Manisha: there's a single thing that anchors everybody together is trust. We show trust in different ways, we express trust in different ways, but at the end of the day, the foundation of every single culture, every single person, every being and everything around us is trust. Nothing starts without it and everything ends when it's gone. this doesn't change whether I'm here in the US, I'm, you know, it's I was in India, where I grew up, in Zambia, Botswana, South Africa, Europe, it does not matter. This single thing, it starts and ends with it. And if you can really understand this, then the cultures are just beautiful differences.
Mark Poiesz: My guest today is Manisha Sharma, an executive coach, facilitator, and longtime operator whose life and career have taken her across industries, cultures, and continents. Over more than 20 years, she has worked as an operator and executive across Fortune 50, Fortune 500, and Inc. 5000 companies, building teams, leading transformation, and helping grow billion dollar businesses. Having lived and learned across four continents, six countries and more cultures than she can count, she brings a deeply global and human perspective to her work. And while her resume is impressive, she describes the people and teams she's helped grow along the way as the real highlight. Today she works with executives and founders navigating C suite transition, organizational growth, and the challenge of showing up with greater presence and clarity. At the center of her work is a simple idea. Clarity precedes impact. I'm excited to explore what has shaped the way she sees leadership, identity, growth, and life. Manisha, welcome and thank you for joining me.
Manisha: Thank you, Mark, for having me here. I'm excited to be on your
Mark Poiesz: Of course.
Manisha: podcast.
Mark Poiesz: It's my pleasure, my pleasure. When you think about today as a snapshot, if we just start present day, what do you find being most important to you right now?
Manisha: In the simplest way, it is my garden is going into fall, and what am I going to do to help it? I think, and the reason I gave you something that was as simple as this is I think that looking at sometimes the smaller things and the smaller tasks gives a level of grounding that gives you the moment to actually think bigger. And me just simply thinking about my garden will make me go out into my garden, fresh air, be grounded with the earth, be alone. with my birds and bees and really, really enjoy a very different perspective to the perspective that I would probably go spend the rest of my day in. And I think those perspectives, just changing and flipping your mind and seeing different things and experiencing different things and the curiosity that comes with it, creates some foundation and humility that we tend to lose. when we start to go into the rest of the day and the rest of the world.
Mark Poiesz: You mentioned so beautifully this idea of grounding with the literal ground as you do work in your garden. When you cultivate that space, do you find certain things flowing from you when you go everywhere else in life to do work or non-work things?
Manisha: sure but I and I'll say this as as as a gardener now you know there's a portion of my life I define as a gardener these days and the reason that I got into it the reason that I'm enjoying it is gardening forces patience Your plants are not going to grow any faster than you want them to grow. Yes, you can put fertilizer in, that's a good that might not always be positive for them. But if you give them what they need and you let them do what they want, there is a level of patience. When I use the word humility, I mean there's an understanding that you can't control everything. You can only control what you can control. And with that perspective, when I go start the rest of my day, I do feel that I sometimes a little bit more patient. and there is a sense of not needing to control because you can't. Human ego is a very it's very interesting the way it's developed over centuries where we believe that we can control more around us than we actually can Right. And with that need to control, we are doing what we are doing with the environment, we're doing what we're doing with many relationships and the kind of relationships that we're choosing to have. But there's something about gardening that says that you cannot control and that's okay.
Mark Poiesz: You have opened up this beautiful metaphor here that I I'll be honest, I I I didn't feel quite prepared for at right at the beginning of this conversation in the best of ways. What has gardening taught you that a younger version of yourself wouldn't have picked up on?
Manisha: Patience for sure. The younger person, if you ask anybody that's worked with me ten years ago, fifteen years ago, for you know, however good I might have been with my job, they will tell you, she's very impatient. I always wanted things faster, I always wanted them quicker, I always wanted more, you know, to achieve stuff. And now I'm happy that we did achieve very big things with that in mind. But sometimes a pause is more powerful than moving forward fast. To me my garden in the mornings that is is is that pause. And I think if I was, you know, twenty years younger, I would probably say find a way to pause. I have a garden today when I was tw twenty years younger, I didn't have a garden. I p had a couple of pot plants. but I think it's more around reminding yourself to take the pause and the power of it. Right? And that is something that, you know, you know, aging in wisdom, if we ever wanna call it la is there to say that there's a There's a profound self-awareness realization that takes place when you do do the pause.
Mark Poiesz: What shifted in your life to create this space for that to come in if there was not so much patience before and not so much pausing? Was there an event or how did it show up?
Manisha: not entirely sure that there was a moment or a pivot or an incident that I can very naturally put my arms around. But I do feel that it kind of started later on in my career. Like when I was working for Amazon and for Wayfair, I loved those I loved working there and I loved the people I worked with in the work that I was doing. But then I I I think I kept asking myself the question of you're doing so much and you're spending so much of your time for these companies. What are you getting out of it? Yes. The the obvious is there. I was getting a paycheck and I was getting, you know, recognition and me I'd already been doing that for twenty years, right? And the question that I kept asking myself is, where am I growing? Right, I can grow a skill set, I can I think that was already happening, but I there was there was something that was not quite clicking in terms of the growth that I really wanted for myself. I couldn't peg it, I couldn't put my arms around it because so much of my time, 50 hours a week, two-thirds of my waking time, in the most part, was being given to someone else. Something else. Okay? And so that's when, you know, in in in back in 2021, I took a sabbatical. I I became a fully certified coach. you and I took that lovely journey together. And then and I think coaching had one way of forcing a pause, but it was a way to put something in my time that had a lot of meaning to me and I could see the meaning to others. But just simply stepping away and re re-owning, reclaiming my time forced the pause. And there's one thing that I tell a lot of my clients all the time is if you can find time to be bored. This is what we avoid so much in life is I'm bored, let me go do something. I'm bored, I need to go and gain another skill. I'm you know, I'm bored, let me go meet some friends. All they're all good ways to and healthy ways to to overcome some boredom. But boredom creates that pause and that frustration, blankness in your mind, which then opens up the mind to innovation and growth. In a very different way than going to a class and taking a skill set or or learning to code something new or even becoming a coach where we studied and became a coach and and we practice it now. Boredom is is is a very very unique way of self-realization and growth. as a parent, you most parents, you're a parent, and most parents will do playtime with kids, right? Here's some toys, be on your own, play. And the kid is going to be and my nephews would do this, right? Where they'd be like, I'm bored. And my sister would be, that's okay, figure it out. Hear the toys, figure it out. But I think with the boredom,
Mark Poiesz: Yeah.
Manisha: it's a like it's like a self-regulation exercise, what boredom does. You learn to self-regulate. And that self-regulation
Mark Poiesz: Yes.
Manisha: allows self-realization and growth and resilience. And with kids, you do it to allow innovation and self-awareness and kindness to self when you're saying I'm bored and I'm but I'm gonna figure out how to play on my own, right? As an adult, we forget about that that wonderful gift that was given to us, which is playtime and being bored. playtime and I think that what that's what I was looking for in my sabbatical and I did realize that boredom would be this frustrating after more than 21 22 years of working. And it was frustrating and I was like, okay, I'm bored, I don't feel like I'm achieving things, I don't feel like I'm getting recognition for things, I'm not doing the impact that I'm so used to doing big things and now I'm, you know, waking up in the morning and I am cooking and I took the sabbatical in India, so it made it even that much bor boring in the sense that I had someone to cook and clean and I had a driver and I had a gardener, I had all the support system. that I got to explore things that in retrospect was extremely profound at the time that boredom was frustrating.
