Managing Imposter Syndrome in the Workplace

 

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Key Insights

1. Imposter Syndrome Isn’t Always Visible – It’s often an internal narrative even high-performing leaders struggle with.
2. Mentorship Is a Growth Multiplier – Creating safe spaces for transparency accelerates learning and development.
3. One-on-Ones Are Leadership Gold – Done right, they’re the fastest way to unlock potential and retention.
4. Leaders Must Reset & Reconnect – Structured yet empathetic communication rebuilds trust and drives results.
5. Growth Mindset > Fixed Titles – Encourage people to value effort and learning, not just outcomes.
6. Retention Starts With Purpose – Employees stay when they see how their role aligns with the company’s mission.
7. Support Doesn’t Mean Hand-Holding – Employees need to own their growth. Managers should offer the bridge, not carry them over it.

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Why Imposter Syndrome Persists at the Top

It’s easy to assume imposter syndrome is a junior-level issue. But as Mandy points out, it can creep up even when you’re at the peak of your career. “It comes down to a lack of confidence, an abundance of self-doubt, and a whole lot of comparisons that are wildly unfair,” she says. Even after being celebrated as a top performer, she found herself questioning her abilities as new executives entered the scene with MBAs and decades of experience.

The kicker? Most people would never know you’re struggling. It’s internal. And until you name it, you can’t tame it.

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How to Run One-on-Ones That Actually Matter

One of the most tactical parts of this episode is our shared breakdown of one-on-ones. Mandy emphasizes a simple, repeatable structure:

• First 15 minutes: Employee’s agenda
• Next 10 minutes: Manager feedback
• Last 5 minutes: Align on action items

We added four foundational questions every employee should ask:

1. What do you want me to do?
2. How am I doing at it?
3. How does this fit into my career and our company goals?
4. What questions should I be asking you?

If your one-on-ones don’t include this kind of dialogue, you’re probably just managing, not leading.

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Mentorship and Coaching at Work: From Transactional to Transformational

Mentorship isn’t about hand-holding. Mandy shares how she once helped employees transition out of roles they were overqualified for by simply asking, “What do you love about this job? What don’t you love? What are your goals?”

These conversations don’t just uncover hidden talent; they build a culture where people feel seen and invested in. It’s coaching, not just management.

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How Growth Mindset Cultures Improve Retention

Employees don’t leave companies. They leave managers. Especially ones who can’t connect the dots between daily work and long-term goals.

Mandy breaks down how a growth mindset—the belief that skills and abilities can be developed—fosters loyalty. Praise effort, not just outcomes. Acknowledge risk-taking and learning curves. And if someone fails, help them learn forward.

Managers who do this don’t just create performers. They create believers.

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About the Guest

Big thanks to Mandy Schaniel, founder of Schaniel Consulting Inc. and author of Faith Over Fear: How to Adopt a Success Mindset. She brings over a decade of hands-on leadership experience, scaling teams and growing revenue at ZipRecruiter, and now coaches organizations on building resilient, people-first cultures.📘 Get her book on Amazon
🌐 mandyschaniel.com
🔗 Connect on LinkedIn

Mandy Schaniel GoHireTalks (Youtube)

 

Full Podcast Transcript:

[00:00:00] Jonathan Duarte: All right, welcome everyone. I’ve got actually one of my favorite people in TA, and it may not even be in TA anymore, but Mandy Schaniel, and normally I ask people to tell me a little bit about themselves, but we’re going to do something a little different this time, because I think Mandy, you and I have known each other since 2005? 6? Something like that.

[00:00:22] Jonathan Duarte: Alright, so this is how we met, and I’ll give a little intro. And correct me, because this is now a long time ago, but Mandy started working with me at GoJobs back in 2006 as part time while she was finishing up her college degree.

[00:00:40] Jonathan Duarte: Then she came and worked with me at GoJobs full time for probably about another year and a half or something like that. Then moved on to other companies in the recruitment marketing space. And then landed this killer job at ZipRecruiter. And it wasn’t really, Killer in the sense like a big [00:01:00] advancement because Mandy already knew all this stuff.

[00:01:03] Jonathan Duarte: She was hired by Ian in the startup team at ZipRecruiter back in what was probably 2010? 2009? 2010?

[00:01:10] Mandy Schaniel: 2012.

[00:01:13] Jonathan Duarte: 12? Okay. And what were you were employee 19, I think, or something like that?

[00:01:18] Mandy Schaniel: 19.

[00:01:19] Jonathan Duarte: Yep, and built the customer service or the inside sales team, depending on how you want to call them early on at ZipRecruiter.

[00:01:26] Jonathan Duarte: She’s had a heck of a career in the recruiting space and she’s written a fantastic book that we’ll put all the info in. But I think. Mandy has been one of my biggest success stories as a founder and a business person because, and hopefully, Mandy, you tell the story about just, working with someone who is willing to just absorb everything with an intention of executing.

