March 31, 2026 – Tech Sales Bob Kocis and The Emphatic Leader Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller

0:04 Intro 1 : Broadcasting from am and FM stations around the country. Welcome to the Small Business Administration award winning school for startups radio where we talk all things small business and entrepreneurship. Now here is your host, the guy that believes anyone can be a successful entrepreneur, because entrepreneurship is not about creativity, risk or passion. Jim Beach,

0:26 Jim Beach : Hello everyone. Welcome to another exciting edition of School for startups radio. We got a fantastic show for you today, two really great guests. Bob Kosis is with us to start we’re going to talk about tech sales. Yes, it is different from selling other things, other products, especially software. And so Bob is going to give us the lowdown. We have a great long conversation on this. We also talk about curiosity, and it’s a great one. After that, Melissa Robinson weinmiller is with us to talk about empathy. And boy, does it make a difference in our leadership, our ability to command people that are actually our friends, all of it, Melissa and I have a really fascinating conversation on all things related to empathy, and we start with a definition that is a little bit different from what I thought it was going to be. Anyway, you will enjoy this and learn from it. Thanks for being with us. Oh, and we have a quick tin today from Intel’s futurist. You don’t get any sexier than that. So it’s a great show. We’ll be started in just a minute. Oh, and remember, tomorrow is April Fools, so tomorrow the entire show may be fake, introducing the real

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2:04 Jim Beach : Thank you. We are back and again. Thank you so very much for being with us. Very excited to introduce my next guest. Please welcome Bob Kosis to the show. Started off as a merchant marine, which we will talk about. I think that’s absolutely fascinating, and now he is the president and chief operating officer of Aptian, which is a sales training organization. Bob is also author of the President’s Club mindset inside the winning strategy of Tech’s most successful sales people. Bob, welcome to the show. How are you doing today? I’m doing great. Thanks for having me. Lot of businesses that you’ve been very successful at and really achieved a lot in sales. Tell us though about the mindset of the President’s Club. First of all, yes, presidents club. Is that the Yeah,

2:56 Bob Kocis : So go ahead. No, I appreciate it. I you know, I decided to write this book. After a long career in tech sales, had success in multiple companies, and actually I just retired a few weeks ago. So I just retired from my tech Thank you very much. So my last company was a company called Appian, which you mentioned, which does ERP for small, medium business, but I wrote the book The President’s Club mindset, because I want to really give back to everybody in the in the tech community, and everybody in sales in general, has been so big to me in my violent career. So in tech sales, or in most companies, the President’s Club is something you achieve if you if you do really well, if you’re in the top 1% you achieve a trip to to a great destination, or some kind of reward. They typically call it the President a presence club, or something similar to that. And, you know, that’s why I went off and I studied, what do the elite performers do better than everybody else? And that’s what I really tried to capture in the book, was what the elite do better than other just, you know, average performers that are out

4:00 Jim Beach : There, all right, I have heard of various things like the President’s Club. How big an organization, how many sales people do you have to have before that kind of a thing exists?

4:10 Bob Kocis : You know, there’s presidents clubs with sales organizations that only have five or 10, and then there’s, there’s companies like, as big as a company like ServiceNow or Salesforce that have 1000s of sales reps, right? So it varies widely, but you know, many startups and small companies I know have have installed a club trip so they can reward their top performers.

4:31 Jim Beach : All right? My son was a salesman at Salesforce, which he just awesome, and he did his two or three years there and got out as quickly as he could, because he didn’t like it. And I don’t like Salesforce, so I don’t like a company Bob that you have to buy the product and then hire another company to implement the product.

4:53 Bob Kocis : I understand that that’s, that’s, that’s interesting, but I get that. I think sometimes that’s a strategy. G that people, people use, but I can understand why it’s not, not for everybody.

5:05 Jim Beach : Yeah, so the mindset, what is first? First of all, I believe my son was born to sell. He was okay when he was 10. You know, he’s just a salesman, pure bred. There’s no other way to put it, and I’m not. I’m not. I really do think it’s in the genes. What are your thoughts?

5:27 Bob Kocis : I think the genes have something to do with it. I know when I was getting in sales, which was interesting, nobody wanted to hire me because I was an engineer. I was an engineer on college. I went, like you said, US Merchant Marine Academy. Was a nuclear engineer, worked aboard ship for a few years, and because of that, people were like, well, you can’t sell. Engineers can’t sell. I think that’s not true. You have to have there are certain things that make a seller great, and some, some people it’s very inherent. Like, my daughter’s a natural salesperson, but my other daughter is not. So I think everybody has a little different, different traits.

6:04 Jim Beach : All right. What is the gene that is Yeah, is it people? Person? Is it remembering names? Is it not being afraid and to talk in front of other people? What do you think that your daughter and my son inherited?

6:20 Bob Kocis : Yeah, I think it’s a series of things. One is, I think, a competitive spirit. I always tell people, it’s, you know, great attitude and an incredible effort. So attitude and effort is one of those that is just absolutely critical. I would say. Number two is the ability for you to really be empathetic, for you to be able to put yourself in your customers shoes, understand the pain they’re going through, and really be able to map your solution to solve their problems. I think that’s another big one. People that have the mindset have incredible curiosity. They’re curious about people. They’re you say people person, but I always say they’re curious about people. They’re curious about curious about companies. They’re curious about their personal wins and their business wins and how they’re going to make them better. They’re very proactive people. They look, they look to be proactive and bring solutions to people to help them rather than wait. And they service their clients better than anybody else. I think, you know, the elite performers do a better job of servicing their clients, you know, better than than all others. And I think those are some of the traits that elite performers are what we call presidents club winners, or presidents club mindset. They all have a condom, all right.

