Accountability and empathy aren’t opposites

Hi, I’m Ben. You’ve found my little corner of the internet — where I read and write about marketing, product, leadership, learning, books, fatherhood, and anything else that happens to inspire me on a given Thursday.

In my work life, I love sitting at the intersection of go-to-market and product: everything from the first pixel in Figma to the story and messaging we carry into the market. But at the end of the day, I follow the great University of Michigan mantra, “the team, the team, the team.” I love building a team, working hard together to accomplish something special, and helping the humans around me do better work and live better lives.

Outside the office, I’m a dad to four stellar kids, a relentless reader (see some of my faves and find your next book rec here), and an adopted Hoosier. Most days you’ll find me walking the streets of Indy with my fam, rewatching The West Wing for the hundredth time, or attempting to win Star Baker. Always happy to connect or help however I can.

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I serve the product marketing, competitive intelligence, customer marketing, and customer education teams at Docebo, a global learning platform.

I joined this post-Series A financial wellness startup as VP of Marketing in late 2022, and two years later stepped up to SVP, Product & Marketing — leading marketing, product, and engineering.

Other roles

VP of Marketing

I founded a nonprofit with a simple mission: bring books to every child in Indiana ages 0–5, in partnership with Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. After a $1M beta across five counties, we successfully lobbied the state to take the program statewide with $6M in funding.

I led the brand, design, video, PR, copy, and social teams at Seismic. Two favorite moments: the 2022 global rebrand — new brand strategy, logo, visual identity, voice and tone, and website — and launching the Seismic Enablement Cloud with activation across PR, social, web, and even Times Square.

Four roles over five years at Indianapolis’ beloved training-software startup. I started as Content Marketing Lead, then as Marketing Manager partnered with CEO Max Yoder to edit, produce, and launch his book Do Better Work. As Director of Marketing I led inbound marketing and sales development — demand gen (owning a revenue number), content, SEO, product marketing, marketing operations, email, paid, social, PR, and web.

I returned as Chief of Staff, working closely with the CEO and President on the rhythm of the business: company objectives, pricing & packaging, weekly all-hands, and our biannual all-company gatherings. After we were acquired, I led the Lessonly side of the integration with Seismic.

Other roles

Director of Marketing
Marketing Manager, Communications & Content
Content Marketing Lead

An early exec-team member at Luma (now Pillar), a High Alpha studio company on a mission to make job interviews more equitable and effective through ML/AI. When the founders moved on, I briefly led the business until a new CEO was hired.

A yearlong fellowship that gathers a small cohort of Indiana leaders to study and practice civic leadership, in the spirit of Governor Mitch Daniels.

Earned my MBA with High Distinction (summa cum laude), and had the honor of speaking at the 2019 Ross commencement — a speech called “It Depends,” an idea that later became a post here in the blog.

Five years on staff with the youth ministry nonprofit, growing from Staff Associate to Area Director II — leading volunteer teams, fundraising, and programs for teenagers.

Other roles

Area Director I
Staff Associate

Studied political science and international studies, alongside integrated marketing & communications.

Every manager I know (including me!) has struggled with the tension of accountability and empathy.

That’s why I love this 2-by-2 from Ed Batista (based on the Mouton-Blake Managerial Grid) and his DEEP dive blog post on it.

A few of my favorite reminders from it:

Empathy and accountability aren’t two ends of a spectrum. Having to choose between them is a false dichotomy.
That’s simple to grasp and wildly hard to do—it’s one of the CORE challenges of leadership
Accountability ≠ bullying - As humans, we turn away from anger and gravitate toward vulnerability, so emotional regulation and communicating thoughtfully are a better way to gain accountability.
Empathy ≠ agreement - We will disagree, and when we do, we need to empathize anyway. Slow down, ask questions, reduce “threat level”, listen.
As leaders, we can’t mandate this—our BEHAVIORS set the standard for high-accountability, high-empathy cultures.

Ben Battaglia

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Accountability and empathy aren’t opposites

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