[00:01:58] Jonathan Duarte: And so that’s who Mandy [00:02:00] is. And Mandy, give me a little spiel otherwise on what you think.

[00:02:04] Mandy Schaniel: No, absolutely. Thank you. And I do tell stories of our time together and I laugh, I reference the myriad of titles I had in that relatively short span of time at GoJobs. It was. a wonderful experience.

[00:02:19] Mandy Schaniel: I think we still laugh thinking about my training when you brain dumped the entire industry, everything I needed to know on the whiteboard for I think two weeks straight, eight hours a day. It was fantastic. I’d never had a leader who saw my thirst for knowledge and my need to just understand all of the inner workings before, just take the time like that to say, okay, you want to learn?

[00:02:46] Mandy Schaniel: Here’s everything in my head that I can get out. So you can help in any way possible. It was, really a great lesson in leadership that didn’t quite hit me until later in my career when I became a [00:03:00] leader. And I realized okay, there were so you know how I was incredibly motivated and I had no, no hesitation whatsoever of walking into your office and handing you a sheet of paper that said, by the way, this is what I’ve been doing.

[00:03:16] Mandy Schaniel: This was a job title for that. And this is. How much I should be getting paid.

[00:03:19] Jonathan Duarte: Yeah. Yep.

[00:03:20] Mandy Schaniel: And I looked back and for a little while I was like, Ooh, Mandy. But it was one of those relationships that, I felt comfortable. I could share those things. We would have a conversation and if it made sense.

[00:03:36] Mandy Schaniel: You were like, yeah, you’re right. Like you’re learning, you’re growing, you’re going above and beyond what I asked you to do in this role. So yeah, that makes sense. And it didn’t always make sense. So that was a huge learning lesson that came in handy years later when I, had my first executive role and was responsible for other people.

[00:03:56] Mandy Schaniel: Cause I’d worked at other startups where. was really just [00:04:00] me or someone I, had a dotted line to me part time, doesn’t give you the same experience. I wrote the book partly because I think it’s important for the people that, helped me to get to where I’ve gotten to in life and in my career to get some acknowledgement, but also it’s important to share those stories of when I felt like I had no idea what I was doing and how did I get past that?

[00:04:30] Mandy Schaniel: How did someone help me? How did I get past it in my mind? What are the little hacks? And it’s really nothing all that complicated, but understanding little things about how your brain works and mindset can make the difference between you Really being stuck in your brain and feeling like you can’t move past some boundary and really unleashing success in everything that you do.

[00:04:57] Mandy Schaniel: That’s, when I had the chance to [00:05:00] what I call retire from full time work and focus on my consulting business, I really wanted to find a way to, how do I keep leading and mentoring, but still have the time to focus on my family, which is my number one priority. A one to many approach.

[00:05:19] Mandy Schaniel: And I’d always wanted to write a book. And so I was like, this is what we’re going to do.

[00:05:25] Jonathan Duarte: And so that brings us back to what you and I decided we were going to talk about. A while back and and that is leadership. It’s about working with employees your employees, if they’re contractors, they’re direct employees, they’re, people you mentor as well as being an employee.

[00:05:47] Jonathan Duarte: Some of the things that we’ve talked about, and we’ll talk about now, are situations where you have imposter syndrome. We’ll talk about that, we’ll talk about what it’s, how it may be to you as an [00:06:00] individual, how it might show up as a leader when you’re looking, when you’re having one on ones and how best to do one on ones with employees from my experience and your experience.

[00:06:10] Jonathan Duarte: Because I don’t think enough people talk about this. And I think if we talk about, everyone says our employees are the number one asset. Why aren’t we actually training our managers to bring those people up? And instead of spending more time on compliance videos that were built in the 60s why aren’t we actually spending more time to figure out how to retain and grow our workforce?

[00:06:35] Mandy Schaniel: 100%. I think it’s, someone out there, I haven’t found the words yet. Someone out there needs to rebrand soft skills because inherently in the name it sounds soft, right? Like it doesn’t sound as Im as important as it is. And that’s been my experience is that those “soft skills” of [00:07:00] really getting to know your employees and caring and putting the people first.

[00:07:06] Mandy Schaniel: And so many of the things I’m sure we’re gonna talk about when it comes to one-on-ones, they’re so much more important to not only the people aspect of. Leadership and working and having these relationships with other people. That’s what they are. But it makes such a difference in the performance and the success of the business.

[00:07:27] Mandy Schaniel: Like it, in my mind, like I’ve seen it time and time again, I’m like, it are, is everyone else blind to this? It makes just so much sense to invest the little bit of human energy that it takes to build those relationships. And. Find that connection and care about the people that you’re leading. I don’t know why everyone’s not doing it.