7:34 Jim Beach : So the mindset is competitiveness and caring about others, right? Just what you just said, right?

7:43 Bob Kocis : Yeah, let me put it in context for the listeners too, I think in a different set of context. So when I’m speaking, because I do speaking engagements around the country, and I talk about this concept, I usually use a sports analogy, because it’s kind of simple for people to get and I think it also is relevant. But, you know, I talk about, if you, if you use AI, and you Google the greatest golfer of use AI, and you chat GPT, and you put in the greatest golfer of all time, people like Jack, Nicklaus Tiger Woods are gonna come up. And when they come up, they say, you can ask AI, what makes them the greatest golfer of all time? And they’re gonna use things like mental toughness, preparedness, they outworked everybody, no, but in nowhere and nowhere, in those scenarios, does it say they have better golf clubs, or they had better they used easier tee boxes, or the course was easier for them, or they had, they had better golf balls everybody else, because that’s all the same, right? So you see the elite performer, the same thing you see in sales, the elite performer does the little things better than everybody else, kind of like I use in the golf analogy, they do those little things. They’re mentally prepared. They make sure they’re they’re not outworked by the competition. They make sure that they learn how to box the competition out and do all those little things better than everybody else.

8:57 Jim Beach : I think Bobby Jones is the greatest golfer. Let me say why? From what I have heard that he won more tournaments by a percentage than anyone else, and then he quit. You only played one or two seasons, and then quit, and then became one of the chief lawyers in the United States. And his law firm still exists. Bobby Jones Day law firm. I gotta just throw that in.

9:24 Bob Kocis : What do you think he’s awesome, obviously, one of the one of the greats. I mean, you could throw Arnie Palmer in there too, and a bunch of other ones, right? But no, I think that’s definitely,

9:34 Jim Beach : Definitely true. Arnie Palmer, all of those others, won 20% of the tournaments they were in, or whatever. I think he won 75% of the tournaments.

9:43 Bob Kocis : It was, he was, he was absolutely dominant in those two years, yeah, and it’s also interesting

9:49 Jim Beach : That he had an incredibly bad stomach, and had really bad stomach issues, like crows, yeah, I didn’t

9:59 Bob Kocis : Know that. You know. Back then they were using, they didn’t even call the clubs at 567, iron. They call them actually, and other and they had wooden shafts on them in those days, remember? So it’s kind of a lot, a lot different, for sure.

10:10 Jim Beach : Yeah, I used to live right around the corner from where his house was during his, like, his last 20 years house. Oh, wow. Have a nice house. All right, is there a difference selling tech products versus services, versus selling architecture services or paving services or something like that? Is tech different

10:36 Bob Kocis : That man? What a great question that you know. Here’s what I would tell people is like, I started off in chemical sales, selling industrial water treatment chemicals, and I moved into tech sales, and I would tell you that the same principles they use in industrial water treatment or in any any industry where you’re selling a solution, it’s the same thing you use in tech Now, the difference is, like you said, if you’re selling a paving solution or you’re selling industrial water treatment, you can kind of see the product. You can feel the product. It kind of exists where, in tech, a lot of times you can’t actually physically touch it, right? It’s not it’s not physical. So that is a little bit different for people, because, you know, you’re not shipping them something that weighs a lot, or, you know, you can physically see it. But, yeah, I think as long as you’re selling a solution, the presence called mindset, the book that I’m talking about, and how the elite sellers do it better, is very applicable to anybody who’s solving a problem to their client.

11:34 Jim Beach : The book is five star rated on Amazon with 36 five star reviews, very, impressive. It’s only been out for two, three months, so you’re doing really well with it, using some of the strategies to sell the books. Are you getting out and pushing it hard, or did you just release it?

11:55 Bob Kocis : No, you know, we we released it. We’ve been doing some stuff on social media, but for me, it’s about educating, educating people to either are coming out school, they want to get into sales, and they’re trying to figure out how to how do I have a great career? How do I take what the best have done and bring it into into this and then into my new career? Or somebody who’s been in sales but have hasn’t quite hit it fully yet, they’re not making quota. They’re not they’re not achieving their success, and this is a great book for them to learn from others. What I did in this book is different is I actually interviewed 10 people that had won more than 200 presidents club combined, and I took their insights into the book as well. So you’re not just hearing from me, you’re hearing from myself, plus you’re hearing from 10 different individuals from all over the world. I interview people from Taiwan in Europe and India that are great sales people all across the globe to get their insights on what made them elite in their craft.

12:52 Jim Beach : That’s very interesting. Did you find a cultural or a difference at all based on their geography?

12:58 Bob Kocis : No doubt there’s definitely different. You see, like folks in India, great sellers in India, I see use empathy a lot more, you know, in some of the Asian countries, you know, they’re, they’re much more like us sellers. And some of the Asian countries, you know, like Japan, they’re, they’re, they’re much more like European sellers. So there’s definitely cultural differences all around, all around the globe, but I think they all have the same traits in common when they come down to it, all right?

13:23 Jim Beach : I used to live in Japan selling for Coca Cola, and they were, you know, I spent most of my time thanking existing customers. You know, we would get a day a month, we would just go around and thank our customers and take them a gift or something. And then a lot of time, I didn’t really understand this. At the time, the bankers would come around, and even though they had zero chance of getting coke business at that time, they would come around. In 10 years, they would come around and give gifts to us, to coke and hoping eventually to get a sliver of Coke’s business. And eventually they would get a sliver, you know, but you had to work 10 years sometimes to get the sale in Japan right?

