In this episode of the Impostor Syndrome Files, we talk about how to make our work more effortless. Too many of us are struggling at work and we don’t know why. My guest this week, Sneha Mandala, a sustainable peak performance expert, shares her research on how we can raise our self-awareness and take action to achieve more flow states. She also shares her own career transition and strategies you can use to minimize risk and maximize confidence in your own transitions.
About My Guest
Sneha Mandala is an expert in "Sustainable Peak Performance" for corporate and tech professionals. Her focus is on optimizing employee performance while combating disengagement and burnout, which has been proven to significantly reduce business expenses. In fact, this problem is currently costing the U.S. economy $1 trillion annually.
Sneha also holds the prestigious Professional Certified Coach (PCC) designation from the International Coach Federation (ICF). This is a rare accomplishment at her age, as only around 350 coaches in the millennial age group have achieved professional credentials out of the 300,000 coaches in the U.S. according to ICF studies.
As a highly regarded speaker for Vistage, the world's largest executive coaching organization, Sneha Mandala has trained and coached business and tech leaders with remarkable results. She has reduced turnover and elevated engagement and performance in these organizations. Her expertise has led to repeat appearances on Fox24 News, where she dissects intricate corporate issues and provides impactful solutions that resonate with diverse employee age groups.
Sneha Mandala has over 1500 coaching hours under her belt, specializing in making work "effortless". Her innovative two-step framework for effortless work, featured in a TED talk, has transformed corporate work culture dynamics. Additionally, she has pioneered transformative L&D programs, introduced gamification and TikTok-style learning, and served as a keynote speaker for executive audiences. All of these accomplishments have solidified her reputation in Sustainable Peak Performance.
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Connect with Sneha:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mandala_sneha/
Fox 24 News Segment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQ8nBR67d_M
Website: https://snehamandala.com/
TEDx Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mGOLNGDazU
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Connect with Kim and The Impostor Syndrome Files:
Join the free Impostor Syndrome Challenge.
Learn more about the Leading Humans discussion group
Join the Slack channel to learn from, connect with and support other professionals.
Schedule time to speak with Kim Meninger directly about your questions/challenges.
Websites: https://kimmeninger.com
Transcript
Kim Meninger
Welcome, Sneha. Hi, I'm so excited to have this conversation with you. And I would love to start by inviting you to introduce yourself.
Sneha Mandala
Thank you so much, Kim. My name is Sneha Mandala and my mission is to help make work feel more effortless. That's what I wake up every day thinking of doing for myself as well as others around me.
Kim Meninger
So I want to know how you got here, right? So you think you're trying to make work effortless? Did it start out effort full grasp, like What made you start thinking about this topic?
Sneha Mandala
Oh my gosh, yes. So effortful is the best way to describe how my life was a few years ago when I was working with a major company. And you know, as luck would have it, you would get sucked into a corporate job that pays big bucks sounds really cool. And you're like, I'm set for life. And then a few months in, you realize this is not what you signed up for. And I was at that point, too. I was experiencing what I call as Sunday dreads, not Monday, not just Monday blues, but Sunday dreads, that the heavy, dark feeling that would set into me because I was feeling anxious and dreading the upcoming workweek. And I would feel a little jolt of this dark feeling every time I would log in for work. And I remember distinctly asking myself, I had just started my career is this how the rest of my career is going to feel like, like swimming upstream, there has to be a better way of spending close to with my math, 100,000 years in your lifetime, because that is how much people typically spend at work. That's equivalent to 11 years of your life that shouldn't be spent feel like feeling like you're struggling and working hard and grinding, it should feel more fun and joyful and effortless. And that's what led me onto this journey. And I asked myself, I'm sure there are certain points or certain projects that felt like I was just having fun. It felt like play. I'm sure that people around me, the leaders around me felt the same at some moment. So I went ahead asking and interviewing leaders and professionals within my company outside my company, and I asked them this one question, not what are you struggling with? Or what are you burning out for? But I asked them? When does your work feel effortless? That was that one positive question I started interviewing leaders on and I found some pretty great answers.
