25.5%
of tech workers rate their manager as highly effective. Manager quality was the strongest driver of burnout in the entire dataset, ahead of role and company size.
Lenny’s Newsletter, 2026 survey ↗
For product managers
Free to try
The hardest part of product management is not product.
It is the engineer who will not commit to the date, the executive who reverses a decision you already shipped against, and the person whose feature you have to kill. You have no authority in any of those rooms. Voohy is where you rehearse them, against a character who holds their position, before you walk in.
No credit card · 10 minutes · Nobody at work sees it
- Session
- 10 minutes, then a debrief
- Scored on
- Empathy, clarity, listening, resolution
- Built for
- Influence without authority
- Privacy
- Transcripts stay yours
Session transcript
10 min 41 sec
SA
The Engineer Who Says No
Sam is the tech lead. Sales has already promised the integration for Q3. Sam was not in that room and is not pleased about it.
Sam
That timeline is not real. I am not committing to it just because sales already promised it.
You
You are right that you were not part of that commitment, and I am not going to pretend you were. What I want from this conversation is your read on what is actually possible, so I can go back and renegotiate with something real.
↳Conceded the legitimate grievance immediately, then reframed the ask from commit to this into help me argue. Different conversation.
Sam
If we cut the bulk import and ship read only first, maybe. But that is not what they sold.
You
Then that is what I take back to them. Can you put ninety seconds of reasoning behind the read only version, so it is your engineering judgment they are arguing with and not my summary of it?
Debrief
Scored automatically
86
Strong session
Converted a refusal into a joint position
Empathy
84
Clarity
88
Active listening
85
Resolution focus
89
✓ You did not defend the commitment you had not made. Dropping that let Sam move from blocking to problem solving.
✎ You never named what happens if sales refuses. Rehearse the version where you have to go back with a no.
Illustrative session
The job, honestly described
Frameworks do not save you in the room.
You know RICE. You know the prioritisation matrix. None of it helps at the moment a principal engineer says your date is fiction and eight people are watching to see what you do.
01 / The gap
All of the accountability. None of the authority.
A PM is judged on outcomes delivered entirely through people who can say no without consequence. That makes the conversation itself the core skill of the job, and almost nobody practices it.
01
Influence without authority
You cannot direct engineering, you cannot overrule design, and you certainly cannot tell the VP no by fiat. Everything depends on whether the conversation goes well, which makes it a skill and not a personality trait.
02
Stakeholder whiplash
The roadmap was agreed. Then it was not. You are now the person who has to tell a team that two months of their work is being reprioritised, and keep them willing to work with you afterwards.
03
High stakes, no rehearsal
Roadmap reviews, escalations, launch retros where the number came in flat. Each one is performed live in front of an audience, and the first draft of what you say is the only draft.
44%
of managers worldwide report ever receiving formal training. PMs, who carry manager sized influence problems without the title, usually get less than that.
Gallup, State of the Global Workplace ↗117
studies in a meta-analysis of practice based training. Knowledge decayed over time. Effects on skills and on real job behavior held steady or improved.
Journal of Applied Psychology, 2005 ↗02 / The loop
Rehearse the room. Read the debrief. Walk in differently.
Twelve minutes end to end. The point is not to script yourself. It is to have already met the objection once, so you are not hearing it for the first time with an audience.
-
01
Pick the room you are dreading
Scenarios open on the sentence the other person would really say. The refusal, the reversal, the feature you have to kill.
-
02
Hold your position
Reply in your own words. The character argues back with their own logic and their own stake in the outcome, and concedes only if you actually earn it.
-
03
Debrief with a score
Empathy, clarity, active listening and resolution focus, tied to specific turns. For PMs the resolution score is usually the one that stings.
The Engineer Who Says No
“That timeline is not real. I am not committing to it just because sales already promised it.”
Influence · Hard
The Executive Reversal
“I know we agreed the roadmap last month. This is more important. Make it work.”
Negotiation · Hard
Killing Someone’s Feature
“I spent two quarters on this. You are telling me we are just switching it off?”
Conflict · Hard
The Design Standoff
“If we ship it your way, it is not a product decision anymore. It is a compromise nobody wanted.”
Influence · Medium
Sales Sold What Does Not Exist
“The deal is signed. They were told it ships in Q3. That is on you to figure out now.”
Conflict · Hard
Delivering the Bad Number
“So the launch we spent six months on moved the metric by how much, sorry?”
Communication · Medium
Plus 20 more across feedback, coaching, retention and direct people management, for when the title does change.
Try one free04 / The rest of it
Beyond the simulator, the product leadership kit.
Practice is the core. These are the things that make the practice compound into a case you can point at when the promotion conversation comes around.
01
Certification tracks
Foundation, Practitioner and Expert, earned on scored sessions and a sustained average rather than attendance. Shareable on LinkedIn.
02
Courses on feedback and one to ones
Structured, research grounded, and short enough to apply the same week. Useful well before you have direct reports.
03
Stakeholder notes
A private record of what you know about each stakeholder, so you walk into the review with the context you gathered three months ago.
04
Wins tracker
Log outcomes as they land. The promotion packet is much easier to write when you did not have to reconstruct the year from memory.
05
Reflection journal
The debrief habit, applied to the real meetings. What happened, what you would change, what you will try next time.
06
Research insights
Short sourced summaries on influence, motivation and team performance, for when you want the evidence rather than the anecdote.
05 / Questions
What PMs ask first.
Something not answered here? Write to the founder directly. He has been on both sides of most of these rooms.
[email protected] →
I do not manage anyone. Is this still relevant?
+
It is arguably more relevant. Everything a PM gets done runs through people who do not report to them, which removes the one lever managers have. The scenarios here are built around influence without authority: holding a position with a skeptical engineer, pushing back on an executive without damaging the relationship, telling someone their feature is being cut.
How is this different from role playing with ChatGPT?
+
The characters have a position and a mood and will not simply agree with you. A defensive opening produces a defensive response. Every session is scored on the same four competencies so you can see whether you are actually improving, rather than starting a fresh chat that flatters you each time.
What does it score a PM on?
+
Empathy, clarity, active listening and resolution focus, with an overall session score out of 100 and written feedback tied to specific moments. For PMs, resolution focus is usually the revealing one: many conversations feel good and end with nothing agreed.
When would I actually use this?
+
The night before a roadmap review, before you tell an engineering lead their estimate is not going to fly, or before the meeting where you have to say no to a founder. Ten minutes, once, changes how the real thing opens.
Is it useful if I am aiming for a management role?
+
Yes, and the certification tracks give you something concrete for that case. The scenarios cover both influence without authority and direct people management, so the same account works before and after the title changes.
Can my company see my sessions?
+
Only if you are on a company team plan, and even then admins see scores, session counts and AI summaries, never the transcripts. On an individual account it is entirely private.
The best PMs do not just
ship. They move people.
Run one scenario. Ten minutes. See how you actually handle a refusal when nobody has to do what you say.
No credit card · One scenario · Instant debrief