PODCAST · business
Handle with Care: Empathy at Work
by Liesel Mertes
It can be difficult to support coworkers as they go through hard times. Liesel Mertes cultivates empathy at work as guests share stories of how real-life struggle affected the workplace. Episodes close with actionable tips to make you a better manager, coworker, and friend.
Episodes
-
Empathy and Connection for Start-ups: an interview with Selfless.ly
- Joshua Driver And so it's always been confusing to me why startups don't think about their culture from day one. And because we spend so much of our wake time at work, especially on our stage and the positive vibes or feelings you get out of helping others or contributing to the betterment of...
-
Lead Like a Human: an interview with Adam Weber
– Adam Weber One of the I think keys to genuine empathy is through consistent one on one and how you display empathy, like, structurally inside of an organization. So, for example, a one on one is that place where as a manager, you can create safety with your team and with your direct reports and...
-
To See It, Be It: an interview with Max Yoder
- Max Yoder That divine middle is emotional liberation, where I can be compassionate and show compassion to an individual. But I do not need to carry whatever it is that they are feeling, right, not my responsibility to. And the thing about the thing that I think this is so important for me in my...
-
Human Skills Are Business Skills: an interview with Joe Staples
- 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...
-
The Awakening: Embodied Empathy for Leaders
- Tegan Trovato There's an awakening happening in corporations and people are now choosing their jobs based on values. And that will force organizations who aren't already inclined to that thinking to really start rethinking their approach to caring for their people and the beautiful thing. NEW...
-
The Pulse of Your People: Optimizing Workplace Support During Crisis and COVID
Nick Smarrelli But at the end of it, you know, you can't be listening to the reality. It can't be you can't be talking about how fantastic things are when things don't feel fantastic because then you lose all credibility and that's what people want. I think in leadership these days. I can get...
-
We Are Humans First: Empathy and International Teams
- Jorge Vargas And sometimes we forget that at work. We forget that in other scenarios. And at the end of the day, work is important and matters. But but it's work. And we are we're humans and we're people. And we were feelings and we're joy. We're sadness first. And that ends up having a huge...
-
How to Mainstream Mindfulness and Operationalize Compassion
This is the Handle with Care: Empathy at Work podcast. I'm your host, Liesel Mindrebo Mertes helping you build a culture of care and connection through empathy at work. MUSICAL TRANSITION Welcome to Season 2. Empathy matters. It isn't just some squishy personality trait, it is a set of skills and…
more -
Lament: Embracing Pain on the Path to Healing
- Mark Vroegop I mean, it's just so private and so painful and so isolating at so many levels. And that's why I said grief isn't tame, because part of the viciousness of it is its unpredictability. Yeah, something can remind you, something can be a trigger. And it's just it's it's not…
more -
Support for Those Struggling with the Disease of Addiction: an interview with Wendy Noe
- Wendy Noe We are we have been dealing with a crisis with with the disease of addiction. And again, I think that we can see that because we're talking about it more than we've ever talked about it. And that's because we're seeing so many people affected by it. But it is a it's a huge health…
more -
How to Stop Asian Hate and Support our Asian Friends and Colleagues: an interview with Tara VanderWoude
- Tara VanderWoude That has been so supportive of me, is just knowing that I'm not in it alone, not alone individually, but then not even alone as as a Korean American, as an Asian-American, but that there are others cross ethnic, cross racial who who care about this and who want to learn, grow…
more -
Layoffs, Trauma, and Disordered Identity: An Interview with Jon Tesser
Jon Tesser Do I have value? Do I have skills? Am I ever going to get a job again? Is am I worthy? Am I worthy? I mean, it gets down to this idea of shame and worthiness. It gets really deep, right? This idea that I'm not worthy because I don't have a job. INTRO In today's episode, we are talking...