[00:07:49] Jonathan Duarte: So let’s dive right into your part of your book. And I know you talk about from imposter syndrome. Why don’t you define it in your terms and then what it means to you for what you’ve [00:08:00] seen, from employees and maybe how you’ve helped that and maybe your own personal experiences.

[00:08:04] Jonathan Duarte: And I’ll dive into on, some things I think people in the industry who are probably going to watch this are probably going to go. That’s totally different. What John was describing is not the John that I know.

[00:08:19] Mandy Schaniel: That and I know we, we talked about this offline. I think that is the case. most of the time.

[00:08:26] Mandy Schaniel: Unless you’ve been there and realized you’ve had imposter syndrome, most people aren’t going to recognize it on your face because it’s an internal battle. And it really, to me, in my experience, it comes down to a lack of confidence. Abundance of self doubt and a whole lot of comparisons that are wildly unfair and so for me when I got recruited to ZipRecruiter had my first VP title [00:09:00] and you know was responsible for building the first account management team there.

[00:09:05] Mandy Schaniel: And I was doing a great job. I, we were breaking milestones and hitting goals and all of this. I had a number nickname for the amount of money that myself and my team had brought in. I was celebrated in what I was doing, which was amazing. It was phenomenal experience. But as we grew, we were bringing on more and more heavy hitters adding to the executive team.

[00:09:34] Mandy Schaniel: And I’m looking at all of these people that have MBAs and they have this laundry list of executive experience. And suddenly I’m being asked to do things that I’ve never had to do before. And I’m like, Oh my gosh, everyone else has a playbook or a template for this and I don’t even know what I’m doing.

[00:09:56] Mandy Schaniel: And so I, it’s funny because [00:10:00] one of the Biggest and most important things when it comes to imposter syndrome, first and foremost, is realizing that you have it. Because I was blind to it for a while. Second is having a support system. Because the number one thing, at least in my brain, going through it was don’t ask for help.

[00:10:21] Mandy Schaniel: Don’t ask for help. They’re going to realize you don’t know what you’re doing, right? And so of course I would talk to my husband and I would be upset or frustrated or stressed and working all hours of the night and he’s babe, If anybody can figure something out, but they’ve never done before, it’s you.

[00:10:40] Mandy Schaniel: And I was like you say that you’re my husband, but and, sure enough, one of those things it sounds embarrassing now, but I’m an open book. I’ll share it. It was a hiring plan and I, I always did things off of gut and my gut was pretty darn accurate. So like I didn’t need [00:11:00] anything more.

[00:11:01] Mandy Schaniel: So I started building it out and I was like, okay, how am I going to model this out? How does how, what makes sense? And I finally asked a colleague for Hey, can you just take a look at this? Way off course here. And he’s no, that’s absolutely perfect. That looks fantastic. And I was like, Oh, I can do this.

[00:11:18] Mandy Schaniel: I can figure those things out. And you know what? He didn’t turn around and look at me and say, what a dumb ass. Like she didn’t know what she was doing. Oh, I’m going to go call the CEO and let them know she shouldn’t be in this role. That’s none of those things happened. I got,

[00:11:33] Jonathan Duarte: I think it’s sometimes, I think it’s that fear inside us. has way more power. We give it more power than then obviously we should. And I’ll give you an example of mine too. So we had mentioned this, but so I, I’ve been in the recruiting marketing space on 96, built a company GoJobs back when. People were on dial up. They didn’t even have email back at the [00:12:00] time.

[00:12:00] Jonathan Duarte: It was, I think, and I don’t know for sure, the seventh job board on the internet. And still, even up till March of last year I had this like little gut feeling, like a little boy saying I’m not good enough. People are gonna find out that I don’t know what I’m talking about. That and I would see people, on stage at conferences and in webinars, and I’d be like, they don’t know what they’re talking about.

[00:12:30] Jonathan Duarte: They really have, they’re clueless, but they’ve got the microphone. So I’m like, this, I gotta figure out what this is. Why do I feel like I’m stuck? And I’m like an imposter in this whole thing. When the reality is that now I have 28 years of experience building three different companies, very successful companies in the HR tech space.

[00:12:55] Jonathan Duarte: I built the software that AppCast was built on. I built the [00:13:00] job distribution platform solutions that most every applicant tracking system use used today. And, but I would never, acknowledge that. And then. One day I did, and I talked to somebody, a successful owner who sold a company in our space as well.

[00:13:17] Jonathan Duarte: And he’s John, you have learned and forgot more than most people in this industry. Just do one thing, pick up the microphone. And so that’s why I started the series of find the people who have the knowledge to get it out there and get. Just, I have knowledge too, I’ll be able to share mine at the same time, but get the voices out there, because I think that the HR practitioners and recruiters who don’t get to go to conferences, don’t get the knowledge.