Mark Poiesz: This is such a a peculiar thread that you've you've drawn out here, and I really, really like it. First, I I was laughing for a second because when you said figure it out when it comes to boredom, I was just picturing my five-year-old daughter going like, Daddy, that's what I figured out, that I'm bored. But that's that's neither here nor there.
Manisha: I you know, that's the innovation that came out of it all.
Mark Poiesz: That's that's neither here nor there. I just had to share that because gosh is the sass overboard right now. the other thing I was thinking about is how this became an unlock. You mentioned some of these earlier drivers like recognition and impact, which I'm sure are still there in in some way for you. But yet it took the boredom to realize the humility that you listed and the patience that. may not come about any other way until we go through this discomfort of the boredom that you have cited. you shared that a sabbatical was the door to this. Was it an intentional space that you left that wide open? I'm thinking about the how do we know with certainty what we're getting into?
Manisha: there are lots of people that are more evolved than me that don't need to take a sabbatical and they can get to they know how to take that pause and they know how to create self-regulated bo boredom and and while they're still giving 50 hours somewhere else. Right? There are lots of people that know how to find their time and claim their time in better ways. I'm I I needed to do something that was A little bit more of a clean cut off saying I'm gonna give myself the blank slate. I didn't expect boredom to be honest. The boredom was the the unique find in this process. I expected that if I want to do something, I've got to do something to see what the difference is instead of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Right. And so the difference, the only difference I could think about is let me out of everything that I was doing, I loved a lot of the things that I was doing, but let me pull a single thread out of that, which I thought was very self-satisfying, and it was definitely something that I got told that I did well, which was growing people in in the ways that I did. And So I said, okay, let me pull that thread out so there's not there's some common thread coming from where I'm what I'm leaving and the rest of it I'll leave blank, which is where the whole coaching concept came in. And then I went and researched it and I said, Okay, I don't want to be the kind of person that, you know, mm does a two week course and then says I'm qualified to do something. I'd rather be really qualified, especially when I'm taking the responsibility of someone else and their growth and the way they would want to grow. I'm taking that responsibility really seriously. so coaching became a common thread, a a small common thread from what I was leaving behind to the new area I was going in. But the rest of it, I was like, Okay, we'll leave it blank, we'll go to a new place. It would be a brand new environment. I had never lived in India since I was four, right? I left India when I was four, so going back to go live there was already interestingly, a unique and very different experience than you know having spent so much time in the West. so what I did expect, or what I thought I would do, was I was gonna go there and I would go join a bunch of nonprofits and my coaching business and I would be able to continue to coach and and then and and and and had this all of these ideas. But when I got there there was surprisingly a bigger cultural difference in the corporate environment than the one that I came from. And all and I was still coaching, but all my clients were still in the US. So I was working night hours. And then in the daytime, I was like, okay, I have all this time, let me you know. So I started to work in public schools and in some of the orphanages teaching English. And it was so amazingly fun to to see such bright, curious faces be so excited about someone who comes and reads to them, and you know, it it makes them play really. fun games in English and them just learning new words and how they're learning them with someone who looks like them but doesn't sound like them. but it was still you know three hours a week while I'm awake and the rest of the time I I read books, I made friends, we traveled a lot. But I didn't close out a day or close out a quarter with a number that went, yay. I'd been doing that for twenty-one years. Right, a quantifiable, impactful output was not happening. And twenty one years in you were addicted to it. There's an addiction.
Mark Poiesz: What does it feel like when that's suddenly missing?
Manisha: It's very v it's like a void. Right. But in this case, it wasn't a it wasn't a bad void. It was interesting because I could stand outside the void and look at the void and what I've taken out of the void in a sense. And I'm looking at it and I'm going, Okay, so now it's empty and what are you gonna do with this? Right. Because I reclaimed all my time and I this was all very conscious. It wasn't it didn't just happen to me. When I left and went on a sabbatical, I was extr very, very, very successful at the time in my career. And I made a conscious choice to say, I think this is enough. And I want something different and I don't know what it is, so I'm just gonna clean it out and let's look at this. And it was very clear because it was so conscious and there was this void and it was empty. And there's still a big portion of this void that's still empty, Mark. But I'm okay with it
Mark Poiesz: Thank you for sharing that.
Manisha: now.
Mark Poiesz: That's what I was wondering is you're in India, which is a place that you're only somewhat connected to at that stage of life. So somewhere very different. And now you're facing this void because what you're doing and investing your whole life force into is not cr generating the same things that you're used to seeing arise. just picturing anyone else when there's so many of the things that they're used to having and suddenly they're not there. How did you actually maybe cope and navigate that? What stories did you tell yourself about what it meant when you were in the moment?
Manisha: It's it's weird because I think in a sense you grieve. You're grieving the loss. Right? We usually think about grief and loss of grief when we are losing loved ones or we're losing something. But here I I lost the the reaffirmation loop. I worked hard, I achieved some results, I got rewarded for them, I got more, I worked hard. Like that reaffirmation loop that was going on for, you know, two, three decades. See, I mean I went through school that way. We all went through school that way. We work hard, we get great results, we get promoted, we go to the next class. We I mean it this started from the time we are five years old. This reaffirmation loop. Right? And then it goes on for two, three decades. And then suddenly you stop it. That reaffirmation loop, you're you're grieving that. In in a sense, I think that's what happened for the first six months of my sabbatical, is the reaction was going through grief cycles. no, I accepted this, you made this choice, this is great. You didn't this didn't come to you. Then I'm like, but I'm so bored, I didn't achieve very much today. Or I've gone through a month, my god, I could be working and I could I could still be making money. Right? I see this, someone someone reached out like this. At this point, a lot of companies were still reaching out to me and wanting to move me back to the US. And I was like, same job, what I left, to do the same thing. I I know I left it, and I was very consciously saying I'm not gonna do this, and the only way that I get to go back to work is if I'm going to do something substantially different. And I did go back to work to do something very, very different with an amazing group of people. Right? but the affirmation loop and the grief and the grieving process of it, layered on top with the boredom is was what was happening in the in the mind. And that the only way to sort this out is to pull yourself out from the emotions that are happening, to step out of those emotions. Look at those emotions and see how logical are these? Some of them are very logical. Yes, it's an affirmation loop. Do you really need it? If you got it today, it's r really just call a few people saying, Hey, I think I want to come back and I wanna work and they'd say, Of course. Right? It was two phone calls away. You can get the affirmation loop but you also get other things that you don't want with it, which you left. Right. And then there's the boredom and then you are you're analyzing the boredom and you're analysing this void and you're trying to say, okay, the logic of this is I have to get past this, I have to figure out how I'm going to fill the void, which is what you came here for, is to create the void to be able to fill it with something different. it's the only way that I felt I could handle it is if I almost had a out of mind experience looking at my own mind and looking at the emotions that are happening and the situation that's forming. that's those were the logical days of grieving. Then you have the non-logical days of grieving of my god I'm so bored can we go on a trip somewhere? Right? To fill the gap in the void and let's go and you know explore good food and then you know some good music. All happy ways to fill the void and it works. But the moments when there was nothing to fill the void were probably the growth moments, to some
Mark Poiesz: Yeah.
Manisha: degree.
Mark Poiesz: Everything you're sharing, I'm hearing this this deeply reflective undercurrent of why am I doing this? Not just is this worth doing, but why am I driven to do this? And really dancing around in so many chapters of your story that notion of enough. What is enough that I'm doing this for? Whether it is affirmation, accolades, measurable impact, or whether it's money, whether it's even with the gardening that has shown up as such an asset, What's your relationship with enough as it relates to all of this now?