-
E. coli, Cancer, and Cascading Grief: an interview with Jill Harding
Jill Harding Whenever I share those stories, people like you look so, so optimistic and you're so bubbly on life with what you've been through. And I said because at the end of the day, my kiddos fortunate, they have taught me a lot about life in ways that I don't know if we didn't go through…
more -
Alcohol, Addiction and Life in Recovery: an interview with Mike Thibideau
- Mike Thibideau But it's been. A really meaningful way to to change a lot of things about myself that were the underlying cause of like kind of what I went back to before, like I didn't I I didn't know why people would like to be sober and the reality is, is because they don't hate themselves.…
more -
Miscarriage and Meaning: an Interview with Danielle Ireland
Miscarriage and Meaning: an Interview with Danielle Ireland - Danielle Ireland It was four or five different nurses came in one at a time and just held my hand and looked me in the eye and told me her story of loss was a miscarriage. And and I don't remember I don't remember their faces. I don't...
-
Lighting the Dark: Cari Hahn on Breast Cancer
- Cari Hahn And I and I remember being on my hands and my knees rocking back and forth, screaming at the top of my lungs. I just was so devastated. And I think I was breathing all of it. I was breathing the fact that I had had cancer. I was grieving the fact that I had worked so hard and that I…
more -
COVID, Leadership, and Reducing Stigma: an interview with Arwen-Widmer-Bobyk
- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk I have no problem having everybody know that I had COVID. I don't I don't feel I don't feel that that is a reason for shame. After all, we are literally in the midst of a global pandemic and tens of millions of people have this and often through no fault of their own. INTRO...
-
Hurting Yet Whole: Liuan Huska on living with chronic pain
- Liuan Huska And so I. I felt like when people were able to say to me, you're not just like something to be fixed, but we can actually learn from what you're going through and what you have to offer as someone who is suffering is valuable and actually may be central to our human experience, is…
more -
Working While Black, Part 2: To Be Us Productions
- Cedrick Smith We're going to tackle topics that are hidden in the crevices, that are a lot of times filled with shame and no one wants to talk about. But in order for us to get to where we need to get to and to heal from those pains and traumas, we are going to cover those topics and this being...
-
Working While Black: Part 1, To Be Us Productions
Cedrick Smith So the disruptive part for me is the white supremacy, the white supremacy, and the microaggression is the microaggression of outright racism, to be quite honest with you, that I've had to deal with and I think that's what people don't realize is what we're bringing to the workplace...
-
A New Normal: Char Simpson on life after the death of her soulmate
- Char Simpson You've got to create this new normal. You just got to find what makes you happy. And create this new normal and what makes you happy may be almost very, very different from what it was with your husband, but it's just you. And so you you weren't meant to just be miserable. Life's...
-
Dead bunnies, COVID meltdowns, and other empathy failures: personal reflections from Liesel Mertes
Liesel Mertes It's been a pretty eventful and emotional week and a half in my house now with six people in the house. There's always high emotion throw into the mix that two of my children are preadolescents. And you can guess all of the back and forth that go on. But this last week and a half…
more -
He is a Gift and Every Day is Enough: Cerebral Palsy
- Peter Kline I'm never doing enough, never doing enough of working enough with them and never doing enough therapy outside of therapy hours with them and knowing the importance of that, but also trying to manage the responsibility and guilt that comes along with that while also, also being clear...
-
"So, no babies?": Megan Flinn on survival and goodness
- Megan Flinn I have, I have faced my own deep, like I have survived the thing, I think a lot of people have the great wounding or the great pain point of their life. And for those of us who have faced and wrestled through it and acknowledge it changes us. We then can turn to others and kind of...
-
My Son has an Autism Spectrum Disorder: An Interview with Chrissy Brack
- Chrissy Brack But if you want to know what it's like to be a special needs parent, it's pretty much like this year all the time, in a way, maybe with like less threat of death around every corner. Like there's not like that that like pandemic piece of it. But as far as the amount of hurdles and...
-
The Fine Art of Waiting: Stacey Ballard on Chronic Illness
- Stacey Ballard I think the most important thing is that 40 percent of Americans live with at least one chronic illness, 40 percent of Americans. So we all know somebody who lives with chronic illness. And so we we know that those people are out there working right now, just like I had to work,...
-
Living with a rare, terminal disease: Dustin Kaehr and HATTR
- Dustin Kaehr And I think there are some people that are so scared of dying that they never truly live. And so so I think if we can help people understand how to truly live. Because once you get that. Once I have that, I'm way more understanding. INTRO Dustin Kaehr is many things. He is a...