[00:13:48] Jonathan Duarte: That we’ve got, but they just don’t get to see it. And I’m really into the practical stuff. Like how do we help them do their job every day? And that’s why I wanted [00:14:00] to talk to you about this, about imposter syndrome, because it could be your leaders who have it. It could be your employees. It could be you.

[00:14:08] Jonathan Duarte: And sometimes it just helps if you can recognize it, you could recognize it in your employees too.

[00:14:15] Mandy Schaniel: Absolutely. And you hit on a very key word that led to how I titled my book is that fear component. And fear is such a slippery little snake and so dangerous if we don’t recognize that’s.

[00:14:33] Mandy Schaniel: where we’re operating from. Because a lot of it, and again, these are things a lot of people think are fluffy, but they’re so important. A lot of it comes to, down to your self talk. So like we, we both just shared in, in your mind, those thoughts of, I’m not good enough, or people are going to think I don’t know what I’m doing, or I’m going to be discredited or whatever the case may be.

[00:14:59] Mandy Schaniel: [00:15:00] Really paying attention to those thoughts is the first step and learning how to flip them. To catch them, because it’s overwhelming when you first start paying attention to those thoughts, because we think a lot of things all day long. We live in a busy world. Our work, environments are go meeting, do the, production, right?

[00:15:21] Mandy Schaniel: And a lot of time people forget that thought work is incredibly productive and your brain simply can’t process unless you take the time to slow down and sort through your thoughts, let things sink in, process, etc. And it’s so incredibly important to your Inner health and your inner dialogue to recognize those thoughts and to learn how to flip them on their heads.

[00:15:49] Mandy Schaniel: Because that was, really big element for me. And I’m so grateful. I had a leader at the time who gifted all of his executives with [00:16:00] some books over the holiday season. One of them was lean in. And when I finally got around to reading it, cause my older two, we didn’t even have the third yet they were little still.

[00:16:13] Mandy Schaniel: So reading a physical book just didn’t happen that often. They were, it was crazy. I finally read it and I like. ran into his office. I didn’t even knock and I like slammed my hand on his desk and I was like, Oh my God, it’s not just me. And he’s you finally read it. And I was like, yep. And that, like that moment and that recognition where he knew, he got it, he’d been there before too really set, lit a fire under me to make sure nobody passed in and out of my office or my team or anybody that I interacted with without me trying to put the Spidey Senses out there and empower them to share with me if they were going through [00:17:00] that, and part of it meant it.

[00:17:01] Mandy Schaniel: sharing that I’ve been through it. Because, a lot of times

[00:17:05] Jonathan Duarte: They need a bridge.

[00:17:06] Mandy Schaniel: Yes. And they need to understand that just because you have this title doesn’t mean everything’s perfect and rosy and you know exactly what you’re doing and you never doubt yourself. And you’ve never, no, that is not the case.

[00:17:20] Jonathan Duarte: Yeah. And other people, and there are people who you know, are gonna have the persona of I wouldn’t say the bully, but the they supposedly have everything figured out. They don’t. No. They never do. They’ve got their own demons they’re playing with too. And this, I want to parlay into the next part that we want to talk about, which is, one on ones, how to do them, what your, what your best practice is.

[00:17:42] Jonathan Duarte: I’ve got some, what I’ve seen work and what I’ve seen absolutely doesn’t work, which is probably 90 percent of them, which is also why people don’t do them.

[00:17:53] Mandy Schaniel: Yeah, absolutely. Number one and I have to share that I [00:18:00] learned a lot about one on ones and the importance of them from a colleague, Kevin Gaither. Call him the godfather of sales. He actually has a book out also called It Happened on the Sales Floor. Lots of entertaining stories of inside sales and growing a massive inside sales team. But he really, showed me the significance of one on ones because there was a time where I was like, do we really need to meet every week?

[00:18:26] Mandy Schaniel: And I doubted it at first. But I really did learn if you set them up correctly, this is not a time, it’s not a micromanagement meeting. It really is a time to connect with your employees. First half of the meeting should be their time. Their time to ask you questions, to get advice, to fill you in on anything big or important all of the above.

[00:18:54] Mandy Schaniel: And then the second half is your time. Is there anything you need an update on? Anything [00:19:00] that needs to be addressed or what have you. And then the last five minutes. for action items. So nothing, slips under the rug and gets forgotten about. But I found that structure works incredibly well, making sure like they don’t, this is their meeting.

[00:19:17] Mandy Schaniel: What do you need from me?