14:11 Bob Kocis : No, for sure. And I lived in China for three years, and I was running sales for a tech company in China, and I had all of Asia. So I was in Japan market as well, very much. But back in those days, they had just made the switch from China being like, where the headquarters have moved, versus Japan.

14:29 Jim Beach : I’m not a fan of China.

14:31 Bob Kocis : Sorry, that’s okay.

14:34 Jim Beach : That’s one place I would just never want to go again. I just don’t I think that inherently, their legal system is so different from the rest of the world that it gives them a moral competitive disadvantage.

14:53 Bob Kocis : Yeah, I think it’s definitely different. I mean, look, I obviously done a lot of business. There a lot of a lot of good friends in. That market, doing business there is much different. And I think the one thing is the piracy piece, especially for tech companies, it still exists, and I think they’ve gotten better. I mean, the the I know a lot of the enforcement folks that I worked with over there have done a much better job enforcing and preventing piracy, but it still exists. And I think as long as it exists, I think it’s a disadvantage. All right, can

15:25 Jim Beach : You give us a strategy from the book?

15:29 Bob Kocis : Yeah, you know the one, the one thing that came out, which was really interesting, that I think the listeners would like, is that, of all the people I interviewed, everybody came, everybody said curiosity was one of their key superpowers, and what that really means is, when they met with clients, they stayed curious. They really understood what their personal wins were, what their business wins were, where they were trying to go with the business, and how they were trying to improve. And that gave them a real advantage of understanding the client’s needs, identifying their pain points and being able to really map the solution to solve their problems and get get more wins. So that was the one thing that came out that I would tell the listeners, and I have a whole section on the oven on the book, but I would tell the listeners that stay curious with your clients and stay in the moment. Make sure, when you’re with your clients, you put your head where your feet are, and you’re in the moment. You’re listening intently and you’re staying curious and understanding really, what’s driving them.

16:32 Jim Beach : In the book, you have a chapter on three critical questions, yes, yes. How much, when and now? How much do you want to buy?

16:43 Bob Kocis : Maybe, maybe. I mean, I think, I think you’re pretty close, but I think three metal I think three critical questions. It’s, you know, why buy from us, right? Why buy anything at all? So why am I even making a purchase? You know, a lot of times we go into a client and and we’d understand, we’d, I’d ask them, you know, as a sales leader, I’d ask them and say, Why are you making any purchase at all? And let them answer, because you want to understand, why are they doing this? What problem they solving? What is the pain? How valuable is it? Is it competing with other things? And then why buy from us making sure that unique value proposition is solid? And then why buy right now? So I think those are the big three. And, you know, great. There’s all these great sales processes in the world, right? And, and I’ve used many of them, and they’re phenomenal. But at the end of the day, if you’re, if you need to boil it down to simplicity, those three questions will get you to the goal line more often than not.

17:37 Jim Beach : Do you like scripts?

17:40 Bob Kocis : It depends. I mean, I think there’s always a place to have to be scripted. There’s always a place to educate the sellers, but then after that, you have to let them do their own thing, because that’s what makes sellers unique, is their ability to go off script and then really understand the client’s needs and understand how they can make an impact on the client. If you say on script, I think your win rates are going to be, you know, a lot lower. The good ones understand how and when to go off and how and when to pivot to get the meetings back on track and advance in the proper way.

18:17 Jim Beach : What about value propositions, pitches, elevator pitch. How important?

18:25 Bob Kocis : Well, the elevator pitch. And, you know, I think for every seller, internalizing the elevator pitch is critical because it helps you in every other aspect. It also, it also always keeps you in sync with what the value proposition you’re delivering actually is, right? So I think it’s always important to have that. I think the unique value proposition of your business, I think you got to tie it to, how are you really effectively? How are you effectively solving the pain for the customer, and what’s that return on investment? That’s more the unique value proposition. I like to see more that’s made with the client, like you get with the client, you say, look, let’s map out how this value is going to really improve your business. And when, when sellers do that, they separate themselves from everybody else.

19:13 Jim Beach : What is the M?

19:15 Bob Kocis : SP, okay, so managed service provider, boy, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a big industry in North America, people that service to small and media business community and service their IT needs, or cyber security needs, now maybe their AI needs. And you know, there’s, I think, 40,000 of them in North America that that exists. They’re small tech companies all over small towns. And they could be two, three employees. They could be a larger company. And those MSPs, I think one of their biggest challenges is, how do they scale their business? How do they land more new clients? How do they grow? And I think that’s why we dedicate a chapter to that community in the book, because there’s a great opportunity for that community that. That community to really grow in the tech world.

20:04 Jim Beach : Okay, so those the people that do the Salesforce install,

20:09 Bob Kocis : You know? I don’t think so. I think this would be a smaller business that is helping out, a accounting firm, a restaurant, a law firm, you know, and what they’re doing is they’re helping with their IT needs. Hey, do you have the right cyber security policy in place? Do you have, you know, you have the right hardware specs for your team? They’re like the outsourced CIO, the outsourced chief security officer for the small business that can’t afford to have their own IT department, right? So that’s where the NSP comes in. They manage the services for that, for those small, medium business and, you know, really critical part of of of what happens in North America and technology, because they help all these small businesses adopt the right things and and keep them safe.