-
Be Strong and Courageous: Teen Suicide and a Father's Heart
Wade Brown While there are plenty of opportunities to be angry, we don't want to be angry. We don't. Joshua was a beautiful, beautiful young man. And Joshua is not suicide. Joshua is a 14-year-old who did an adult thing in a moment of weakness and we'll never know why. He's a kid that did an…
more -
How can I honor her? Jason Seiden on life and meaning after his daughter's suicide
- Jason Seiden That meant that I would gladly, if I could be the last person ever lose a child. I would I would take that on, if I could, to say it like that's how horrible it is that I don't ever want anybody else to feel it. And so other folks actually telling me that they're happy and that...
-
Racism, Loss, and Living while Black: an interview with Fred Brown
- Fred Brown That was difficult. And that the kind of person I am or what people expect from me is to not flinch in the face of adversity. I could never grieve. In a meaningful way. And I've never grieved in a meaningful way because. The role I typically play in this society that I live in is the...
-
Everything Fell Apart: Cancer, Miscarriage, Divorce, and Infant Loss. An Interview with Molly Huffman
- Molly Huffman A year after Tage died, I had processed so much that by the time my husband left, I, I was I was definitely anxious and really struggling at that point. But then there was this little bit of just, a I had to laugh and maybe that was all I could do to keep from drowning, but it was...
-
My partner is dead: drunk driving and sudden death. An interview with Barry Hoyer
- Barry Hoyer All of my friends have kind of treated this is like the loss of a husband or a wife, like it has the exact same gravity. Yeah. Work, it's. It's an interesting conversation at work. My my V.P. is also gay, and we're roughly the same age and we've started an LGBTQ employee resource...
-
Front-line workers & the stress of being essential: an interview with Seth Morales
- Seth Morales Those folks have had their eyes closed to this central, frontline workforce. And I think the lights have turned on and many people are starting to realize that this essential frontline workforce that is delivering packages to your front door, making sure that certain type of food…
more -
"Action is the best way to help": reform for restaurants in COVID-19
Serena Suh The whole pandemic impacting our economy and the restaurant industry is a big, big event. But in the end, why is that so catastrophic is because of the ways that restaurant workers and the restaurant industry have not been given safety nets. And it's a bigger issue than the issue…
more -
Alcohol, Self-Soothing, & the Coronavirus: an interview with David Mills
- David Mills But I promise you, anyone who's hearing this. There are absolutely incredible things about you that other people see that you don't see. So be gentle with yourself. Be gentle with yourself, because there's always gonna be parts of yourself that you personally you don't feel like you...
-
COVID-19 & Catering: Insights from the Pirate Ship
- Matt Mills You care about their family; you care about each other's success and what you're doing. And you never want to. You never want to see anyone suffer, especially from things out of their control. As far as our, personally, with my business, I was telling them the first person and not…
more -
Living with Depression: an Interview with Paul Ashley
- Paul Ashley Because it dismisses it dismisses who who I am or whoever that person is. You're saying it, too. It dismisses who their whole self is. Yes. Right. Again, the dichotomy of the fact that I have depression, yet I'm a hoot to be at be at a party with or are both true and at the same…
more -
Dissolved Adoption: Shame, Isolation, & Painful Choices
– Adam Bryan And in this, the first time we've talked publicly about this, because this gets a really people get shamed. This is this is a really black mark on many families. And they get kicked out of churches, they get kicked out of neighborhoods, they get kicked out of families where the...
-
Mental Health, Stigma, and Suicide: a Chinese-American Perspective
– Karen Ng Do we mention suicide? Do we use that word? And there was a lot of reluctance. My mom's gut reaction was no. How could we tell people that she took her own life? You know how. How shameful. You know, what would people think? And it would it would. It has implications for the family…
more -
Living with PTSD: an interview with Elsie Iudicello
And I think that was when I really learned that, you know, all our healing doesn't happen at the same time. I think I was very impatient to just get better. I just wanted everything to go away. And I didn't realize that, you know, I had accumulated trauma from some past events and then from this...