[00:19:18] Jonathan Duarte: 100, 100%. No, I will further yours and make four specific questions that. The employee should be prepared for at every meeting, every one on one, as well as the manager. And it comes from this. I think every employee, every person, whether you’re a boss or not, has these questions, but ultimately the boss, they’re responsible to themselves, so they get to have a conversation with themselves or a consultant because they can’t do it with a board either.

[00:19:49] Jonathan Duarte: Is what do you want me to do? Number one. Number two, how am I doing at that? At meeting the goal and being specific about that? Number three is, [00:20:00] how does this fit into my career? That’s the question. These are the questions everyone’s asking themselves all day long at some point or another. And maybe they don’t come up every single day that same one, but this is what people want to know so they can figure out.

[00:20:15] Jonathan Duarte: I should say not everyone wants to know these questions because if they just want a job so they can survive. They’re not asking these questions, but I’d also ask them, maybe you should be asking them because that’s why they’re not getting motivated because yeah,

[00:20:30] Speaker 3: I’ll jump in on that. I always recommend.

[00:20:32] Speaker 3: So with clients or anyone that comes to me that I mentor that’s in a leadership position if they’re not currently structuring their one on ways, One on ones in one of the ways that we’ve talked about, start with a reset. It’s always healthy to do. If you feel like, Oh, I’ve not been hitting the mark and we could be getting more out of this.

[00:20:53] Speaker 3: Just say it. 90 percent of things that we want to do in a leadership capacity [00:21:00] are so easily solved by just communicating openly. And one of the main things to do in a reset or first one on one, is really talk about goals. For me, I learned this lesson firsthand and just how powerful all of this stuff I’m about to share is.

[00:21:19] Speaker 3: I inherited a reactive customer service team when I was at Zip. It was challenged with transitioning them to become a proactive customer success team, and at the same time, move that very large team from a cost center to a profit center. That was my challenge. Can you do it? And we did. But the first thing I didn’t hire any of these people.

[00:21:44] Speaker 3: So I sat down and I went through their work experience with them. I wanted to understand who they are, why they came here, what their background is. What do you love about this job? What do you not love about this job? What are your goals? Personal and professional. [00:22:00] I say this. So I’m blue in the face to anybody that asks because we all get a little bit scared to ask personal questions, right?

[00:22:07] Speaker 3: From an HR perspective. But it’s so important to understand What drives this person? What’s important in their life right now? What matters to them? Because you will find ways to connect the dots. And as a human being, having a leader who cares that I achieve my personal goals and I feel good in what I’m doing at work makes all the difference.

[00:22:30] Jonathan Duarte: Support you and just even ask you about them. You don’t have to do much more of just be curious. Yes. And then they get you, and then they will just, they’ll remember. Man, Mandy’s on my team.

[00:22:44] Mandy Schaniel: Exactly. And, I found through that process, I found, I don’t have a count, but so many people who, we were in a Such a unicorn position, right?

[00:22:56] Mandy Schaniel: We, we had a lot of brand recognition. A lot of people were willing to [00:23:00] take, a step down in their career just to become part of ZipRecruiter. So there were a lot of people that were in customer service roles that had so much other experience in other areas. I was able to find, help point them in the right direction and tell them like, Look, like you’re doing a great job, but by no means is my intention to keep you in this role.

[00:23:24] Mandy Schaniel: If you can add more value in another place in the organization, like that’s a win for both of us. And we made it happen time and time again. And it’s funny to me because they would always be so grateful to me. And I’m like, I did nothing but ask. I did nothing but say. Heck yeah, your work is done.

[00:23:43] Mandy Schaniel: Go shadow that other department. Like I’m all for it. It helps the organization. And it helps you and that makes me feel good, but I didn’t do anything. You did all the work. I just asked the question. And, but that’s all it takes. That’s all it takes, right? It’s like you said, be [00:24:00] curious be supportive and offer guidance.

[00:24:03] Mandy Schaniel: It’s really what it comes down to.

[00:24:05] Jonathan Duarte: Yep. And my fourth question on that one too, is what is what other questions do they have for me, the boss? It’s. Again, the real quick recap is number one what do you want me to do? Number two, how am I doing it? Number three, how does this fit into my career?

[00:24:24] Jonathan Duarte: Number four what questions do you have? I think it’s very similar, but you can just write those four things down. We would in my, some of the best one on ones I’ve ever had, not that I’ve actually worked for people very often, but when I have, In the best 101s, we would take out a mutual word doc, or Google Sheet or something, and we’d say, Okay, this is what we’re getting done this is what we’re going to do this week, these are the questions we had, this is what we answered, and then we would forward it on.

[00:24:55] Jonathan Duarte: It was just structured, and by that, I knew exactly where my [00:25:00] boss was, what he wanted, when, all that, so I didn’t have to think about what I what do they want me to do. And we had the structure in place so I knew where I was as far as achieving them. And you don’t have some people say, hey, do it every week.