Kim Meninger
Oh, tell me more about what people said in response to that question.
Sneha Mandala
The first common thing came that came up in my conversations was that it is not a common feeling. It is not an everyday phenomenon that that word feels effortless. It's just this very rare, one-off-peak experience that professionals and leaders were experiencing. And it is very hard to make that happen again, it just somehow magically, things fall into place. They're having a lot of fun. They're performing at their optimal levels. And when that moment is over, they find it very hard to recreate it. So I asked him follow-up questions on what were some of the factors that have led to that particular feeling. Was it a particular kind of project? Was it a particular group of people that they were working with? So due to these follow-up questions, the reason why I was asking them this as I was, I was trying to find out that bottom line, that common denominator out of all of these rare peak experiences. So if I could find, what are some very specific common factors that I could find and all of these experiences that they describe to me in these interviews, maybe just maybe I can intentionally create that for myself as well bring that effortlessness intentionally into every day of my life.
Kim Meninger
Hmm, that is so powerful. And that's something I think about a lot too, because one of the conversations that I often have related to impostor syndrome is to think about not only the times when you feel least confident and or most self-doubt, right, and to really think about what's happening in those moments so that you can better anticipate and manage the triggers, but also what's happening in the moments when you feel like you're at your best, right, what's happening when you feel like your most confident self because, to your point, if we understand that then how do we proactively recreate those conditions as much as possible. So we're actually driving our own sense of whatever it is right confidence, effortlessness just joy, fulfillment. So what are you? What did you hear? Did you learn anything from the, from the responses?
Sneha Mandala
Yes, absolutely. So when I was asking these leaders to describe their experiences, it came very close to what positive psychologists would describe as a flow state. A flow state is when your body and mind are performing at their optimal levels in a very effortless manner -- where you're not doing something, you're just being. And the work, beautiful, high-quality work, is just flowing from you. I'll give you an example. When athletes describe that they stepped into the fields, and everything else fell silent around them, they got out of their mind and into their body, they're describing a flow state, when there is a creative professional music producer, for example, they say they sat down for six hours straight for God to eat for God to you know, go meet their family. But now six hours later, they have this amazing rhythm in mind. They're describing a flow state. And I was so surprised that a lot of studies around flow state or observations are around athletes and creative professionals or action adventure sports enthusiasts. But when I was interviewing these leaders and professionals, I was seeing the same description of a flow state in them as well. And the fact that they couldn't recreate it on purpose kind of stuck with me. And that's the reason why I was looking for those factors, right? Because they said that they realize that they were in this magical, effortless experience. After that experience had passed that, how do you recreate it is the question. So the two factors that came up to be common and all of those interviews were? Well, I'll give you the first one. Very, very common. If you're into the self-help genre, or if you're an audience listening to this podcast, you might have heard of this over and over again, it's do what you love. Do what you love, and you'll never work a day in your life, do what you love, and your work will never feel like work. And that can be described as drive internal motivation. Scientifically, you are not being led by an external reward, or punishment, you are internally enjoying what you do 30, the process feels more rewarding to you than the outcome, you're doing it because you're deriving a lot of joy from the process itself. That is drive that is internal motivation. So that wasn't a huge surprise for me the first factor. But my question was, well, we see people all the time who are doing what they love, and they're still burning out. So what is that missing factor that helped them go through that peak experience without feeling the stress without struggling without burning out? And I realized that it's not just enough to do what you love. But you should also do it in the way you love to do it. In your most authentic, natural state, that just blew my mind. Alright, so drive is not enough drive and Authenticity will create the conditions for a flow state.
Kim Meninger
And you know, as you say that it makes so much sense. But it's so hard because we live in this world where we don't often have control over how and when we do the things that we need to do, right? So I'm thinking about how easy it is to, to disrupt your flow state when somebody puts something on your calendar a certain time, right? Or somebody makes an urgent request of you when you think you're gonna have this time block to be able to do what you want to do. Like I wonder, does it feel like a juggling act to try to manage your own needs at the same time that you're managing everyone else's demands of you? Like how do we get to a place where we can assert more control over this?