Manisha: I think that this you have to remind yourself about enough on a regular basis. This is not something that I reminded myself once and then now it's gonna stay. Right? I mean it's not human nature to stop it enough. Right? We always want more. And I'm not saying that I stop it enough. I want more. I want I want more clients, I want to help more people. I do want to be recognized still for the work that I'm doing there. I want my garden to look beautiful. I want more bees to come there. I want to make sure that I have more varieties of bees. I want to go and get a backyard habitat certification for my backyard because of the work I put in. I want to be recognized for it. So I don't actually feel that. The affirmation has gone away, but I think what I want affirmation from has changed. Like what I want to be affirmed for has changed. what it is that I want affirmation for now is easier for me to say this is enough. Versus being in an environment that every day asks for more and you're always driven to do more.
Mark Poiesz: there's an important aspect to your story because of the number of places you've been, lived and worked, even where you grew up, I I don't wanna do our conversation a disservice for listeners by ignoring that because I think there may be very interesting ways that that weaves into this inner reflection that you've been sharing right now with us. What things did you pick up maybe from a few of the key places that you lived, worked, grew up? And how did you see a difference between being part of a culture versus being true to yourself and anywhere that that may have rubbed?
Manisha: All cultures Having lived through many of them, and I don't I'm not really sure what even I define myself as, right? I'm Indian by birth, I'm African by upbringing, southern African by upbringing. My roots are still in Botswana with my mom being there. I grew up and I did all my entire professional career here in in the US with a few years in London, But even in that portion, we had g I worked at global companies that had global interactions and there's a single thing which goes back to you know a little bit around defining values as well is there's a single thing that anchors everybody together is trust. We show trust in different ways, we express trust in different ways, but at the end of the day, the foundation of every single culture, every single person, every being and everything around us is trust. Nothing starts without it and everything ends when it's gone. this doesn't change whether I'm here in the US, I'm, you know, it's I was in India, where I grew up, in in the various parts of, you know, Zambia, Botswana, South Africa, Europe, it does not matter. This single thing, it starts and ends with it. And if you can really understand this, then the cultures are just beautiful differences. There's nothing better or worse. They're just beautiful differences that you be curious and you understand and you learn to behave and trust in the culture's way. And that's I it's it's so much simpler.
Mark Poiesz: could you walk us through how you think trust is built and how it's most commonly broken from your experience?
Manisha: So we're born with the idea of trust. If you take a if you take a baby and you throw a baby, the baby has an instinctive fear that you're not gonna catch him. Because they have somewhere instinctively, who knows how, but they know that if you don't catch them and they fall, they'll get hurt. So there's a trust that we have that if I throw something up, it will fall. There's a trust in gravity that we have. We're born with it. I understand Newton did his physics and we have a lot of respect for that. But if you asked a cave person, They all know that if I drop something it'll fall. They might not define it as gravity, they might not understand the physics around it. But there's a trust that we wake up with every single day. The sun is gonna rise, it will set. We might not see it in the Pacific Northwest every year or every day. But we know it's going to rise and it will set. Right. So there's a there's a layer of trust that I can't f sort of find as a foundational trust in a in a muscle that we've been already been given. You've been given this muscle to trust. Because without it, you won't be able to take a step forward. You won't be able to pick up a class. You won't be able to do anything. Because you understand if I put my arms around something and I pick it up, it will rise. You they th you don't you'd we're not thinking about it, but there's a trust. Then there's the trust that you form with relationships, which is which is the second layer of trust that when we're growing up. And I'm asking I'm answering your question in a little bit long-winded. Because under the leadership umbrella, I I think it's a it's it's a very small pocket where it happens, but it doesn't happen without us walking in with these muscles somewhat developed. there's relationship trust. I trust that the person that loves me is not going to hurt me. I trust that when someone says that they're a friend of mine says that they're going to show up to hang out with me, they will show up and hang out with me, or they'll call and they'll do this because they believe that I'm going, that's what I respect. These are super simple things, right? It's just having trust in relationships that they will be there for you time-wise, emotion-wise, space, all of the things that we have. And we grow up with them as children with our parents, siblings, friends, etc. Then you land up in the work environment. Now I know I know a lot of companies tend to call their works places families or you know yes you will make some friends at work, but at the end of the day you go to work to do your job. They're not your family and when you start off they're not your friends. you're all are working towards a common goal that you have agreed to in the most part, and you all are using your different skill sets, if done really well, you'll achieve that goal together. There's no way goals achieve get achieved on their own. I have made some of my best friends and really, really great relationships out of work because I spent two-thirds of my waking life there. At some point, you you're going to take the whole of yourself there. You don't separate yourself, right? And what I found as a leader, if you want to be trusted as a leader, you've got to learn to trust first. Meaning all of these muscles that you've developed to some degree you have to bring a little bit of that. as a leader into a workspace. You have to trust your people. You have got to trust your peers. You've got to trust your manager. And if you want to be trusted and you want people to come with you, I never say follow, but you want to take them with you with the ideas that you are trying to put forward, then you've got to trust first before feeling that you need to be trusted. Stephen Kavi, right? Seek to understand before being understood. Same thing with trust. a lot of that comes through communication. I used to tell this to my team all the time, and that's because someone told it to me, I think, in my first year at work, when I started with Intel way back then. Is this a very simple formula for growing trust. Tell people what you're going to do. Do what you said you were going to do, and then tell people what you did. Someone told that to me back in 1999 and I have been trying to do that many times successfully, many times not less successfully, but it works. Tell people what you're going to do. In corporate language, it is alignment. Let's make sure you and I know what we're trying to do, where we're trying to go. Do we agree on the goal? Here's what we're saying. This is what we're going to do. Here's the scope. Here's the timeline. Here's how much it's going to cost, etc. Tell people what you're going to do. Then do what you said. Don't go off on a tangent and decide you're going to do your own thing. And if you are doing what you said you were going to do, keep reminding them. That this is what you're doing. So communication that they know that you're doing what you what you said you were going to do. Don't go into a black hole. Because things change around everybody's world, and you don't want to go into a black hole to continue to down a path when something else has changed and it didn't work. Right? Then tell people what you did. This to me is that one of the most important parts of the trust formula is tell them. what went right, tell them what went wrong, what was actually done, what couldn't be done. do the retros that you're supposed to do. Right? To learn from them, to move forward more positively with a bigger impact the next time. Right? That's what it is. So this this also in a relationship. Right, tell people what you're gonna do, then do what you said you were gonna do, and then remind them what you did. And sometimes with the r reminding, you get the affirmation that you want of thank you or well done or a great job. the formula changes when you get into a corporate leadership environment, but it doesn't come void of that experience that you've had instinctively as as a person growing up in society. Unfortunately, not everybody comes out of those life experiences being able to develop a trust muscle that is truly kind and truly able to trust. There are many people who have incidences or situations in their life where they struggle to trust and it takes them a little longer. And as a leader you learn to understand that y you need to do more to get people to trust you first. To do that, you've got to trust who they are, what do they need, and then come show up that way.
Mark Poiesz: And the patience that's required for that I I already hear baked into the story you've told about it, because it's the leader's job to do it first. And they have to keep doing it until it lands. am I hearing that implication right?
Manisha: No, absolutely. You you have to come leadership is a service. You have to come with a service-based mindset to say you're coming to serve. we've heard servant the concept of servant leadership everywhere and and it's become like like a new fad over the last ten years. But at the end of the day, it's a privilege to lead. And don't n for and no leader to take that lightly or take it for granted. And you're there to serve. You're there to serve the people you're taking with you for them to go and achieve things together. That's what you're there for.
Mark Poiesz: Have you found yourself in situations where not everyone in leadership is aligned with that? How do you navigate that?
