Remembering to Be Human in the North Country

Yesterday on North of Normal I sat down with Jeff Cozzens, the co-founder of Schilling Beer Company here in Littleton. Conversations on the show have a way of wandering in the best possible direction. We start with someone’s story—where they grew up, how they ended up here—and eventually we find ourselves talking about the things that shape how we live and work in this community.

That’s what happened yesterday.

We talked about Jeff growing up in northern Michigan, about the long friendship with his business partner that eventually led them to build a brewery together, and about the early days of Schilling when they were hauling grain sacks up flights of stairs and doing whatever needed to be done just to keep the doors open.

Toward the end of the conversation, the topic shifted to leadership.

Jeff said something that stayed with me long after the microphones were turned off. “You can read all the books you want about leadership or communication”, he said, “but eventually it comes down to something simple: treat people the way you would want to be treated if you were in their position.”

“At the end of the day, you have to remember to be human.”

I’ve been thinking about that ever since.

Not because empathy is a new concept to me, but because I remember very clearly the moment in my own life when I realized how much I still had to learn about it.

Not many years ago, I was working as an operations manager at a company where my role revolved around building systems. That was where my strengths naturally lived. I loved structure. I loved processes. I loved taking something chaotic and turning it into something organized and predictable.

Give me a messy situation and a computer and I can usually build a system that makes sense of it.

In many ways, I found comfort in that kind of work. Systems behave the way they’re designed to behave. They follow logic. They follow rules. If something breaks, you can usually trace it back and figure out why.

People, of course, are not like that.

As the company grew, my role shifted from designing systems to leading the people who had to operate within them. I had very little experience with that at the time, and no real training.

So it got messy.

I remember feeling genuinely confused about why people wouldn’t do what I was asking them to do. From my perspective the systems made perfect sense. I understood how they reduced risk and prevented errors.

All people had to do was follow the structure and everything would work.

But people don’t live inside neat diagrams.

They bring their whole lives into the room with them—their stress, their pride in their work, their frustrations from earlier conversations, their worries about things happening outside the office.

And at that point in my life, I didn’t understand that very well.

One moment in particular still stands out.

I needed information from the founder of the company in order to move a project forward. From my perspective the system I had built depended on that information. Without it, the entire process started to break down.

For reasons I didn’t understand at the time, he refused to share it with me.

So I pushed harder.

Eventually, in a moment of frustration that I still look back on and shake my head about, I said something that landed about as poorly as you might imagine.

I suggested that if he wouldn’t give me the information, maybe he wanted his own company to fail.

The room went cold.

I remember feeling angry and desperate at the same time. I wanted the system to work. I wanted the outcome I was responsible for delivering. And I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t simply cooperate.

Looking back now, I can see how narrow my perspective was. (And how fortunate I was to not be fired on the spot!)

Not long after that interaction, my boss pulled me aside and introduced me to the work of a former FBI negotiator named Chris Voss and his book Never Split the Difference. I’ve mentioned that book before because it genuinely changed the way I approach conversations.

What I began to understand through that work was simple, but difficult to practice.

If you want to work effectively with people, you have to take the time to understand them.

Not their role.

The person.

What they care about. What motivates them. What pressures they might be under that you can’t see.

That realization forced me to confront something uncomfortable. I had been so focused on achieving the outcomes I was responsible for that I hadn’t spent nearly enough time understanding the people around me.

Learning to shift that mindset required slowing down.

It required listening in a way I hadn’t practiced much before—not listening so I could respond, but listening so I could understand.

And something unexpected happened along the way.

The founder I had clashed with so strongly showed me empathy.

He forgave me.

Working through that moment didn’t destroy our relationship the way it easily could have. In fact, it ended up doing the opposite. It created a deeper understanding between us and a new level of respect.

That experience changed me.

It made me realize that empathy isn’t just a leadership skill or communication tactic. It’s a way of seeing other people.

When someone takes the time to truly understand you—to listen and recognize the human being behind the situation—it changes the way you feel around them.

Those are the people we trust.

Those are the people we open up to.

Those are the people we gravitate toward.

Living in the North Country has a way of reminding you how much that matters.

In small communities, people remember how they were treated. You see the same faces at the grocery store, the hardware store, the post office. The person you’re frustrated with today might be the same person helping you dig your car out of a snowbank next winter.

Life has a way of bringing us back to each other.

Because of that, empathy tends to matter more here.

But something about the way we live now has also changed the places where those conversations happen.

More and more often, we’re not just talking across counters or around kitchen tables anymore. We’re talking through screens.

People share pieces of their lives online. They write about things they’re wrestling with. They respond to each other’s thoughts in comment sections and messages.

Sometimes those spaces feel thoughtful and human. Other times they feel like the exact opposite.

But if empathy matters when we’re face-to-face with someone, it matters just as much in the places where people now gather digitally.

And I’ve seen it happen.

Last month I wrote a blog titled When Home Stops Feeling Safe. It wasn’t an easy piece to publish. Writing honestly about something personal always carries a little vulnerability.

What came back surprised me in the best possible way.

Several readers told me they had felt the same way I did. Some shared pieces of their own stories. Others simply said something along the lines of, “I thought I was the only one who felt this way.”

That moment stayed with me.

Because empathy doesn’t actually require being in the same room with someone. Sometimes it looks like a person quietly reading your words on the other side of a screen and realizing that they are not alone.

Behind every comment, every message, every post is still a human being carrying their own story.

And when someone takes the time to respond with understanding instead of judgment, something real happens there too.

It’s not that different from what happens when a friend leans across a table and says, “Yeah… I’ve felt that way too.”

So today I want to leave you with a couple of questions.

Think about the people in your life who have shown you empathy.

Think about how that felt.

And then ask yourself where you might have the opportunity to offer that same empathy to someone else today.

It might happen in a conversation at work. It might happen with a family member or a friend.

Or it might happen through a screen—in a message, a comment, or a thoughtful response to something someone else shared.

Yesterday Jeff reminded me of something simple but important.

You can read all the books you want about leadership or communication. But eventually it all comes back to the same thing.

Remembering to be human.

-Amanda