Sneha Mandala
This is an interesting question because before I even think of juggling our needs with others It comes down to us knowing what really our needs are. How many times especially as women, right, as a man, I'm a mother. So I'm expected to put everyone else, you know, before me before I put myself or my needs and address them. And that is very common in the corporate world to it translates into the corporate world, for women and other people do. The fact is, have you ever spent time paused and stood up for yourself? Not for others, even just for yourself? Have you ever paused and asked yourself? What are my core values? What do I really care about? Because before you even allowed the other noise in, you need to be isolated, literally, you know, in your mind, in your body isolated and think through what's really important to you. What does your authentic work-self look like? Blue Sky brainstorming. If you had no restraints at all at work? What would your work style be? What would your communication style be? What are your strengths? What are, what are some of the things that you're pretty damn good at that you would love to keep doing them, even if you're not paid for doing those tasks? Those are the things that you need to have crystal clear clarity on before you start letting the external noise come in. So before we go to the fact of juggling things, and I agree, there's no possible way that you can do what you love, and do it in the way you love to do it. Absolutely 100% of the time, every single day at work, that's not going to be possible. But do you know what to fight for?
Kim Meninger
Oh, that’s such a great way to say it, right? Because you're absolutely right. The core values, the self-awareness that you're describing, anchor us to a vision of ourselves or an understanding of ourselves and how we can be as productive as possible, right? And if we don't know what that looks like, it's really hard to advocate for ourselves. And so a lot of the, a lot of the disruption or the lack of autonomy that we're talking about is a function of not having thought through, how can I best contribute. How can I do my best work, and then assert yourself to get more of that? It's just that we don't want it. So we're just kind of operating on autopilot, and not tuning into what we need in order to be our best selves.
Sneha Mandala
I love that you use two different words, and they're the complete opposite of each other as the assertion versus autopilot. I would call the autopilot as the path of least resistance, it's much harder to assert yourself and stand up for yourself and be very clear in your vision of what your needs are, what your authentic self is. And hence, this is my natural way of doing things, versus just giving in to some of the more stronger voices that you hear around you giving in to them and saying, You know what, this could be the only way of working. Maybe this is the restraint. That is the only way to get my job done. And actually, there are a million ways to solve a problem or address an issue or complete a task. You need to find what your way is. Yeah, and stick to it, or at least advocated, advocate for it and see what situations you can still keep doing it in the way you love to do it.
Kim Meninger
Yeah, and I think so I think about this a lot too, that everything starts with that clarity, that understanding of where can I be of greatest service, and how does that intersect with what I most enjoy doing. Right? So it's exactly like what you're describing. And then I think about it from the next step as okay, I know now, what I want, what it should look like, but there may be some other internal challenges that are getting in the way so maybe I don't feel like I deserve to ask for this. Or maybe I don't feel I feel guilty or ashamed for asking for it or I have too much Yeah, self-doubt that I question whether this is an appropriate ask. Right. So then I feel like there's, you know, we're sort of talking about the physical clutter that gets in the way of the environment. But there's also a lot that goes on in our own minds. That's a function of our upbringing of our past experience, like, how do you think about that mental clutter?