[00:25:14] Jonathan Duarte: It depends on the level of seniority I would gather. And at least once a month you gotta spend that half hour with people. Every employee, they direct the report, I think.

[00:25:24] Mandy Schaniel: Absolutely. I think weeklies are great, but there’s a different cadence to some of these questions, right? In terms of goals and things like that, at least monthly.

[00:25:33] Mandy Schaniel: And I would always encourage my teams to really think through what are, your goals for the next, Order for the next two quarters for the next year. Let’s keep an eye on that. And not everyone’s going to have an answer to that question right away because a lot of people aren’t used to being asked that question.

[00:25:54] Mandy Schaniel: And I share this in the book in the leadership chapters, you’re going to [00:26:00] have, people that are like, Like I was running into your office going, Hey, here’s what I want to do. Here’s what I’m doing. Here’s what I’m interested in. . And you’re going to have people that you say, what are your goals?

[00:26:10] Mandy Schaniel: And they go. I don’t know. Am I doing a good job? That’s what I was focused on, right? And you have to be patient, right?

[00:26:18] Jonathan Duarte: I’d also say that there are going to be people who, you ask them about their goals. And in sales, they may be the person that crushes stuff. Be the best salesman, but they don’t have any personal goals, or they don’t, it’s weird, like they’re maybe off a little bit like in their personal life versus business life and they’re trying to achieve something for some reason.

[00:26:39] Mandy Schaniel: This is why it’s so important to really get to know them on a human level, because I’ve noticed that depending on life events, that range of growth ambition will teeter totter in accordance with life events, right? Upcoming big life events, some people are going [00:27:00] to go really high on the growth ambition scale.

[00:27:03] Mandy Schaniel: Just had a major life event, there probably, a lot of times people are going to slow down on that growth ambition scale because they need some stability, they need to process. So that’s why you have to have these conversations. The only thing I would change in your four questions is on that third one, To ask how does this relate to my career and how does what I’m doing tie into the company’s mission, vision, and values?

[00:27:31] Mandy Schaniel: Because that is on All of the employee engagement surveys over the last, I think, four or five, probably longer years. That’s the number one thing that matters to employees today that in terms of employee engagement, employee satisfaction, employee retention is feeling connected to the organization’s vision, their goals and having confidence in their [00:28:00] leader.

[00:28:00] Mandy Schaniel: And it’s Again, all of the things we’re talking about really help to build that relationship and confidence between the employee and the leader.

[00:28:09] Jonathan Duarte: I think it’s one of the biggest thing you hear everyone talking about and at SHRM and at anything in recruiting is the big word called retention.

[00:28:18] Jonathan Duarte: And the only way I, and I’m in the business now of messaging and communications within workforces. And the funniest thing to me is that, as companies, we look at like HR or departments within companies and we know that, in the United States, most people leave because of their manager. But we also know that HR really only talks to an employee in most cases. When they’re in trouble, or at least, I’m not gonna, that’s not always true, so don’t, what I’m suggesting is that the conversation that people says, hey, you have to talk to somebody at HR, it’s [00:29:00] either because something’s wrong, maybe performance, maybe your benefits, there could be any number of things, but the only time like the hourly workforce is being communicated with is by their boss.

[00:29:13] Jonathan Duarte: or their manager who may not be trained and, or trained well. The company, the employee is a company employee, not a manager’s employee. And HR and management really have no conversation with employees.

[00:29:28] Mandy Schaniel: Yeah. I think you’re right. It’s it sets a tone, when, the idea of speaking with HR is a subject.

[00:29:36] Mandy Schaniel: scary, uncertain, versus having a relationship. I think there are a lot of companies out there that are working. I love the kind of people, management and people, business partner, that connection, right?

[00:29:49] Jonathan Duarte: We had a happiness manager. I love that. That was her title.

[00:29:53] Jonathan Duarte: I forget what Karina’s title was. Something like that. Something like that. Karina was great at that. Worked for HR, did, that was her title. [00:30:00] And she planned all the events and she was super fun. And if you’re like, Hey, you had to go talk to Karina and be like, Hey, that’s great.

[00:30:06] Jonathan Duarte: Of course we had an amazing company culture too.

[00:30:09] Mandy Schaniel: Yeah.

[00:30:10] Jonathan Duarte: It was all part of it.

[00:30:11] Mandy Schaniel: And so much of company culture comes down to those key interactions. Do you feel supported? It let’s talk about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, right? You need to feel connected and supported and seen. And we are a whole person who has things going on outside of work, has thoughts swimming in our heads that may not be visible or understandable or easily, pinpointed by other people. And yet we have this expectation of ourselves and others to like, all right, come on, put on your. Your work self and just be work. That’s not possible. You know what I mean? There’s so many things.

