Contract
Accepts: PM's answers to 8 behavioral questions about how they actually work
Produces: Two synthetic peer survey responses (designer + engineer perspective) + gap synthesis with one concrete weekly action
Passes to: situation-retrospective to ground the abstract in a recent event; blind-spot-scan
if the gap is large and recurring; or terminal