Sneha Mandala
I would love to talk through this by going back to the story that I was just sharing my own story, right? When I realized that, after all of these interviews, that these are the two factors that are needed. And both these factors were missing. In my current job that was leading me to a lot of stress and a lot of burnout. Well, I had two choices, I wake up tomorrow, and you know, nothing changes, I keep going about my day, the way it is, and I keep dreading you know, the, the next 100,000 hours that were coming up in this work environment, or I do something about it. And that something would, at that point for me, and my situation was to leave my career, right, because this career is not serving me. And people give you a lot of hard time for quitting things that you planned a lot for. And I went through two degrees, I came here to the US for my master's degree to my background is engineering. So how do you leave something that you have been preparing your entire childhood for? My parents primed me to be an engineer, I went through two degrees to be an engineer, and how do I just let go of that and start from scratch? That was my internal struggle, as you were sharing, I didn't feel like I could be good as good. In a totally different career as I was in this particular one. I felt like I would be considered a failure if I had to quit and start all over again. And one thing and it's a scary thing to do, especially when you're not born in a country where you're working in it's it adds a whole another layer of complexity to my decision. That I said, does it have to be ending my career and starting a new one? Is that the decision I'm trying to make? Or maybe I can find something in between to test things out slowly? iteratively. That is what I told myself to overcome my internal struggle. It's not this one giant blind leap of faith. Let's experiment like an engineer. Right? Let's try a few things out and see if we are on the right course or we have to course correct. And that way, it felt like a much smaller decision to make than this huge leap of faith. And in my case, what I did was I started working outside of my office hours. With Well, another interesting story. My job was to install robots in warehouses all over the country. So every time they saw me enter into the warehouse, the associates there who would pick Pack Ship packages would call me a job stealer. Okay. And my team's consideration was that, well, if a robot can do your job, then maybe you should step up and do something better. And I took it to heart. And I thought, maybe this is my in-between experiment, right? Maybe this is my incremental change that I'm going to dabble in. So I started working with these associates who usually pick pack and ship packages outside of my office hours helping them with their interview skills with their resumes. And you can imagine if their shift started at 6 am, I was there at 4 am working with them in a classroom full of like 100 You know, very hopeful, very positive associates teaching them math even. And I realized that even though I was putting in a lot more like reorder hours I was mattered. I was just married then to be there at 4 am. Working with all of them. It was definitely a little bit of a different lifestyle than what I had imagined. I wanted to have a high God so much joy in these outside office hour activities, teaching them helping them develop helping them grow, helping them back. The next big promotion at their job to become a team lead to become a supervisor, or an ambassador or Even some of them applied for jobs outside of the company. And they were so happy with the results that they were seeing in their professional life. And that gave me so much joy. And that point I realized, maybe I work with people a lot better than I've worked with robots, maybe I enjoy working with people a lot more, then how I enjoy working with robots. That for me was the aha moment where I realized that my incremental or in-between experiment, can actually paved the way for that bigger decision. Which, surprisingly, just a few months ago, I was absolutely doubtful about. So my take away with this experience was that if something seems like maybe you're not ready for it, or you're doubting if you deserve it, or maybe you're not ready for that big change, you don't have to make that big change right away, you need to find that in between where you can experiment and see how it feels like before you make that big change. And you would feel like maybe there isn't, maybe it's all or nothing, but there's always an in-between.
Kim Meninger
What an inspiring story for so many reasons, because I really loved what you said about treating it like an experiment, because it feels so high stakes when we treat it like it's, you know, a lifelong commitment to something new that we're going to leave behind what we know and go off into this unknown land. And what if we make a mistake, and it just feels so scary and hard to motivate ourselves to do that? But there are so many other people out there listening who know how to, you know, if you're involved in any kind of science-related work, technology-related work, you know, you're already doing these kinds of experiments, right? So it's like this just another experiment, it helps your brain to not feel like it's that risky. And I love the way you found a way to do this in the context of what you were already doing. Like, you didn't feel like you had to leave your job right away. You didn't feel like you, you know, had to go really far beyond the scope of what you were doing in order to test this out. And, and to your point, right, I mean, everybody's gonna have different experiences with this based on whatever it is that you're trying to test out. But I think sometimes we overcomplicate it, and sometimes overcomplicating, it serves to keep us in our comfort zone, because if we tell ourselves, it's too hard, if we tell ourselves, it's not possible, then we don't have to do the scary thing, right? But if instead we look, look at it as what is possible, right now, what is a step I could take an experiment I could put into place, and then just see, because like you said, you don't have to make a change. But if you explore your options, at least, you're making an informed decision.