Manisha: I mean you have different types of I mean leaders that that believe in leadership through fear, leadership through collaboration, directive versus more transparency. Like the leadership styles vary and they're very unique in in many ways. The leaders that I find really really, really strong, like really strong leaders and things and people that I've aspired to be or and and and really wanted to be and not not always succeeding, but you know, working at it every day, is the whole concept of agile leadership. I I talk about it a lot even with my own clients and and in different forums, is how do you show up with the right behavior set with for the right occasion. If we dress up for the right occasion, put on the right behavior set for the right occasion. Right? And so there is no single form of leadership style that works all the time. And what I find with poor leadership to answer your question, like sometimes when I see leaders and I'm like, mm there's no there's no poor or bad leader. It's a poor or bad set of behaviors for the situation they're showing up for. And for leaders who cannot change their behaviour and be able to recognize the environment and the behaviour set that they need to show up with, to me as leaders are less agile and poor agility in leadership is i it it's just you have less trust from people that you want to take with you. versus if you show up with the right behaviour set and you start to recognize that is what we call EQ, you know, a high high high emotional connection. And and I think that is what the transformation from any leader to an amazing leader and the higher up you go in organizations, what is required is not how smart you are. There are lots of very smart people. There are lots of very brilliant people in this world. However, they don't turn out to be the best leaders that people want to follow or go with. Because the EQ is not there or the EQ is not as developed. And I think that's what changes from good leaders to less good leaders is the changing of the EQ. Can you show up for the right behavior, for the right situation, to move everybody forward positively? Eventually that's what you're doing is you're moving people forward positively. And that's not easy to do all the time. Because you ha you're dealing with your own day, your own emotions, your own agenda, where you want them to go, your own patience, impatience. You're dealing with all of that and then the dynamic of everybody else. But that's why you're a leader is to come and serve.
Mark Poiesz: you just alluded to we're all human and it can be very, very difficult sometimes to walk the walk with this instead of just I know how this should go. When you catch yourself getting out of alignment, how do you notice it first, maybe if there's any characteristic traits of it? And how do you bring yourself back into alignment?
Manisha: one of my n more usual traits, and e if you go to anybody any of my teams that I that that ha might have worked with me, will tell you that I'm impatient. which is why my gardening is really helping me right now.
Mark Poiesz: Yeah.
Manisha: that I used to be very impatient. I always, you know, wanted things faster because I always felt we could. Right. what I learned to do when I was younger and I didn't really I wasn't managing a lot of people and you know, I would have enough people that my manager would give me a like you it's okay to slow down, it's fine. But as I started to manage more people and I was already aware of this aspect of mine, of being a little on the impatient side, if things were not moving where we need to move. and what impatience does is impatience gets you to listen less, it gets you to pause less. It lets you gets you through this cycle that is not always the best. I started to actually tell my teams before I even got there as they were getting to know who I was that this is the problem I have is I'm impatient. not to put the burden on them, but I gave them permission to call me out on it.
Mark Poiesz: Mmm. Powerful.
Manisha: Sometimes it's it's difficult to call your manager out or your leader out on on a behavior and you're like, we'll just let it go, they'll it'll calm down, right? I would allow them to call me. I would give them the permission to call me out and say that we can slow down. We don't have to do this right now. Or
Mark Poiesz: Yeah.
Manisha: ask me why do you want it so fast? And if I can't answer the why, then let's stake it'll force me to take the pause back. But if I can answer the why, then there's a reason.
Mark Poiesz: Did you ever have to overcome a lack of trust on their part for them to meet you where you just asked them to meet you?
Manisha: I was generally very transparent in the sense that I would tell them as much as I could of what is happening, w why we're doing what we're doing, if there is something that's coming that they should be aware of. It was a it was to me was a partnership. Right? Yes, there was there was a an org chart that said something, but to me, my relationship with my teams was a partnership. We had our roles, right? And when there were situations when I could not tell them something because you know, I can't tell them there's a layoff coming or, you know, if there's some big disc org decisions that are taking to take place that we don't want panic to happen or or, you know, discussions to happen on. Organizations are always doing things that you kinda want to keep quiet a little bit. I would already tell them upfront that they're things I will not be able to tell you. But as soon as I am able to tell you and things are better and clearer and and we have I'm very clear on how they affect you, you will be the first to know. Right? So there was a I think there was an expectation setting on what communication will look like. In the most part I think it worked. and if someone is not telling me they don't trust me, then it's more difficult to figure out what do I need to do to gain your trust if the communication it it's a all relationships are two way, right? So all you can do is this is the way that it is there and then you know, you you take your part and you step in. if someone will not do the step forward, then unfortunately we'll be where we are, but we'll still keep moving forward. Which is why you are not you're not you don't look at people as family and friends when you're going to work. You're doing work. And you are responsible for at the end of the day, as an adult, yourself and your emotions. People help you and they support you through it the same way as you help and support others. However you're s You're still an adult at work.
Mark Poiesz: I want to make sure we get to this idea of clarity precedes impact that I know is a core thing for you and your work now. Could you walk us through how that has looked like for you at perhaps a key juncture or more than one of your life? What does clarity look and feel like and how do you get there?
Manisha: So I think the first time that something was c clearer in terms of what I want to spend my time doing I left Intel and I joined Micron. And my hiring manager at that time told me everything, the mountain I had to climb as soon as I walked through the door. And he was amazing guy, you know, we became good friends, we still are very good friends. And he mentioned to me all the things the Micron had just acquired acquired Lexar, so there was a lot of transformation and transition going on. There were so many unknowns and and I was walking in one I had you know, jumped into a role that was bigger than I had ever done. I had started to do I had exercised skill sets that I've never had. and then I'm walking into an unknown of a mountain and he goes, It is it's not you're not walking into you know a a three-month high achieving job right you're gonna walk in and you're there's going to be a lot of work that he has to get done before we can see any kind of result. I don't think I've said yes to a job as fast as I said yes to that one. I took took the job, you know, w it hired a team, all great. Everything turned out to all the things that we wanted to do, right? But then when I reflected on why I took the job as fast as I can, when someone is telling you that you're gonna have to climb a mountain to even do your job to properly to start, I think, and this is the the clarity before impact was that I loved the idea of ambiguity. I loved the idea of solving something that was somewhat chaotic and making it really organized, predictable, process driven. Like that, if you gave me that, I'd be like, okay, I can manage it. But to make it that was super exciting. The gray areas and trying to find how do you break down the gray areas to make it predictable. How can I say that I trust this business to do this? To build that entire system in place. That was phenomenal. And so that's why I'm like, okay, that's that is what it is that I love to do, and that's where if I'm clear about this, then every job I take. will be very conscious on the job I take to get the impact that I want for myself and for the business because I'll be so inspired to do it, that almost every job I took after Micron, all the jobs at Amazon, in the Wayfair, the one at Upfront, even in my own time when I took it as as coaching, was all about a ambiguity space because I loved the idea of operationalizing a little bit of chaos. that to me was like almost the first time that I had a realization on what it is and where I can really cause impact because it's a unique skill to see grey areas most people fear from it. Right, I I would do better in that environment than if you put me in a highly operational, really functioning environment. I think there's a beautiful mind that does that better, even though I can, but there's another mind that does it way better. So that was just a lot of fun. And even in coaching today, as as a coach you know this, that you walk into the ambiguity of where someone is and you help them get the clarity that they need. And they come back and tell you the impact that they had. And it's so rewarding just to hear them say that.
Mark Poiesz: Yeah. Is that that sort of savoring of ambiguity? If Can you trace that all the way back or did you learn it from someone or somewhere? 'Cause that's not the most common thing.