-
My daughter has narcolepsy: an interview with Susan White
– Susan White I don't think people understand narcolepsy. They don't understand that. I'm sure any other invisible disability. It was hard for me to talk about because I know you're with all your colleagues your friends you're focused on work and you've got your adult daughter at home in the dark...
-
Nobody Sent a Card: Jennifer Merrell and Addison's Disease
And at the end of the day it felt like these are the people I spent 50 hours a week with. I was in the office seven something every morning always wanting to do my best for the people I worked with. And at the end of the day I left and only heard from one person ever again. And these were my...
-
The Holidays Can Be Hard
Is it, really, the most wonderful time of the year? With all the holiday greetings and everybody, telling you to be of good cheer? Maybe not. Maybe its not the most wonderful time of the year. And that is why today is a special holiday edition of the Handle with Care podcast. INTRO Cookies bake....
-
Infertility and IVF: an Interview with Julie McCorkle
- Julie McCorkle I didn't allow myself to be as vulnerable as I probably would today because there are a lot of great people out there that do truly care even if they don't understand or don't know what you need. I think I would have voiced that a lot sooner. INTRO Today, I welcome Julie…
more -
Going it alone: building a life and a business after your marriage crumbles. An interview with Jennifer Magley
Jennifer Magley I was I was grieving the loss of of this person of this role in my life and really just more of grieving the life that I thought I was going to have and that that was actually which may be not a great sign but that was actually more painful than even just becoming a single mother…
more -
Parkinson's Disease: loving and losing my dad
How do you support families living under the shadow of a long-term illness? Parkinson's disease is relentless and degenerative. There is no cure. Jason Berns remembers his dad, Don. Don was diagnosed with Parkinson's at the age of 33; Jason was just 8 years old. Jason reflects on the challenges…
more -
Mercy died, Moses needs surgery: my personal journey with grief
Today, I share a part of my story of loss. Elaine Brenner is my guest host as I move behind the microphone, telling the truth of my collision with death and surgery. As I listened to this episode, I still felt the loss; there is so much more that I would like to tell or share, the ways that Mercy...
-
Childhood Disruption, Part 3: An Interview with Magnus Mertes
Disruptive life events linger; they cast a long shadow. Years afterwards, you can still be surprised by sadness or fear. Magnus knows about living with pain and uncertainty; his sister died when he was just one year old and his younger brother has needed multiple heart surgeries. Magnus shares...
-
Childhood Disruption, Part 2: An Interview with Jemima Mertes
A hug, a nap, a kind word: each of these actions can be really helpful for those that are going through hard times. Jemima Mertes, age 6, shares these insights and more on this episode of Handle with Care. Jemima is no stranger to sadness. As she speaks about her safe place, breathing techniques,...
-
Childhood Disruption, Part 1: An Interview with Ada June Mertes
When tragedy impacts in the life of a child, it can be difficult for adults to know how to help. Ada June, age 11, had a sister die and a brother undergo multiple open-heart surgeries. She shares about death, the power of remembering, and the importance of being able to self-advocate in the midst...
We're indexing this podcast's transcripts for the first time — this can take a minute or two. We'll show results as soon as they're ready.
No matches for "" in this podcast's transcripts.
No topics indexed yet for this podcast.
Loading reviews...
ABOUT THIS SHOW
It can be difficult to support coworkers as they go through hard times. Liesel Mertes cultivates empathy at work as guests share stories of how real-life struggle affected the workplace. Episodes close with actionable tips to make you a better manager, coworker, and friend.
HOSTED BY
Liesel Mertes
CATEGORIES
Loading similar podcasts...
Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Handle with Care: Empathy at Work have?
Handle with Care: Empathy at Work currently has 65 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Handle with Care: Empathy at Work about?
It can be difficult to support coworkers as they go through hard times. Liesel Mertes cultivates empathy at work as guests share stories of how real-life struggle affected the workplace. Episodes close with actionable tips to make you a better manager, coworker, and friend.
How often does Handle with Care: Empathy at Work release new episodes?
Handle with Care: Empathy at Work has 65 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Handle with Care: Empathy at Work?
You can listen to Handle with Care: Empathy at Work on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Handle with Care: Empathy at Work?
Handle with Care: Empathy at Work is created and hosted by Liesel Mertes.
URL copied to clipboard!