20:50 Jim Beach : What about the sales cycle? Is it long, short, or what are you finding? How to manage the sales cycle?

20:57 Bob Kocis : Yeah, that’s a great question. I think it depends a lot on the industry you’re in, right? I mean, it depends it depends on the market you’re selling in. If you’re selling in a small market, you know yourself, your sales cycles can be a little quicker because you have less decision makers. You don’t have a broad power base. You know, all these things come into play if you’re selling in the enterprise. You know, your sales cycles could be a lot longer because of those scenarios. And you know, so I think it’s a little bit market industry specific, and also probably technology specific. It also matters whether you’re selling a replacement technology, so you’re replacing an incumbent, or are you selling, you know, to a first time buyer, and are they going out to bid, right? So I think all those factors come into place. But I think great sellers know how to compress the sales cycle. Great sellers know how to box out the competition in the sales cycle. And great sellers know how to keep sales cycles on track and make sure that the deals don’t get pushed to the next quarter, the next month, or they slip out of the forecast.

21:57 Jim Beach : How do they box out the competition

22:00 Bob Kocis : With the sales? Yeah, this is, it’s a great that’s great point, great question. So I think the good ones knows how to set traps, right? They know how to take their critical capabilities, their unique capabilities that they have in their solution, whatever it might be, and they know how to set the traps with the competition, with the customer, to box out the competition on things that the competitor doesn’t have. So each of each company has a set of unique things, right? They’re not they’re not everything’s not the same. And knowing how to position those, how to work with your client, how to make sure you box out the competitor who may not be in there, but you’re setting traps for them during the process, is really what I would call a sales superpower. The Elite sellers do it, you know, better than everybody

22:41 Jim Beach : Else, all right, when I was 18, I signed up to sail across the Atlantic Ocean on 125 foot schooner. It was an academic program. We were doing marine biology research, but as part of the program, we also got our the first step in our captain’s license. It was a very, you know, very small step in the whole process, but they encouraged some of us to think about going into the merchant marine or the captain of boat world. And I really kind of wish I had that was a great lifestyle. I loved it. Loved being on the ocean. Tell me about what the Merchant Marine Academy teaches you. I’m fascinated by you learning you said engineering, nuclear, right? Tell me about that career and why you left it, yeah.

23:41 Bob Kocis : So emergency marine camera was phenomenal. I got recruited to play football there. It’s run by Department of Transportation. I think it’s critical for our nation’s security. It’s the ability for for us to turn out the next generation of maritime officers. And you know, I was, I went there, I had a great experience. And I worked aboard ship, and I had to do a certain amount of years afterwards as my service, right, just like you do for Naval Academy, or if you go to West Point. So I did those years. And once I Once I completed my required duty, which is three years at sea, eight years Navy Reserve. Once I completed my required duty, I got into the private sector, which in my case, I went into chemical sales. And the one that the connection of the nuclear was, is when I got out of school, the first time I got offered to go to Navy Nuclear Power School with General Dynamics and work on the next generation of submarines. And so that’s what I did out of school. But what happened was that submarine program got canceled, and therefore I got laid off. So I ended up having to go different route and actually go to sea, but I still finished Nuclear Power School, which was really fun, very difficult, but it was fun and a great learning experience.

24:54 Jim Beach : What kind of boat were you on? Like, 1000 foot tanker or cargo?

24:58 Bob Kocis : Yeah. So. So I spent most of my time on the military pre positioning ships that are out in Diego Garcia. They basically, you know, allow our US military to go anywhere in the world in a relatively short period of time with, you know, all the equipment. So, you know, we carry tanks and missiles and all those kind of things. So we’re kind of military. We were civilian operation, but military crew positioning. I also worked on container ships. I did not work on any tankers. I did work on some grain and what they call break ball. And I worked on some railroad ships, which are vehicles, roll on, roll off. So vehicle ships.

25:35 Jim Beach : Diego Garcia is in the Indian Ocean. It is

25:39 Bob Kocis : South of, south of the tip of India, about 1000 miles. And it’s a little group of islands called the shargos archipelago. And it’s a fantastic, fantastic location, but also very strategic for, you know, for the US,

25:54 Jim Beach : If you’re a conspiracy cuckoo nut, that is where mh 370 the Malaysian airplane that disappeared 12 years ago. Now, the conspiracy people think that’s where it actually landed, and that it was part of a US government thing run out of Diego Garcia. Does that make any sense? Having been stationed there,

26:16 Bob Kocis : I would say to me, it does not make any sense. But, you know, I don’t. I really haven’t followed that. So I don’t, I probably can’t speak intelligently about what people are saying

26:25 Jim Beach : On I love all the conspiracy theories, I especially when they involve aliens. So do you ever see anything that say that you couldn’t explain?

26:34 Bob Kocis : No, I never did. I never saw anything that would say, Look, you know what the heck just went on or why that happened. I mean, you know, you saw some pretty, beautiful skies and some some shooting stars and some things like that. They were pretty, pretty awesome, but you always kind of took it as it was just nature. It wasn’t, yeah, it wasn’t anything else.

26:51 Jim Beach : Very cool. Bob, fascinating career, and thank you for writing this by this book. Bob kosis.com, K O, C, I, s.com, how else Bob, do you want us to find you look around, I think, I think

27:04 Bob Kocis : On Amazon, on Amazon, the President’s Club mindset is on Amazon. It’s available in Kindle and paperback and an audio and for your listeners today, if anybody wants, I have a couple free audio versions left. If anybody wants an audio version, if they email me at Bob Bob coaches.com which is my website, I’d be happy to send them a free audio version.