Manisha: I think in my case it's kind of obvious. I mean I I I was I left like we moved all the time. But there was always something new. we moved to Zambia when I was four. We moved to Botswana when I was when I was seven. Then I went to a different country to do my A levels in my undergrad, then I came here. So I think there was such a huge change in my entire environment all not all the time, but enough times in big junctures of my development that I got I think I took the idea of not knowing in my stride. Right? It didn't I it didn't create a fear that it does for a lot of people, the unknown, change. That creates a lot of fear. Human nature does not like change. We know this. But in my case, maybe I would not have liked it. But in a lot of cases it we didn't really it's not like options were put in front of me to say we you you we don't have to move. Right, my dad moved for for opportunities to give us better lives and he did an amazing job of doing that, and we ended up moving, and then then by choice I just made those choices to move. and then, you know, maybe seeked ambiguity to some degree, because I wanted the excitement of parsing through it all to get to the known and then know it. And it still happens today, but right now I'm much calmer because I get to do it with with the journeys of so many people. I get to do it in my garden. I get to do it with cooking. I have absolutely no idea what I go into the kitchen to do and what comes out is unique on its own. So I you know
Mark Poiesz: All all I know is I am hungry and I have these ingredients.
Manisha: You know, and then you and then you innovate. You're right, and then it works sometimes. so yeah, I mean I think I think embracing ambiguity is is one skill that I would encourage more people to have. I was given it by the lifestyle or the or the choices that my parents made. I was given it. But we have a lot of change coming our way. Right? The way our i the way the world is changing. between the environment and how small the world is getting, how exposed we are to all the different cultures and people around us that are so interesting. how fast the jobs are changing, the AI is coming into the workplace and we're learning to adapt it's never been so fast. there's a lot of change coming our way. and it's a skill that the faster we adapt to it, the faster we embrace it, the faster we can get impact and we can get we can actually use it to our advantage rather than rather than freeze. Right? the single thing that happens in this world is change. Evolution will tell you this. We don't recognize it as much as because it That one single thing that is which is changed that is happening is not obvious on a daily basis. We're evolving as humans over thousands and thousands of years. planets are shifting, this is happening, but change is always happening around us. But right now, with our dependence on technology and our dependence on people and infrastructures that feed us, clothe us, house us. That are not in our control. We're so much tightly connected that a single change affects us, and opening our mind to say, let's go with it and figure out what it means is is a skill that I would really, really love to see the world develop as we all learn to be more flexible and learn to move towards it rather than create wars because of it or discrimination because of it because we are angry w with the change. Right? You
Mark Poiesz: Absolutely.
Manisha: can embrace change and have love as well.
Mark Poiesz: When it comes to clarity for yourself from here, where do you see things going?
Manisha: I don't know very clearly yet. And sometimes it makes me comfortable, sometimes it doesn't make me comfortable. I think I'm still going through this metamorphosis of of unwinding a change that I want, but I don't know where I want it to go yet. Like earlier I talked about this void, and the void is still there. The difference is that the void is still there, or at least it's smaller in some ways. And I'm maybe more comfortable with it being there and allowing things that I really want to go in it, or maybe not go in it, some days. Some days it makes me very uncomfortable that it's there and it could be filled with something that was impactful and something I could get affirmation from, right? That's still happening so many years later, so much realization later, so much awareness later, and patience later. There's still days that I asked myself, should I go back to work full time and do something? so that I can get the affirmation that I was so used to. It felt so good. And then there are certain days where I'm just so happy that the affirmation was someone eating whatever came out of my kitchen and saying, that tastes so good. Or someone walking through my garden and admiring my garden and that affirmation is great. Or the five bees that are there, the five varieties of bees being so buzzy and happy, that affirmation is great. Right? So, but there are days
Mark Poiesz: Yes.
Manisha: that it's not enough.
Mark Poiesz: Thank you for sharing that. That's a that's a beautifully human and vulnerable share about where you stand right now. So the idea is that you have the attention of everyone in the world, all seven or eight billion of us, for a very short period of time. And you get to advocate for one value that you think everyone would be better off if they adopted it more centrally for themselves. What one thing do you advocate for and what's your sales pitch about it?
Manisha: Curiosity. Curiosity allows you to open your mind and and see things in the way they are versus holding your judgments and biases and insecurities on top of it. You can be judgmental or you can be curious. You cannot do those things together ever. They're two completely separate muscles. If I'm going to be judgmental, I've shut my brain to anything new. If I'm going to be curious, I've chosen not to close shut my brain and be judgmental, and I'm curious and I'm willing to learn. If we all were just a little bit more curious, with an open mind and wanting to learn rather than tell, wanting to learn rather than closing out and saying this is what it is, then I think we would just be a much kinder world. And we would move forward in anywhere that we want to go, in a much more positive way. Like if we all became just a little bit more curious, fifty years from now this world would be a very different world.
Mark Poiesz: What a wild picture. Yeah. Fifty years of that. Not just a moment of it or a day of it, but a fifty years.
Manisha: big change, at least w w where we've landed up with the messes that we've created as a human race in this world, the pests that we've kind of become, right? It will take us a good amount of time to reverse it. But I think just a little curiosity from every single person We could do it.
Mark Poiesz: Thank you. If people want to find you or keep up with you, where would you point them and how do they do so?
Manisha: I do some writing on LinkedIn so they can find me on LinkedIn with some of my writings there. I'm not the greatest writer, so you know the ideas are worth reading, but take it with a pinch of salt in terms of beautiful language. And then you can always reach out to me. you can find me on LinkedIn. I have I have my web page as well, which has some tools of what I offer as a as a coach. yeah.
Mark Poiesz: Thank you so much, Manisha. I really appreciate you sharing. I'm coming back and thinking about your garden and how clearly what you're cultivating there is much more than plants and a an abode for bees. So maybe maybe we sh can all do something similar as a result.
Manisha: Just a little cultivating. It doesn't have to be a garden. It can even be a pot or a person. Right.
Mark Poiesz: My guest today is Manisha Sharma, an executive coach, facilitator, and longtime operator whose life and career have taken her across industries, cultures, and continents. Over more than 20 years, she has worked as an operator and executive across Fortune 50, Fortune 500, and Inc. 5000 companies, building teams, leading transformation, and helping grow billion dollar businesses. Having lived and learned across four continents, six countries and more cultures than she can count, she brings a deeply global and human perspective to her work. And while her resume is impressive, she describes the people and teams she's helped grow along the way as the real highlight. Today she works with executives and founders navigating C suite transition, organizational growth, and the challenge of showing up with greater presence and clarity. At the center of her work is a simple idea. Clarity precedes impact. I'm excited to explore what has shaped the way she sees leadership, identity, growth, and life. Manisha, welcome and thank you for joining me.
Manisha: Thank you, Mark, for having me here. I'm excited to be on your
Mark Poiesz: Of course.
Manisha: podcast.
Mark Poiesz: It's my pleasure, my pleasure. When you think about today as a snapshot, if we just start present day, what do you find being most important to you right now?
Manisha: In the simplest way, it is my garden is going into fall, and what am I going to do to help it? I think, and the reason I gave you something that was as simple as this is I think that looking at sometimes the smaller things and the smaller tasks gives a level of grounding that gives you the moment to actually think bigger. And me just simply thinking about my garden will make me go out into my garden, fresh air, be grounded with the earth, be alone. with my birds and bees and really, really enjoy a very different perspective to the perspective that I would probably go spend the rest of my day in. And I think those perspectives, just changing and flipping your mind and seeing different things and experiencing different things and the curiosity that comes with it, creates some foundation and humility that we tend to lose. when we start to go into the rest of the day and the rest of the world.