Sneha Mandala
The question that comes to my mind, as you were describing that, Kim is if you want to step into the absolute ideal state, the paradise of your career, if you will, it does take a journey to get there. So if you are willing to put in a little bit of work, willing to get into a little bit of discomfort, just start exploring and discovering what drives you, truly, truly drives to you what is your real authentic self at work, takes a little bit of time, a little bit of discomfort. But nothing great ever happens without any complexity, right? But if you're willing to go through a little bit of that in a fun, playful manner, like just think of it as an experiment, you will enter that paradise and I am so happy to share that I am in my professional paradise, if you will, just because I wanted to take a chance, in a playful way, not to push myself too much. But to see that if I allow myself a little bit of discomfort here, stay through it. The outcome is going to be beautiful. And I am I am a success story to show that yes, the outcome is beautiful. If you allow yourself to explore and discover first, because it all goes back to the first point we talked about if you don't know what you want to stand for, what you need to advocate for yourself, the external noise the internal noise is always going to blind you your thoughts and your actions.
Kim Meninger
And I know that I am not the only one who wants to hear how the story like where the story is now. So how did you get going? You In at 4 am and figuring out rather work with people that have robots to where you are today, what was that other leg of the journey?
Sneha Mandala
Yeah, the very special leg of my journey basically made me realize and I had spent a few months training them and coaching them. And while I was doing that, I also started gathering some logistical information. Okay, so I am building my confidence, I am overcoming my inner doubt and struggle that yes, I, I should be confident enough to switch careers. But meanwhile, I should logistically find some data and information to support that decision. Right. So I started reaching out to the most logical set of people that I thought would help me out, and that would be HR professionals, HR and l&d professionals, I reached out to them saying, hey, my background is engineering, but I'm sort of doing what you're doing training coaching people here, outside of my office hours, I would love to get into this career. I'm happy to start from scratch nope, no issue at all. I'm building my knowledge, my resources, my skills. But what is one thing that you wish to do in your career to put a star on top of your Christmas tree? And, again, I love interviewing, right? I love interviewing and gathering data and inputs like this. And the most common answer that all HR professionals and l&d professionals shared was, I want to be certified as a coach. I love helping people so much, but I would love to understand the ethic, the competencies and do it the right way, the best way possible, I want to get credentialed by the International Coach Federation. And that for me was like, alright, so that is the next logistical step for me to take, right? Because I don't have any academic background in training and coaching. So why don't I just shoot for that star on my Christmas tree that all of these Well, tenured professionals are sharing with me about. So I enrolled into a coaching program that put towards the end of probably a year or a year and a half, that would give me a professional credential coach certification. And all this while I was still working with my associates, right. So now I had like a logical way of switching career but also like the internal confidence to switch careers. So when I finally got very close to getting my credentials, when I started applying for jobs, and my current company was kind enough to see all the work that I was putting outside of my previous job, even without the academic credentials, but also, I would credit a lot of the confidence that I was projecting in my interview too, because my drive was showing through my natural state was showing through drive and authenticity. Once again, they saw that I was in a flow statement talking about this stuff. And when doing all this stuff, that they took a chance on me. And that's how I began my professional career in learning and development and coaching. And now I'm happy to share that I'm working as a senior leader in my current company, working with the Chief Technology Officer 10 to 12, VPS on any and all of their growth needs, helping them with their engagement and work culture. And I never let go of that those set of interviews, either how to make your work feel more effortless. So that's when I started reaching out outside of my company, to leaders to work with their teams to coach them on how to create the conditions to perform at their peak by reducing burnout, not just for themselves, but for their teams as well. How do you create a culture of flow for your people? So that's where I am at right now. My very first public message about this was my TED Talk, which came out about a year ago, finally, which is my very first public talk. My very first public talk was on a TED, TED stage TEDx stage. So I'm very, very grateful for that opportunity. And things have never been the same ever since I'm a well-requested speaker for Vistage, which is one of the world's largest SEO coaching organization. So I get to sit down each month with multiple sets of CEOs and business founders, about 12 to 15 of them for three hours, which CEO is ready to give you three hours, hours, they are so engrossed in the material that I share with them about flow state because they know they have experienced this at some point in their career. So they get very, very hyped up. And I say, Well, you can intentionally create those conditions for yourself and your people, you just need to add a little bit more drive in what you do. And make sure there are ways for you to remove restraints so you can be more authentic at work. And I love that.