[00:30:55] Jonathan Duarte: Wear your costume for eight hours a day.

[00:30:57] Mandy Schaniel: Yeah we have to, I just [00:31:00] think people enjoy it too, because when you’re authentic and you bring your whole self to everything you’re doing, it gives.

[00:31:09] Mandy Schaniel: permission to do the same. And there’s a level of comfort and connectedness that comes from, oh yeah, like you might have this title or whatever, but you’re a real person. That I think makes all the difference in the world in people feeling comfortable coming to you and asking for advice and hearing you out.

[00:31:31] Mandy Schaniel: And also as a leader, not feeling like. Oh, I have to put on these airs so people respect me. I have a lot of opinions on that mentality because respect is earned. And my vision of a leader is to serve the people that you’re leading and to help them to grow in whatever way they want to grow.

[00:31:53] Mandy Schaniel: I think that’s, what’s most important. But that’s gone are the days of, just respect. [00:32:00] Obviously I’m always going to enter a situation and be respectful, but there’s a difference in demanding respect versus seeking to earn it, right?

[00:32:10] Jonathan Duarte: Yeah, there’s one other thing I want to do before we finish up, and that is talk about growth mindset.

[00:32:16] Jonathan Duarte: I think it was a combination of in March of last year my decision to just, bareknuckle it and get out of the little boy the scared little boy and just go public and speak. But there’s also something else that we had talked about too, and that is how to acknowledge people for hard work rather than just success and a growth mindset.

[00:32:42] Jonathan Duarte: And, I’ve learned this stuff from Andrew Huberman’s podcast, listening to his the concept of, People are, the people who do the best work long term aren’t the people who got straight A’s, maybe in high school and [00:33:00] maybe were rewarded for doing great, for getting a result.

[00:33:06] Jonathan Duarte: And so they get these dopamine rushes for getting an A and their parents saying, “Hey, great time kicking the soccer, you did great kicking the soccer ball”. Like everyone on the field probably kicked a soccer ball. So it’s not that huge of an accomplishment. But the thing that I learned was, It’s not about the result.

[00:33:26] Jonathan Duarte: It’s if you praise individuals for the hard work, they’re going to get more praise internal and create internal motivation, and that’s what you want ultimately, for us individually, as well as the people who work with you and for you and your consultants and contractors. If they’re internally motivated because they’re driven by being better.

[00:33:56] Jonathan Duarte: And solving problems and figuring things [00:34:00] out. Instead of driven to, get the top sales numbers and, sales managers are going to say, Oh, that’s, you can’t do that. The reality is the person who has the internal motivation and is tied to those goals is going to kill everyone long term on those goals because they have the internal motivation to do it.

[00:34:21] Mandy Schaniel: I 100 percent agree. The way that I try to break down the difference if you haven’t read Mindset by Carol Dweck. Amazing read to understand growth mindset.

[00:34:34] Mandy Schaniel: But I really classified the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset is in a fixed mindset, you do something you quote unquote fail or realize Oh, that’s really difficult. And you set a boundary and say, Oh I guess I can’t cross that line. Fixed mindset. This I’m going to stay in this box over here.

[00:34:53] Mandy Schaniel: A growth mindset has the same experience that goes. Okay, so that was hard. How do I [00:35:00] climb over that challenge? How, what do I need to learn to be able to move past that next time? And so that’s the very difference, right? Is not looking at necessarily the results of that one attempt or situation, but looking at All right, what do I need to learn?

[00:35:17] Mandy Schaniel: How can I grow and how can I improve myself from here and acknowledging in the process, the hard work that it takes to do that and to even think through what I need to learn it’s such a powerful game changing experience. I actually had it with one of my kids in school. The difference in phrasing the hard work versus the result completely shifted the mentality towards school.

[00:35:48] Mandy Schaniel: And in a very short period of time massively changed the outcomes as well.

[00:35:54] Jonathan Duarte: Yeah, it is. That’s the interesting thing is it’s an immediate shift.

[00:35:57] Mandy Schaniel: Yeah.

[00:35:58] Jonathan Duarte: I shouldn’t say immediate. It’s [00:36:00] almost immediate. There still has to be a learned process to acknowledge people, the people who are acknowledging them, to get that internal motivation, and you’ve got to continuously not praise for kicking a soccer ball and doing, getting the result, but praise for that, and they’ll pick it up themselves.

[00:36:21] Mandy Schaniel: Yes. Not, and I don’t think either of us are saying in a, highly goal driven role, we’re not saying, Oh, they failed. They’ll go tell them they worked so hard and good job. Like that’s not what we’re saying. You still have to, stick to the rules of the game in that role and what goals do they need to hit.