Mark Poiesz: You mentioned so beautifully this idea of grounding with the literal ground as you do work in your garden. When you cultivate that space, do you find certain things flowing from you when you go everywhere else in life to do work or non-work things?
Manisha: sure but I and I'll say this as as as a gardener now you know there's a portion of my life I define as a gardener these days and the reason that I got into it the reason that I'm enjoying it is gardening forces patience Your plants are not going to grow any faster than you want them to grow. Yes, you can put fertilizer in, that's a good that might not always be positive for them. But if you give them what they need and you let them do what they want, there is a level of patience. When I use the word humility, I mean there's an understanding that you can't control everything. You can only control what you can control. And with that perspective, when I go start the rest of my day, I do feel that I sometimes a little bit more patient. and there is a sense of not needing to control because you can't. Human ego is a very it's very interesting the way it's developed over centuries where we believe that we can control more around us than we actually can Right. And with that need to control, we are doing what we are doing with the environment, we're doing what we're doing with many relationships and the kind of relationships that we're choosing to have. But there's something about gardening that says that you cannot control and that's okay.
Mark Poiesz: You have opened up this beautiful metaphor here that I I'll be honest, I I I didn't feel quite prepared for at right at the beginning of this conversation in the best of ways. What has gardening taught you that a younger version of yourself wouldn't have picked up on?
Manisha: Patience for sure. The younger person, if you ask anybody that's worked with me ten years ago, fifteen years ago, for you know, however good I might have been with my job, they will tell you, she's very impatient. I always wanted things faster, I always wanted them quicker, I always wanted more, you know, to achieve stuff. And now I'm happy that we did achieve very big things with that in mind. But sometimes a pause is more powerful than moving forward fast. To me my garden in the mornings that is is is that pause. And I think if I was, you know, twenty years younger, I would probably say find a way to pause. I have a garden today when I was tw twenty years younger, I didn't have a garden. I p had a couple of pot plants. but I think it's more around reminding yourself to take the pause and the power of it. Right? And that is something that, you know, you know, aging in wisdom, if we ever wanna call it la is there to say that there's a There's a profound self-awareness realization that takes place when you do do the pause.
Mark Poiesz: What shifted in your life to create this space for that to come in if there was not so much patience before and not so much pausing? Was there an event or how did it show up?
Manisha: not entirely sure that there was a moment or a pivot or an incident that I can very naturally put my arms around. But I do feel that it kind of started later on in my career. Like when I was working for Amazon and for Wayfair, I loved those I loved working there and I loved the people I worked with in the work that I was doing. But then I I I think I kept asking myself the question of you're doing so much and you're spending so much of your time for these companies. What are you getting out of it? Yes. The the obvious is there. I was getting a paycheck and I was getting, you know, recognition and me I'd already been doing that for twenty years, right? And the question that I kept asking myself is, where am I growing? Right, I can grow a skill set, I can I think that was already happening, but I there was there was something that was not quite clicking in terms of the growth that I really wanted for myself. I couldn't peg it, I couldn't put my arms around it because so much of my time, 50 hours a week, two-thirds of my waking time, in the most part, was being given to someone else. Something else. Okay? And so that's when, you know, in in in back in 2021, I took a sabbatical. I I became a fully certified coach. you and I took that lovely journey together. And then and I think coaching had one way of forcing a pause, but it was a way to put something in my time that had a lot of meaning to me and I could see the meaning to others. But just simply stepping away and re re-owning, reclaiming my time forced the pause. And there's one thing that I tell a lot of my clients all the time is if you can find time to be bored. This is what we avoid so much in life is I'm bored, let me go do something. I'm bored, I need to go and gain another skill. I'm you know, I'm bored, let me go meet some friends. All they're all good ways to and healthy ways to to overcome some boredom. But boredom creates that pause and that frustration, blankness in your mind, which then opens up the mind to innovation and growth. In a very different way than going to a class and taking a skill set or or learning to code something new or even becoming a coach where we studied and became a coach and and we practice it now. Boredom is is is a very very unique way of self-realization and growth. as a parent, you most parents, you're a parent, and most parents will do playtime with kids, right? Here's some toys, be on your own, play. And the kid is going to be and my nephews would do this, right? Where they'd be like, I'm bored. And my sister would be, that's okay, figure it out. Hear the toys, figure it out. But I think with the boredom,
Mark Poiesz: Yeah.
Manisha: it's a like it's like a self-regulation exercise, what boredom does. You learn to self-regulate. And that self-regulation
Mark Poiesz: Yes.
Manisha: allows self-realization and growth and resilience. And with kids, you do it to allow innovation and self-awareness and kindness to self when you're saying I'm bored and I'm but I'm gonna figure out how to play on my own, right? As an adult, we forget about that that wonderful gift that was given to us, which is playtime and being bored. playtime and I think that what that's what I was looking for in my sabbatical and I did realize that boredom would be this frustrating after more than 21 22 years of working. And it was frustrating and I was like, okay, I'm bored, I don't feel like I'm achieving things, I don't feel like I'm getting recognition for things, I'm not doing the impact that I'm so used to doing big things and now I'm, you know, waking up in the morning and I am cooking and I took the sabbatical in India, so it made it even that much bor boring in the sense that I had someone to cook and clean and I had a driver and I had a gardener, I had all the support system. that I got to explore things that in retrospect was extremely profound at the time that boredom was frustrating.
Mark Poiesz: This is such a a peculiar thread that you've you've drawn out here, and I really, really like it. First, I I was laughing for a second because when you said figure it out when it comes to boredom, I was just picturing my five-year-old daughter going like, Daddy, that's what I figured out, that I'm bored. But that's that's neither here nor there.
Manisha: I you know, that's the innovation that came out of it all.
Mark Poiesz: That's that's neither here nor there. I just had to share that because gosh is the sass overboard right now. the other thing I was thinking about is how this became an unlock. You mentioned some of these earlier drivers like recognition and impact, which I'm sure are still there in in some way for you. But yet it took the boredom to realize the humility that you listed and the patience that. may not come about any other way until we go through this discomfort of the boredom that you have cited. you shared that a sabbatical was the door to this. Was it an intentional space that you left that wide open? I'm thinking about the how do we know with certainty what we're getting into?
Manisha: there are lots of people that are more evolved than me that don't need to take a sabbatical and they can get to they know how to take that pause and they know how to create self-regulated bo boredom and and while they're still giving 50 hours somewhere else. Right? There are lots of people that know how to find their time and claim their time in better ways. I'm I I needed to do something that was A little bit more of a clean cut off saying I'm gonna give myself the blank slate. I didn't expect boredom to be honest. The boredom was the the unique find in this process. I expected that if I want to do something, I've got to do something to see what the difference is instead of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Right. And so the difference, the only difference I could think about is let me out of everything that I was doing, I loved a lot of the things that I was doing, but let me pull a single thread out of that, which I thought was very self-satisfying, and it was definitely something that I got told that I did well, which was growing people in in the ways that I did. And So I said, okay, let me pull that thread out so there's not there's some common thread coming from where I'm what I'm leaving and the rest of it I'll leave blank, which is where the whole coaching concept came in. And then I went and researched it and I said, Okay, I don't want to be the kind of person that, you know, mm does a two week course and then says I'm qualified to do something. I'd rather be really qualified, especially when I'm taking the responsibility of someone else and their growth and the way they would want to grow. I'm taking that responsibility really seriously. so coaching became a common thread, a a small common thread from what I was leaving behind to the new area I was going in. But the rest of it, I was like, Okay, we'll leave it blank, we'll go to a new place. It would be a brand new environment. I had never lived in India since I was four, right? I left India when I was four, so going back to go live there was already interestingly, a unique and very different experience than you know having spent so much time in the West. so what I did expect, or what I thought I would do, was I was gonna go there and I would go join a bunch of nonprofits and my coaching business and I would be able to continue to coach and and then and and and and had this all of these ideas. But when I got there there was surprisingly a bigger cultural difference in the corporate environment than the one that I came from. And all and I was still coaching, but all my clients were still in the US. So I was working night hours. And then in the daytime, I was like, okay, I have all this time, let me you know. So I started to work in public schools and in some of the orphanages teaching English. And it was so amazingly fun to to see such bright, curious faces be so excited about someone who comes and reads to them, and you know, it it makes them play really. fun games in English and them just learning new words and how they're learning them with someone who looks like them but doesn't sound like them. but it was still you know three hours a week while I'm awake and the rest of the time I I read books, I made friends, we traveled a lot. But I didn't close out a day or close out a quarter with a number that went, yay. I'd been doing that for twenty-one years. Right, a quantifiable, impactful output was not happening. And twenty one years in you were addicted to it. There's an addiction.