27:26 Jim Beach : Fantastic, Bob. Thank you so much for being with us. Great stuff, and I hope you enjoy your retirement you

27:30 Bob Kocis : Deserve. Thank you so much. Have a great day.

27:34 Jim Beach : You too, and we will be right back. You.

27:53 Intro 2 : That’s a great question. I think it’s a great question. It’s, it’s, it’s great, great question. Yeah, that’s a really good question. Okay, that’s a great question. And, yeah, it’s a great question. And those are two great examples. Great Jim. Jim, I think that’s absolutely, absolutely perfect. That is exactly it. School for startups radio, okay,

28:17 Jim Beach : We are back and again. Thank you so very much for being with us. Very excited to welcome another great guest. Please welcome Melissa Robinson weinmiller to the show. She has had a fascinating career in her website has got some great pictures of her. She started off as a French horn enthusiast, not enthusiast, master, and got Welcome to play all over the world, including doing a solo performance in Rome, and then she got a teaching position in music, and then the rug fell out from underneath her. Everything disappeared, all the good stuff, and she was left wondering about life, and she had to rebuild her career. And is now an expert on empathy. She has a new book out called the empathetic leader. How EQ your emotional intelligence via empathy transforms leadership for better, profit, productivity and innovation, and it is five star rated on that Amazon place. Welcome to the show. Melissa, how you doing?

29:19 Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller : I’m doing great. Jim, thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.

29:23 Jim Beach : I love some of the pictures on your website. First, the one is you as a teenager. Looks like you’re right out of 1962 you know, just very funny. And then the next picture is one of the sexiest pictures I’ve ever seen. You with your head turned with the microphones, and you’re obviously singing some high notes or something. You know, you know the picture I’m talking about with the big earring, I

29:47 Unknown Speaker : Do, yeah, it’s one of my favorites. If

29:49 Jim Beach : You’re ever on an online dating service, that’s the picture that you use, by the way, I’ll take it. It’s a great picture. I mean, it looks like, you know, a woman. Just belting it out, you know? And that’s a great picture. Tell us about the book. Why is empathy so important? First? Maybe we should define empathy. It’s really simple, isn’t it, just how I understand and share my feelings with you, right?

30:16 Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller : Well, yes and no, which is part of the problem. And thank you for asking that is a fantastic question, because there’s so many myths out there about it. Really empathy, the whole feeling thing as part of it, but there’s 43 different definitions of empathy. So when you start realizing just what goes into it, it’s not necessarily about feelings, it’s about perspective, taking and understanding what the other person is going through, or what their situation is. Feelings can be part of it, but it’s actually a really tiny part of it, okay?

30:46 Jim Beach : It’s the understanding that’s important paying attention, yeah, that’s certainly part of the emotional intelligence. Understand yourself and then understand others, right? So you’re focusing on understanding my feelings and your feelings and how they interact with each other, well,

31:04 Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller : But not feelings. That’s the same understanding. Yes, yep. It’s called perspective taking, but it’s just kind of a long way of saying, I’m trying to understand you. I’m trying to understand your situation. I’m trying to understand where you’re coming from. Because when you think about business and you’re dealing with stakeholders, right? Whether it’s customers or employees or the board of directors, it doesn’t matter if you can’t really understand their perspective, where they’re coming from, what they want, what their drivers are, you’re not going to have a successful business for very long.

31:37 Jim Beach : Very true, very true. All right, so how do I know if I am empathetic or not? How do I know how I’m doing currently, before we read your book?

31:48 Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller : Well, luckily, most people have it, so there’s a biological component to it. So most of us do have it naturally. There are a few who don’t, and those are psychopaths and sociopaths and narcissists, and we kind of try to stay away from them anyway. So luckily, most of us can say, Yeah, we have it. It’s a matter of learning how to use it as a skill. And the other thing is that what I think we really need to remember is having empathy doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a warm, touchy feely, puppies and rainbows kind of person. There’s a component to this that’s called cognitive empathy, which means I logically understand where you’re at. I just don’t actually feel anything. So what I found with a lot of leaders and people in top leadership positions is that they really rely on this cognitive empathy component without understanding that it is empathy. So you’ll have, you know, employees or or other stakeholders that will be like, yeah. They’re really just not a warm kind of person. It’s like, yeah. But that doesn’t mean they’re not using empathy. They might be using it every single day, strategically, and because it’s not coming off as feeling, we’re not necessarily understanding what they’re doing as empathy. What are they doing? They’re using cognitive empathy. They’re they’re thinking strategically. They’re thinking, as far as the group, what’s going to be best for the organization, what’s going to be best for the employees. How can I actually use this to align? You know, if you understand the perspectives of the people that you’re working with, employees, other people within the organization, board of directors, customers, and you can align goals with that, because you understand their perspective, then you’re using that cognitive empathy component strategically. So it’s not just a lot of people think it’s like empathy is something you have, right? It’s just something that’s intrinsically there, but it’s that cognitive empathy component that allows you to use it actionably, and people that are really good in leadership and can understand other people’s perspectives. That’s how they’re using it.

33:44 Jim Beach : Use it. It almost sounds like you’re saying use it strategically, right? Yes, okay, yes. What strategies would I have? You know, I’m cold and distant, but I do care about you, I promise you know. How do I use empathy to be a better manager or a better leader?