Kim Meninger
I love your story so much. It really makes what might otherwise feel incredibly daunting or even impossible, right? Like it might you might have to have an easily assumed an engineer who's going to talk to me from HR l&d, right, like, they're not even going to look at me, but you did your homework and you put it into you broke it down into bite-sized chunks in a way, right, that made it much easier to that. I'm not saying what you did was easy, but it makes it more manageable. Right? [Manageable. Yeah.] Yeah. So that goal. And so I love that you share that because I hope that it inspires other people who may be thinking to themselves, yeah, I have this dream or this idea. But there's no way it's going to be possible, right? And now you get to live that and share it with other people.
Sneha Mandala
Thank you. And I wouldn't have been here, if I didn't find that in-between moment. And I have to tell everyone listening to this episode, go find your opportunity go find your in-between. It is always there. You just need to look for it.
Kim Meninger
And it also sounds like you really took advantage of the opportunity to connect with other people. Like I love that you interview people. I love that. It sounds like you didn't hesitate to reach out to others. And there are a lot of people who are very nervous about doing that and feel like they might be bothering people or are quite sure how to have that conversation. So do you know that you know what you know, right? Like now that you've been through the process? Are there any tips you would give for people who are maybe a little bit nervous about connecting with other people around exploring something new?
Sneha Mandala
Networking is something that dawns me as well because I am an extreme introvert. But there is this concept that completely changed my perception about networking. It's called informational interviewing. Okay, so now you're not approaching people thinking, Oh, maybe we'll build a relationship out of this. Or maybe I can get to learn something out of them. Like all of those things disappear when you look at the connection or the interaction as an informational interview. Now, what an informational interview is, basically, is you understand their background, you understand their experience, you read up about it, or figure something out about it, and you pick one or two points that stood out the strongest to you. So for example, for me, it was I know that this leader shine in whatever, you know, career that they have had, I wanted to ask them that one question, what makes work feel effortless to you, which kind of work feels effortless to you. So if you hone in on that one or two questions that you can ask them, there are very, very, very few people who are going to say no, to a very specific question that you want to ask them based on their particular experience. So this is going to be an easy way in because you can send that as your LinkedIn connection request question, Hey, I saw I observed that you've done this, I saw that you shared a post about this, I have one question for you. Very simple words, right? Very short, very easy to understand. That makes it you're making it easier on them for you for, for quickly responding to your query. And then based on your read the room you read the person on how open they are to continue the conversation and then you ask follow-up questions that you bring in other perceptions of questions that you want to continue to gain information from them about. Questions, questions, questions, if there's one thing that I learned through my one and a half-year of coaching program is asking powerful, simple, open-ended questions is the best way to connect. And of course, you reach out to 100 people, maybe 50 of them don't respond to you but the other 50 you get a really good connection out of that because you're building the foundation. Have your bit mentorship or guidance or whatever you would like to call your relationship that comes out of this networking. You're building it based on the foundation of curiosity. Curiosity is what drives every connection. It's not about you, it's about them and how curious you are about them. And there's honestly so much that we can all learn from each other.
Kim Meninger
Yes, oh, you and I are entirely on the same page with that I always say, connect around curiosity, respect or gratitude, right? Like just showing interest in someone else, and they will absolutely give you their time. And if they don't, it's not about you. Maybe their see, maybe they're not comfortable with networking, who knows. But don't let the fear of someone else's response keep you from going out there and making these types of connections because they benefit the other person as much as the benefit you.
Sneha Mandala
Kim, given your line of work, you're probably hanging out on social media a little bit, there's just so much of negative attitude when people are commenting on other people's work, you could be that positive person out there reaching out to them, asking people to recount their best moments or their peak moments in their life. And that's the reason why I didn't ask them. What makes you burnt out what is stressing you out? I wanted to ask them the opposite. Yeah, that is what feels effortless to you. So everyone loves to talk about their peak moments in life. Everyone wants to talk about what makes them happy and brings joy. And that is more of the energy we need all around us.