Mark Poiesz: What does it feel like when that's suddenly missing?
Manisha: It's very v it's like a void. Right. But in this case, it wasn't a it wasn't a bad void. It was interesting because I could stand outside the void and look at the void and what I've taken out of the void in a sense. And I'm looking at it and I'm going, Okay, so now it's empty and what are you gonna do with this? Right. Because I reclaimed all my time and I this was all very conscious. It wasn't it didn't just happen to me. When I left and went on a sabbatical, I was extr very, very, very successful at the time in my career. And I made a conscious choice to say, I think this is enough. And I want something different and I don't know what it is, so I'm just gonna clean it out and let's look at this. And it was very clear because it was so conscious and there was this void and it was empty. And there's still a big portion of this void that's still empty, Mark. But I'm okay with it
Mark Poiesz: Thank you for sharing that.
Manisha: now.
Mark Poiesz: That's what I was wondering is you're in India, which is a place that you're only somewhat connected to at that stage of life. So somewhere very different. And now you're facing this void because what you're doing and investing your whole life force into is not cr generating the same things that you're used to seeing arise. just picturing anyone else when there's so many of the things that they're used to having and suddenly they're not there. How did you actually maybe cope and navigate that? What stories did you tell yourself about what it meant when you were in the moment?
Manisha: It's it's weird because I think in a sense you grieve. You're grieving the loss. Right? We usually think about grief and loss of grief when we are losing loved ones or we're losing something. But here I I lost the the reaffirmation loop. I worked hard, I achieved some results, I got rewarded for them, I got more, I worked hard. Like that reaffirmation loop that was going on for, you know, two, three decades. See, I mean I went through school that way. We all went through school that way. We work hard, we get great results, we get promoted, we go to the next class. We I mean it this started from the time we are five years old. This reaffirmation loop. Right? And then it goes on for two, three decades. And then suddenly you stop it. That reaffirmation loop, you're you're grieving that. In in a sense, I think that's what happened for the first six months of my sabbatical, is the reaction was going through grief cycles. no, I accepted this, you made this choice, this is great. You didn't this didn't come to you. Then I'm like, but I'm so bored, I didn't achieve very much today. Or I've gone through a month, my god, I could be working and I could I could still be making money. Right? I see this, someone someone reached out like this. At this point, a lot of companies were still reaching out to me and wanting to move me back to the US. And I was like, same job, what I left, to do the same thing. I I know I left it, and I was very consciously saying I'm not gonna do this, and the only way that I get to go back to work is if I'm going to do something substantially different. And I did go back to work to do something very, very different with an amazing group of people. Right? but the affirmation loop and the grief and the grieving process of it, layered on top with the boredom is was what was happening in the in the mind. And that the only way to sort this out is to pull yourself out from the emotions that are happening, to step out of those emotions. Look at those emotions and see how logical are these? Some of them are very logical. Yes, it's an affirmation loop. Do you really need it? If you got it today, it's r really just call a few people saying, Hey, I think I want to come back and I wanna work and they'd say, Of course. Right? It was two phone calls away. You can get the affirmation loop but you also get other things that you don't want with it, which you left. Right. And then there's the boredom and then you are you're analyzing the boredom and you're analysing this void and you're trying to say, okay, the logic of this is I have to get past this, I have to figure out how I'm going to fill the void, which is what you came here for, is to create the void to be able to fill it with something different. it's the only way that I felt I could handle it is if I almost had a out of mind experience looking at my own mind and looking at the emotions that are happening and the situation that's forming. that's those were the logical days of grieving. Then you have the non-logical days of grieving of my god I'm so bored can we go on a trip somewhere? Right? To fill the gap in the void and let's go and you know explore good food and then you know some good music. All happy ways to fill the void and it works. But the moments when there was nothing to fill the void were probably the growth moments, to some
Mark Poiesz: Yeah.
Manisha: degree.
Mark Poiesz: Everything you're sharing, I'm hearing this this deeply reflective undercurrent of why am I doing this? Not just is this worth doing, but why am I driven to do this? And really dancing around in so many chapters of your story that notion of enough. What is enough that I'm doing this for? Whether it is affirmation, accolades, measurable impact, or whether it's money, whether it's even with the gardening that has shown up as such an asset, What's your relationship with enough as it relates to all of this now?
Manisha: I think that this you have to remind yourself about enough on a regular basis. This is not something that I reminded myself once and then now it's gonna stay. Right? I mean it's not human nature to stop it enough. Right? We always want more. And I'm not saying that I stop it enough. I want more. I want I want more clients, I want to help more people. I do want to be recognized still for the work that I'm doing there. I want my garden to look beautiful. I want more bees to come there. I want to make sure that I have more varieties of bees. I want to go and get a backyard habitat certification for my backyard because of the work I put in. I want to be recognized for it. So I don't actually feel that. The affirmation has gone away, but I think what I want affirmation from has changed. Like what I want to be affirmed for has changed. what it is that I want affirmation for now is easier for me to say this is enough. Versus being in an environment that every day asks for more and you're always driven to do more.
Mark Poiesz: there's an important aspect to your story because of the number of places you've been, lived and worked, even where you grew up, I I don't wanna do our conversation a disservice for listeners by ignoring that because I think there may be very interesting ways that that weaves into this inner reflection that you've been sharing right now with us. What things did you pick up maybe from a few of the key places that you lived, worked, grew up? And how did you see a difference between being part of a culture versus being true to yourself and anywhere that that may have rubbed?
Manisha: All cultures Having lived through many of them, and I don't I'm not really sure what even I define myself as, right? I'm Indian by birth, I'm African by upbringing, southern African by upbringing. My roots are still in Botswana with my mom being there. I grew up and I did all my entire professional career here in in the US with a few years in London, But even in that portion, we had g I worked at global companies that had global interactions and there's a single thing which goes back to you know a little bit around defining values as well is there's a single thing that anchors everybody together is trust. We show trust in different ways, we express trust in different ways, but at the end of the day, the foundation of every single culture, every single person, every being and everything around us is trust. Nothing starts without it and everything ends when it's gone. this doesn't change whether I'm here in the US, I'm, you know, it's I was in India, where I grew up, in in the various parts of, you know, Zambia, Botswana, South Africa, Europe, it does not matter. This single thing, it starts and ends with it. And if you can really understand this, then the cultures are just beautiful differences. There's nothing better or worse. They're just beautiful differences that you be curious and you understand and you learn to behave and trust in the culture's way. And that's I it's it's so much simpler.