34:04 Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller : Well, when you can understand the perspective of others, you can align goals. So think of it this way. If you can say you have an employee that you know they just they’re warming the chair, they’re basically doing the bare minimum, you don’t really understand what the problem is, and we hear this a lot now with some of the younger generations, right, that they don’t want to work, that they don’t want to do things, that they don’t want to be a team player, but as a manager, if I’m going in and I can name their outcome, and what I mean by that is I can take their perspective and understand the things that motivate them, understand the things that they’re going for, because we all have goals, whether that’s something we’re moving towards or something we’re moving away from. Maybe it’s a fear of being found out that we’re not as good as you know. We’d like people to think we are at what we do. Maybe it’s that we’re actually really ambitious, but we don’t feel we have the support that’s going on. There’s these these outcomes that are. Going on that people don’t necessarily recognize, because they’re under the surface. As a manager, if I can name their outcome and understand what that outcome is, now I can reverse engineer how we’re going to reach those goals together, because my outcome may be, I want to be able to put this change initiative together for the organization in a way that’s going to cement my legacy, that is going to do what needs to be done for the company, that’s going to make everything easier for everybody. And that’s a lot different than an outcome from the employee that may be. We’ve had six change initiatives in the last year, and I’m tired and I don’t want to have to figure out one more. But if you could understand their perspective on that, and then reverse engineer it to align with your goals, you’re going to be able to find success a lot easier as a manager, as a leader, because you’re not fighting against the goals that they have as well. All right, what

35:54 Jim Beach : If this 25 year old, their goal is to be to maximize the value, the quality of their life, and they’re just at your business to get a paycheck and get out of there as fast as possible so that they can go be themselves as much as possible out there in the world and do as much backpacking and stuff as they want. And they’re just using you to get a paycheck. And you eventually understand that. That’s why they’re not seeming like they’re involved, because they’re not. Yeah, so many people today, the youngsters, I have two in this age range, and you know, their number one concern is to be happy. That doesn’t mean that the work is part of that. They just need a paycheck, yeah?

36:41 Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller : Absolutely. And I mean, there are people like that, and there, there have always been people like that. So, you know, even though we’re paying attention to it, I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily anything new. But if that’s the case, empathy doesn’t say that you should pat them on the head and keep them there just because, you know, that’s the nice thing to do. You know, you would be better off to talk to this person say, Look, no matter what we do, we are not going to align our goals, because your goals are not going to align with our organization no matter what. So why don’t we find you a place where you can thrive, even if that means it’s outside of this company? You know, because I need to have empathy and an understanding for all of the rest of my employees that do want to work hard, that do want to be there, that do want to excel, and having that one person there bringing down morale and just taking up space isn’t showing empathy for anybody else in that organization. So empathy doesn’t say, Yeah, I should keep them here because I should coddle them and be you know, think I’m being nice to them. It says, if they don’t work here, I need my empathy to go to the greater group and to the larger organization so that we can all thrive together. And if this person is that unhappy here, I’m not doing them a favor by keeping them here. Anyway. They should go where they can be happy,

37:55 Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller : Whatever that is.

37:57 Jim Beach : So I have a famous story that I tell all the time, and I’d love to get your take on it. Decades ago, I was running a 500 600 person company, and that company had a two story office with like a balcony that kind of wrapped around the big pit in the middle, and I was suffering from gillonne beret. I woke up paralyzed one day, and trouble walking and stuff like that. I had to learn to walk again, so I looked at my feet all of the time because I was trying not to trip and fall, and killed myself. And yeah, I had an employee whose desk was directly underneath my door, and so I would come out of my office looking down, walking so I didn’t trip, get out on the balcony, and then turn right or left, depending on where I needed to go. And almost always, I caught eye contact with the employee directly underneath me, right there. The CFO came to me one day and said that guy quit. And I was like, Oh, that sucks. I really liked him. Met him at the mall five years later, randomly. And I was like, dude, why’d you quit? I liked it so much. You were great. You know, we had plans for he was like, You were always staring at me. Every time you came out of your office, you were staring at me like you were spying on me. I was like, trying not to trip and fall off the balcony and land on your desk.

39:13 Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller : Yes, he didn’t understand your perspective. He didn’t he didn’t know, yeah,

39:19 Jim Beach : Absolutely office knew that I was sick. No one. I wasn’t hiding it. You know, there I was in the hospital for a while. And you know, everyone knew it.

39:29 Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller : Yeah, they knew it on a surface level, but did they really know what it entailed? You know what I mean? I mean, it’s one thing to say, Yes, I have Guillain Barre. I’m sorry. I’m having to look at my feet. This is what’s happening. But it’s another to be in the moment and be like every single time he walks out of his office, I know he’s looking at me. I know that he’s looking over my shoulder. He’s microman. You know, it’s one thing to say it, it’s another to live it. And that’s where that perspective taking becomes so important, because an employee probably just didn’t understand. Your perspective, you were trying not to take a header off that balcony. So what should I

40:04 Jim Beach : Have done in retrospect,

40:07 Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller : Without him expressing something to you first? I don’t know that there’s anything you could have done in that case. That’s where it would have been. The ball would have been in his court to say, look, are is? Am I do I? Am I getting the right perception on this. Are you actually coming out? Are you mad at me? Is there something I’m not doing? Is there something I could do better? To give you the opening to say, No, this is what’s going on, which is exactly what happened in the mall five years later, you were able to say, no, that’s not what was going on at all. But that’s why it’s so important to have a culture of empathy, so that everybody feels free to be able to take the perspective of the other person, whether it’s someone in charge, because let’s be real people in leadership positions, it’s hard. If it were easy, everybody would be doing it. So being in a culture where employees also have the ability to have empathy for the people above them, the people above them are able to have empathy for the people below them, and again, not puppies in rainbows, you know, taking the perspective of the other, understanding what it is to be in the other person’s situation. Suddenly, everything becomes richer, because we’re understanding each other as human beings, instead of making assumptions and jumping to conclusions.

