47 min
Human Skills Are Business Skills: an interview with Joe Staples Handle with Care: Empathy at Work
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- Business
- Joe Staples For anybody listening, you can learn empathy. It's not something that somebody should go. You know, I'm not an empathetic. So I'm just going to stay the way I am.
INTRO
Human skills ARE business skills. You cannot create lasting, high-performing teams without paying attention to and caring for the actual humans on your team.
This is something that my guest, Joe Staples, has seen again and again in his years of work. We are going to talk about tips and tactics to build connection (hint: nothing brings people together like food), how walking a mile, literally, in someone else’s role can build empathy, and why a group softball game was one of Joe’s biggest misses in team building. You will hear stories of high school bullies and reflections on the changing expectations of generations in the workplace. All in all, it is just one fine episode full of wisdom.
Let me begin with a little bit more about my guest, Joe Staples. Joe is a senior B2B marketing executive who advises companies around go-to-market strategy and activities. He has spent decades in the business and developed expertise in building a powerful, differentiated brand and generating demand.
Joe is also the author or coauthor of numerous articles on leadership, customer experience, marketing, branding, employee engagement and work management. His work has been featured in all sorts of publications from Ad Age to Digital Marketing Magazine.
Joe lives out in Salt Lake City, where he gets to spend time not just working but enjoying the great outdoors.
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes What are some of your favorite things that you get to do out in Salt Lake City?
- Joe Staples You know, we have we have a large family and so we're constantly going to parks going up in the mountains. We have we have a cabin that's kind of our getaway place. And, you know, we just we like the outdoors. The interesting one of the most interesting things about Utah is you can you can golf in the in the morning and ski in the afternoon if you hit the time of year just right. And we're 20 minutes from the closest ski resort.
- Joe Staples So a lot to do.
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes You can you can just have a whole day of recreation at your fingertips.
- Joe Staples Right. And when you when you think of small grandchildren, it doesn't take much to entertain them, give you like some rocks and potato bugs. And there's that
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes That's that is true. I feel like in my own family, I have four. I was going to say young children, but the eldest is now 13, so they're getting less young with each passing year. But we know 13 down to seven. And as you mentioned, the cabin, we did well.
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes We still do a fair amount of camping. And it's amazing when you strip away some of the electronics and iPads and all the interactive toys that are so dazzling. How really entertaining a good puzzle, a little bit of mud and a pile of sticks can really be.
- Joe Staples That's exactly right. I agree completely. You know, the other thing for me, so getting to our cabin, you go through what's called the Heber Valley, which is this little old farming community, and then you go up into the mountains. And as I come down into that valley, I could physically feel the stress just kind of fall off of my shoulders. And I forget about everything that's good.
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes There's a there's a particular power about familiar land, just that you revisit again and again. And I can think even this weekend we're going down to Bloomington, which was a meaningful place for me. I did graduate work down there. I gave birth to a young daughter who died shortly afterwards. But there was a lot of emotion that's tied up in that time. And there's a particular trail that I I ran and walked a lot during those years. And then I always make a point to come back to.
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes And there
- Joe Staples For anybody listening, you can learn empathy. It's not something that somebody should go. You know, I'm not an empathetic. So I'm just going to stay the way I am.
INTRO
Human skills ARE business skills. You cannot create lasting, high-performing teams without paying attention to and caring for the actual humans on your team.
This is something that my guest, Joe Staples, has seen again and again in his years of work. We are going to talk about tips and tactics to build connection (hint: nothing brings people together like food), how walking a mile, literally, in someone else’s role can build empathy, and why a group softball game was one of Joe’s biggest misses in team building. You will hear stories of high school bullies and reflections on the changing expectations of generations in the workplace. All in all, it is just one fine episode full of wisdom.
Let me begin with a little bit more about my guest, Joe Staples. Joe is a senior B2B marketing executive who advises companies around go-to-market strategy and activities. He has spent decades in the business and developed expertise in building a powerful, differentiated brand and generating demand.
Joe is also the author or coauthor of numerous articles on leadership, customer experience, marketing, branding, employee engagement and work management. His work has been featured in all sorts of publications from Ad Age to Digital Marketing Magazine.
Joe lives out in Salt Lake City, where he gets to spend time not just working but enjoying the great outdoors.
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes What are some of your favorite things that you get to do out in Salt Lake City?
- Joe Staples You know, we have we have a large family and so we're constantly going to parks going up in the mountains. We have we have a cabin that's kind of our getaway place. And, you know, we just we like the outdoors. The interesting one of the most interesting things about Utah is you can you can golf in the in the morning and ski in the afternoon if you hit the time of year just right. And we're 20 minutes from the closest ski resort.
- Joe Staples So a lot to do.
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes You can you can just have a whole day of recreation at your fingertips.
- Joe Staples Right. And when you when you think of small grandchildren, it doesn't take much to entertain them, give you like some rocks and potato bugs. And there's that
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes That's that is true. I feel like in my own family, I have four. I was going to say young children, but the eldest is now 13, so they're getting less young with each passing year. But we know 13 down to seven. And as you mentioned, the cabin, we did well.
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes We still do a fair amount of camping. And it's amazing when you strip away some of the electronics and iPads and all the interactive toys that are so dazzling. How really entertaining a good puzzle, a little bit of mud and a pile of sticks can really be.
- Joe Staples That's exactly right. I agree completely. You know, the other thing for me, so getting to our cabin, you go through what's called the Heber Valley, which is this little old farming community, and then you go up into the mountains. And as I come down into that valley, I could physically feel the stress just kind of fall off of my shoulders. And I forget about everything that's good.
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes There's a there's a particular power about familiar land, just that you revisit again and again. And I can think even this weekend we're going down to Bloomington, which was a meaningful place for me. I did graduate work down there. I gave birth to a young daughter who died shortly afterwards. But there was a lot of emotion that's tied up in that time. And there's a particular trail that I I ran and walked a lot during those years. And then I always make a point to come back to.
- Liesel Mindrebo Mertes And there
47 min