Joe shares multiple examples of how empathy transforms business outcomes. In fundraising, he noticed a potential investor getting distant and simply said “I noticed you’re getting distant — what happened?” This opened a deeper conversation that addressed the real concerns. He also learned to sense when investors objectified him as an employee rather than seeing him as a partner — a red flag that prevented bad investor relationships.
In sales, when a customer goes into resistance, the typical salesperson tries to convince them, creating more resistance. The empathetic approach: “I noticed something isn’t working for you. What’s going on? I don’t want you doing something you don’t want to do.”
In team management, managers often report “we all agreed and nobody did it.” Joe always asks: “Did it feel like they were excited?” The answer is always no. People make decisions based on emotions — intellectual agreement without emotional buy-in produces no action. You can “feel into that resistance, feel into where the excitement is, feel into what’s being held, where the rigidity is in the room.”
In product development, focus groups fail because they ask emotional questions through the intellect. Henry Ford’s “faster horse” quote illustrates this — the intellect is limited in seeing what emotions want. But if you put someone behind a car and watch their face, “it’s pretty clear who’s going to buy what.”