41:17 Jim Beach : This segues great into chapter eight in your book, The single greatest skill for EQ via empathy is communication

41:28 Unknown Speaker : Nailed the second we didn’t we? Yes, we did communication.

41:33 Jim Beach : It’s communication, communication, communication.

41:37 Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller : Yes, I would have underlined it six times if I could have

41:41 Jim Beach : Talk to me about communication and how I’m supposed to do it as the boss, as the CEO of a 10 person business.

41:48 Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller : So a lot of people, they when they communicate, they think if they’re just throwing noise out there and saying stuff, that that qualifies as communication, but it doesn’t. That’s making noise. I was a musician for a long time, and it’s funny, because when you’re in an orchestra and when you’re making music, we would say it’s 80% listening and 20% making noise, because that’s what you’re doing. Communication is the same. You should be listening and understanding the perspective of the other person 80% of the time, so that when you’re making noise, that other 20% it actually lands just giving orders and making noise and rattling. That’s not communication. And the problem with communication is lack of it costs money in 2023 was it the Grammarly state of business communication report, the United States lost 1.2 trillion with a te dollars just about communication. And it’s getting worse because we’re adding more ways of doing it, and we’re adding AI into the mix, and there’s so many different phone and text and teams and outlook and all of this stuff. So without taking the perspective of the other person that you’re trying to communicate with, you’re going to be lucky if any of that communication gets through.

43:06 Jim Beach : All right, so how do I move the mall conversation forward five years and let the employee down there that I’m about to land on know that he has the right and should come up to me and say, Are you spying on me? How do we move it forward, so that we allow that communication to happen? Because you said that he should have come up to me. How do I move it forward?

43:29 Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller : You make it part of the culture, and you do it by showing it so so much of the culture comes from the top. It drips from the top down right. But as a leader, when you’re creating that culture, you are always on stage, just like being a musician, which means that even if you don’t think people are watching, even if you don’t think that people are paying attention, somebody is so if they see you going out and talking to the employees and saying, you know, how is this today? I really want an honest answer, creating this perspective, taking so that they feel it coming from you, they’re going to give it back, because that’s just how it works. Culture is funny that way, because we talk about building culture and creating culture, but we’re creating culture all the time, whether we’re strategically setting out to do it or whether it just occurs. So as a leader, you got to walk the talk. I had a director I was working with not that long ago, and he was like, Well, how do I do that? And I’m like, 20 minutes a day, take a walk. Go see your people. You’re busy. You do not need to get in a four hour long, you know, tea party conversation with them, but you do need to let them see your face so that the one time you come out of your office, they don’t think you’re coming out to lay everybody off and give bad news. You need them to see that you’re a human being and even just say, Hey, how you doing? Yes, I’m making contact with you. Yes, I want to be able to hear more from you. Yes, my office is open. And I mean that that’s not just me, you know, towing some line, and the more you. Show it, the more they’ll give it back.

45:03 Jim Beach : You also have a chapter talking about artificial intelligence and machines, and how do we communicate using all of this technology better. It sounds a couple of minutes ago, you said that it gets harder as all of these new options exist, right? I could tweet you, I could post you. I could call you. I could smoke signal you. How do we get better at this using the machine?

45:30 Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller : Well, we have to understand that the machines are tools to begin with. We tend to give machines way too much credit, and I’m talking about AI in particular, in that we think that it’s kind of a human stand in and it’s not so by giving so much credence to these AI models, our communication as a whole is diminishing right now. They’re talking about how on the internet, 60% of what’s out there is what they call AI slop, because it doesn’t communicate. It’s just rattling and making noise. So we need to be very aware of that and understand that AI is not going to fix all of our problems, most especially communication. The other thing is to understand the sheer onslaught of communication that happens in every day. You know, if you’re sitting at your desk and you are an assistant and you’re getting communications from however many different people you’re helping, and you’re getting teams, and you’re getting texts, and you’re getting messages and you’re getting calls, and these people don’t want to use this platform, and these people don’t want to use that platform, and it is so easy for things to get lost. It is so easy for things to get crossed because you’re just trying to take on too much stuff. They’ve actually called this the four day work week, because one of the articles I was reading off of Harvard Business Review was talking about how we waste seven and a half hours per employee per week to bad communication. And a lot of it is just this onslaught of too much stuff, as opposed to being clear, being concise, sticking to a couple channels so you know where it’s coming from, having rules set down, you know, with your email, so you’re not sending these long emails, or, you know, the dreaded Reply All sinkhole, or that sort of thing. So it’s really imperative for our communication that we keep it clear, and we keep it concise, and we don’t just keep adding on more because it looks cool or this is the neatest thing, or, Oh, this will make things more efficient without actually talking to anybody to see if it’s actually going to make it more efficient. I mean, if I’m talking to this executive assistant, is there a perspective going to be, yeah, sure. I need three more channels of communication. Or is there perspective going to be? No, I need clear direction so I can do my job.

47:44 Jim Beach : How does middle management fit into this? You also have a chapter about middle management.

