What makes managing people so difficult? It’s probably that we’re all different. But in the business world, we ask our leaders to manage teams of people: each with their own needs, wants, styles and personalities. It’s a big ask, and the larger the team, the larger the challenge.

Whether you’re an experienced manager of people or early in your leadership career, leading your team became a lot more challenging in 2020. Individual styles and personalities carried over into remote work and affected how people dealt with their own health, as well as the health and safety of their families and friends.

In this episode of B2B Nation, we talk to James Sherer. In addition to working on his PhD in business administration, James is an executive with the retail arm of Marathon Petroleum, which most people know as the Speedway brand. He’s also involved in a pair of entrepreneurial ventures: Salesology, which aims to help align marketing and sales, and Eventology, which applies a project management framework to event management and production.

One thing that was clear from our conversation is that there is good news for marketers managing people. Many of the skills you use in your marketing can help you effectively manage your team. Talking to people and promoting ideas is messaging and content creation. Managing people, like marketing, isn’t one size fits all. And that empathy you had to develop talking to your customers in 2020? It can come in handy as you lead your team through an unpredictable 2021.