[00:36:41] Mandy Schaniel: But at the end of the day. Unless even if they’re getting let go because they’re not meeting goals or expectations, I think as a leader, we should be having a conversation of that’s, that happened, that’s done, where do we go from here? How do we do it differently next time? [00:37:00] How can you learn and grow from this and acknowledging that effort?

[00:37:04] Mandy Schaniel: It doesn’t have to be. Two separate things, right? You can still, whatever, if there’s discipline needed in a work environment or whatever the case may be, you can still have, maintain those rules and that structure that are necessary in certain roles, while at the same time, acknowledging the hard work and working with that.

[00:37:25] Mandy Schaniel: someone and alongside them, supporting them in their journey of growing and learning and doing better, right?

[00:37:32] Jonathan Duarte: Yep. And yeah, I think that’s a good, you probably had to do this and don’t, I don’t want you to speak about any individual, but you probably have to do spiffs on, on performance for salespeople and things like that.

[00:37:42] Jonathan Duarte: What are some experiences where that you can remember using a growth mindset? Even if, you may not even been thinking about it back in those days, but if you have, if you remember an example where you had an employee where and again, I don’t want, I want you to be anonymous on this, but if you [00:38:00] had an employee that wasn’t performing but You, and maybe even let them go, but you really got into understand them, and they may have decided to leave, or you may still had to let them go, but you were trying to use, be open and supportive.

[00:38:19] Jonathan Duarte: Without just Oh, fill out the SPF form for HR.

[00:38:22] Mandy Schaniel: Oh yeah. At any time I had to put someone on a PIP which I did. The nature of the beast. , there was a, it was embedded in the process. The, I’m here to support you, but you are responsible for. Achieving, doing these things, right?

[00:38:42] Mandy Schaniel: We’ve had a conversation. We’ve had multiple conversations about the reason why you’re on this performance improvement plan. Here is all the information. Here are the goals and the things that need to happen in this time frame that you’re responsible for. I am here to support you, [00:39:00] but it’s your responsibility to put the time on my calendar.

[00:39:04] Mandy Schaniel: That was a big one. Cause at first that’s, that wasn’t my nature. Cause I’m like it’s like a one on one. And had some colleagues first, my first go around with managing a PIP. And I realized how important it was because the people who were going to take the ownership and take advantage of my support.

[00:39:24] Mandy Schaniel: To grow and to learn and they’re going to, take the initiative. To put time on the calendar to gauge, am I going in the right direction or not? And the people who didn’t were the ones that were like I’ve got 30 days or however long the PIP was, and I’m searching for another job and I’m not going to change anything.

[00:39:46] Mandy Schaniel: And that’s their prerogative, right? I think knowing that the support is there, I will do anything and everything to help you, but you have to take the initiative. I think That teaches a lot in the way of growth mindset, right? [00:40:00] Obviously when you’re put on a PIP, not a great feeling for anybody shouldn’t come as a surprise.

[00:40:05] Mandy Schaniel: You should have already talked about the things that aren’t going well in your one on ones. Never come as a surprise. We talked about that one TikTok video. We could do a whole nother conversation on that. It’s that mix of. Okay, this happened. What are we going to do about it?

[00:40:22] Mandy Schaniel: And you have to be in the driver’s seat. And I think that’s a lot of what we’re talking about with growth mindset and imposter syndrome and just growing and learning and understanding mindset and how to shift your mindset and how to point it in the right direction and not let fear take over is being in that driver’s seat and being willing to acknowledge.

[00:40:43] Mandy Schaniel: the not so great and learn and figure out how to move it into something great. And it’s okay to ask for help, but you have to ask. No one is going to be banging down your door. Can I please help you? Can I please help you? Because if you’re not willing to do the work,

[00:40:59] Jonathan Duarte: They’ve got their own stuff to deal [00:41:00] with.

[00:41:00] Jonathan Duarte: Yeah.

[00:41:00] Mandy Schaniel: And if you’re not willing to ask for help, They’re not going to be as invested because it’s not going to be as meaningful or impactful for you.

[00:41:07] Jonathan Duarte: All right, so give us the name of the book and how can someone buy it on Amazon or maybe I’ll put a link on there.

[00:41:15] Mandy Schaniel: Yeah, absolutely. So it’s called Faith Over Fear, “How to adopt a success mindset”

[00:41:20] Mandy Schaniel: so everything we talked about today is in the book in a lot more detail with stories, all of them anonymous, unless it’s a wonderful story. And yeah, it’s available on Amazon, on my website, mandyschaniel. com and just about anywhere else that you can get books online.

[00:41:39] Jonathan Duarte: All the bookstops.

[00:41:40] Jonathan Duarte: Awesome. Thank you so much, Mandy. As usual, we’re going to see a lot more of you.

[00:41:45] Mandy Schaniel: Sounds good. Looking forward to it. Thanks again. Appreciate it.