47:48 Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller : Help me there? Yeah, middle management is really important because they lead both up and down, especially now where we get so many layers in these vertical organizations, so they have to take care of the people that are underneath them so that they can actually do their job, but in a lot of ways, they also have to lead the management above them and be able to say, Okay, I understand that you may not understand every single nuance of whatever it is that I’m doing technically. So I can’t give you communication with a lot of jargon. I can’t give you stuff that is very heavy verbally. I need to make sure I can cut right to the heart of the matter. It may mean using a lot of graphs. It may mean us actually sitting down and talking, but I need to be able to lead you through this stuff so that you can make the best decisions. Plus, frankly, the people that are in middle management now are the people that are going to be in top management in the next 1015, 20 years.

48:41 Unknown Speaker : Oh, god, that’s scary.

48:49 Unknown Speaker : You said no crying. Melissa,

48:53 Jim Beach : Unfortunately, we are out of time already. Boy, that flew fast. How do we find out more? Get a copy of the book. Get in touch with you all that, please.

49:01 Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller : You bet my website is probably the best place, and that’s at EQ via and that’s vias and Victor ia empathy.com because you can link to my book, you can link to my TEDx, which were over 150,000 views now in four months, which is like, fantastic, yes, thank you. I’m excited. And you can see some of my other talks. You can contact me there if you want to. The book is also on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and all the usuals. And I also have my own podcast called The Empathic leader, so you can find me at any of those places.

49:30 Jim Beach : Fantastic. Thank you so much for being with us. Great stuff, and we’d love to have you back.

49:34 Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller : Congratulations. Thank you. This is fantastic, Jim. I really appreciate you having me here.

49:38 Jim Beach : Oh, appreciate you coming. Thank you so much for me. We will be right back. You.

50:00 Steve Brown : You. Well, that’s a, that’s a, that’s a wonderful question, actually,

50:07 Intro 2 : Oh my gosh, I love the opportunity to do this. Thank you, Jim, wow, that’s, that’s, that’s a great one. You know, that is a phenomenal question. That’s a great question. And, and I don’t have a great answer. That’s a great question. Oh, that is such a loaded class, and that’s actually a really good question.

50:23 Jim Beach : School for startups radio, we are back and have another brave contestant willing to play the quick 10. Please welcome futurist Steve Brown to the game. How you doing?

50:34 Unknown Speaker : Steve spectacular. Thanks very much, Jim, let’s

50:37 Jim Beach : Do it. Did your AI, already tell you your score? I’ve got them

50:41 Speaker 4 : All written out here. Yeah, AI’s answered them all for me.

50:45 Jim Beach : Number one, oh, if I forgot, do you want to accept the standard wager?

50:50 Unknown Speaker : The standard wager? What’s the standard

50:53 Jim Beach : Wager, bet that everyone else who played made?

50:56 Speaker 4 : Then if everybody else made it, I have to make the same Yes, I accept the standard

51:01 Jim Beach : Wager, great. I love it. Number one, your favorite creativity, hack

51:05 Speaker 4 : Constraints, force constraints. Creativity does not come from freedom. Comes from pressure.

51:11 Jim Beach : Number two, favorite bootstrapping trick

51:15 Speaker 4 : Always pre sell the outcome before you build anything. Best form of validation is going to be the revenue that comes from that. Comes from that.

51:22 Jim Beach : Number three, what are your top passions?

51:27 Speaker 4 : Ai, I suppose, storytelling, travel, wine and my lovely wife.

51:33 Jim Beach : Number four, the first three steps of starting a business are,

51:39 Speaker 4 : Pick a painful problem, make sure someone’s willing to pay for it, and then build the simplest version you can that delivers an outcome they’ll pay for.

51:46 Jim Beach : Number five, the best way to get your first real customer

51:50 Speaker 4 : Is solve a real problem. Make sure that you solve a problem somebody and ask for the sale directly.

51:56 Jim Beach : Number six, your dreamiest technology is that

52:02 Speaker 4 : Would have to be something to teleport me anywhere in the world

52:07 Jim Beach : Or time.

52:10 Unknown Speaker : I’ll take this time.

52:12 Jim Beach : Best entrepreneurial advice, don’t wait. Number eight, entrepreneurial mistake,

52:21 Speaker 4 : Building something that you think is brilliant, but not confirming that anybody actually cares about it.

52:26 Jim Beach : Number nine, your favorite entrepreneur, and why?

52:31 Speaker 4 : Steve Jobs? Just because he realized that technology was not enough, you have to also solve a real problem for people, and do it in a way that’s just meaningful.

52:41 Jim Beach : Number 10, your favorite superhero,

52:45 Speaker 4 : Iron Man, I guess because Tony Stark builds the future instead of waiting for it.

52:50 Jim Beach : All right, while we calculate your score and find out the winner of the wager, how do we get your new book?

52:56 Speaker 4 : You can find it on Amazon’s the AI ultimatum. You can also find it on Barnes and Noble, and I think any other online store should have a copy.

53:04 Jim Beach : Fantastic. Oh, Steve, I’m so sorry. I’m so very sorry you got a 94 according to our AI engine, and you have to have a 95 to win. So you I win the wager, and you owe us a Tesla. We always play for a Tesla. So I look forward to receiving that soon.

53:19 Unknown Speaker : Okay, I’ll put it in the mail.

53:21 Jim Beach : Thanks a lot. Steve Brown, everyone got to get his new book, which is called the AI automated preparing for a world of intelligent machines and radical transformation. Sir. Thank you so much for playing the game. I look forward to my Tesla.

53:34 Speaker 5 : It’s really fun. Thank you, Jim. It’s on the way, and we will be right back. You. You.