Kim Meninger
You're absolutely right. I'm glad you brought up the negativity on social media, too. What a great way to be a change-maker in a real hostile environment. So I want to ask you, what you I know you and I talked about sort of how to support the listening audience and taking their next step. So I would love to invite you to share what you think others who are listening should prioritize as a first step. And then I also want you to tell us more about how we can find you connect with you get more of you?
Sneha Mandala
Absolutely. I'm all about simple action items. They're probably you are doing laundry while listening to it or you're commuting while listening to this episode. If there's one thing that you want to take away from all of this conversation, is that you have the power in you to change the narrative of how the rest of your career looks like. And if you're sitting there wondering, well, sure, I can add drive an authenticity to my work, but how can I change what I do or my job or my responsibilities overnight? Great question. I'm not asking you to do that. I'm asking you to find little ways that you can add a little bit of drive and authenticity to what you're already doing. Studies show that we already spend five to 6% of our time, each day at work in slow. Because you do find a choice, no matter how much you hate your job, there are little moments of rapt attention and joy, where you do unknowingly get into flow. And, that study also says that if you can increase the time spent in flow from five to 15%, okay, you will see a significant improvement in your well-being as well as your performance and productivity. Five to 15%, that equates to six hours, just six hours per week. That's the difference. Can you add six more hours of more driven work, or more authentic work in what you're already doing? So here's my simple takeaway for you. I want you to take maybe 30 minutes today, to sit down and figure out what are your top three job roles or responsibilities. Whether you are in the corporate world as an employee, as a leader or a business owner? What are the top three job roles or responsibilities that you spend the most amount of time or effort on? And I want you to assess yourself on how driven you feel at each task on a scale from one to five, five being the highest. And how authentic in your natural state, no restraints. How much do you feel that authenticity in each task? And whichever score is lower, you know that you would have to add a little bit of that to that particular task. I'm going to take an example here, if there is, let's say, a salesperson, okay, you do a lot of sales and your job is to make a lot of cold calls, right? The same daunting thing, like networking freaks me out. But a huge part of your job is doing sales calls. And you think that you feel driven at it. Let's say you have a good score there because you love closing the deals and making money out of your conversations. But you might not feel as authentic at it. Let's say you give yourself a low score for authenticity, then maybe you sit down and think how can I be more of a natural game changer in this particular task? Maybe I love connecting with people in person rather than over a cold call or an email. There is a marketing conference that come in, that's coming up in my particular field. So maybe I set up a marketing booth there. That's a little bit of authenticity, adding a little bit of authenticity in what I'm doing, right? Like I said, there's always opportunities lying around. You just need to take that pause and ask yourself, how do you add just a little bit more drive, just a little bit more authenticity, and what you're already doing? And watch your work start to feel more effortless.
Kim Meninger
I love it. And so in closing, where can people find you?
Sneha Mandala
Absolutely. I am doing my best to share videos on social media on Instagram and LinkedIn. My name is Sneha Mandala, s-n-e-h-a Last Name, m-a-n-d-a-l-a, I have a website. I'm constantly blogging, sharing videos, you'll find a few news interviews of me online, where I do break down some of the more intricate corporate issues that deer struggle with. So if you're a people manager, definitely check out my news interviews on Fox 24 News. And definitely, Everything started with that TED Talk. So go check that out. It's titled How to make work feel more effortless. It was on TEDx Reno, it should be on the TEDx official YouTube channel. So definitely go check that out because everything started from that foundation.
Kim Meninger
Thank you so much, Sneha. I'm so grateful to you for having this conversation. And for all of the amazing work that you're doing those links will be in the show notes as well for anybody who is interested. And I'm just so grateful for, for your willingness to share your story with us and to inspire us with your own personal journey.
Sneha Mandala
Kim, thank you so much for this opportunity. It definitely felt very effortless to converse with you and I'm grateful to be in this space with you.