Mark Poiesz: could you walk us through how you think trust is built and how it's most commonly broken from your experience?
Manisha: So we're born with the idea of trust. If you take a if you take a baby and you throw a baby, the baby has an instinctive fear that you're not gonna catch him. Because they have somewhere instinctively, who knows how, but they know that if you don't catch them and they fall, they'll get hurt. So there's a trust that we have that if I throw something up, it will fall. There's a trust in gravity that we have. We're born with it. I understand Newton did his physics and we have a lot of respect for that. But if you asked a cave person, They all know that if I drop something it'll fall. They might not define it as gravity, they might not understand the physics around it. But there's a trust that we wake up with every single day. The sun is gonna rise, it will set. We might not see it in the Pacific Northwest every year or every day. But we know it's going to rise and it will set. Right. So there's a there's a layer of trust that I can't f sort of find as a foundational trust in a in a muscle that we've been already been given. You've been given this muscle to trust. Because without it, you won't be able to take a step forward. You won't be able to pick up a class. You won't be able to do anything. Because you understand if I put my arms around something and I pick it up, it will rise. You they th you don't you'd we're not thinking about it, but there's a trust. Then there's the trust that you form with relationships, which is which is the second layer of trust that when we're growing up. And I'm asking I'm answering your question in a little bit long-winded. Because under the leadership umbrella, I I think it's a it's it's a very small pocket where it happens, but it doesn't happen without us walking in with these muscles somewhat developed. there's relationship trust. I trust that the person that loves me is not going to hurt me. I trust that when someone says that they're a friend of mine says that they're going to show up to hang out with me, they will show up and hang out with me, or they'll call and they'll do this because they believe that I'm going, that's what I respect. These are super simple things, right? It's just having trust in relationships that they will be there for you time-wise, emotion-wise, space, all of the things that we have. And we grow up with them as children with our parents, siblings, friends, etc. Then you land up in the work environment. Now I know I know a lot of companies tend to call their works places families or you know yes you will make some friends at work, but at the end of the day you go to work to do your job. They're not your family and when you start off they're not your friends. you're all are working towards a common goal that you have agreed to in the most part, and you all are using your different skill sets, if done really well, you'll achieve that goal together. There's no way goals achieve get achieved on their own. I have made some of my best friends and really, really great relationships out of work because I spent two-thirds of my waking life there. At some point, you you're going to take the whole of yourself there. You don't separate yourself, right? And what I found as a leader, if you want to be trusted as a leader, you've got to learn to trust first. Meaning all of these muscles that you've developed to some degree you have to bring a little bit of that. as a leader into a workspace. You have to trust your people. You have got to trust your peers. You've got to trust your manager. And if you want to be trusted and you want people to come with you, I never say follow, but you want to take them with you with the ideas that you are trying to put forward, then you've got to trust first before feeling that you need to be trusted. Stephen Kavi, right? Seek to understand before being understood. Same thing with trust. a lot of that comes through communication. I used to tell this to my team all the time, and that's because someone told it to me, I think, in my first year at work, when I started with Intel way back then. Is this a very simple formula for growing trust. Tell people what you're going to do. Do what you said you were going to do, and then tell people what you did. Someone told that to me back in 1999 and I have been trying to do that many times successfully, many times not less successfully, but it works. Tell people what you're going to do. In corporate language, it is alignment. Let's make sure you and I know what we're trying to do, where we're trying to go. Do we agree on the goal? Here's what we're saying. This is what we're going to do. Here's the scope. Here's the timeline. Here's how much it's going to cost, etc. Tell people what you're going to do. Then do what you said. Don't go off on a tangent and decide you're going to do your own thing. And if you are doing what you said you were going to do, keep reminding them. That this is what you're doing. So communication that they know that you're doing what you what you said you were going to do. Don't go into a black hole. Because things change around everybody's world, and you don't want to go into a black hole to continue to down a path when something else has changed and it didn't work. Right? Then tell people what you did. This to me is that one of the most important parts of the trust formula is tell them. what went right, tell them what went wrong, what was actually done, what couldn't be done. do the retros that you're supposed to do. Right? To learn from them, to move forward more positively with a bigger impact the next time. Right? That's what it is. So this this also in a relationship. Right, tell people what you're gonna do, then do what you said you were gonna do, and then remind them what you did. And sometimes with the r reminding, you get the affirmation that you want of thank you or well done or a great job. the formula changes when you get into a corporate leadership environment, but it doesn't come void of that experience that you've had instinctively as as a person growing up in society. Unfortunately, not everybody comes out of those life experiences being able to develop a trust muscle that is truly kind and truly able to trust. There are many people who have incidences or situations in their life where they struggle to trust and it takes them a little longer. And as a leader you learn to understand that y you need to do more to get people to trust you first. To do that, you've got to trust who they are, what do they need, and then come show up that way.
Mark Poiesz: And the patience that's required for that I I already hear baked into the story you've told about it, because it's the leader's job to do it first. And they have to keep doing it until it lands. am I hearing that implication right?
Manisha: No, absolutely. You you have to come leadership is a service. You have to come with a service-based mindset to say you're coming to serve. we've heard servant the concept of servant leadership everywhere and and it's become like like a new fad over the last ten years. But at the end of the day, it's a privilege to lead. And don't n for and no leader to take that lightly or take it for granted. And you're there to serve. You're there to serve the people you're taking with you for them to go and achieve things together. That's what you're there for.
Mark Poiesz: Have you found yourself in situations where not everyone in leadership is aligned with that? How do you navigate that?
Manisha: I mean you have different types of I mean leaders that that believe in leadership through fear, leadership through collaboration, directive versus more transparency. Like the leadership styles vary and they're very unique in in many ways. The leaders that I find really really, really strong, like really strong leaders and things and people that I've aspired to be or and and and really wanted to be and not not always succeeding, but you know, working at it every day, is the whole concept of agile leadership. I I talk about it a lot even with my own clients and and in different forums, is how do you show up with the right behavior set with for the right occasion. If we dress up for the right occasion, put on the right behavior set for the right occasion. Right? And so there is no single form of leadership style that works all the time. And what I find with poor leadership to answer your question, like sometimes when I see leaders and I'm like, mm there's no there's no poor or bad leader. It's a poor or bad set of behaviors for the situation they're showing up for. And for leaders who cannot change their behaviour and be able to recognize the environment and the behaviour set that they need to show up with, to me as leaders are less agile and poor agility in leadership is i it it's just you have less trust from people that you want to take with you. versus if you show up with the right behaviour set and you start to recognize that is what we call EQ, you know, a high high high emotional connection. And and I think that is what the transformation from any leader to an amazing leader and the higher up you go in organizations, what is required is not how smart you are. There are lots of very smart people. There are lots of very brilliant people in this world. However, they don't turn out to be the best leaders that people want to follow or go with. Because the EQ is not there or the EQ is not as developed. And I think that's what changes from good leaders to less good leaders is the changing of the EQ. Can you show up for the right behavior, for the right situation, to move everybody forward positively? Eventually that's what you're doing is you're moving people forward positively. And that's not easy to do all the time. Because you ha you're dealing with your own day, your own emotions, your own agenda, where you want them to go, your own patience, impatience. You're dealing with all of that and then the dynamic of everybody else. But that's why you're a leader is to come and serve.
Mark Poiesz: you just alluded to we're all human and it can be very, very difficult sometimes to walk the walk with this instead of just I know how this should go. When you catch yourself getting out of alignment, how do you notice it first, maybe if there's any characteristic traits of it? And how do you bring yourself back into alignment?
Manisha: one of my n more usual traits, and e if you go to anybody any of my teams that I that that ha might have worked with me, will tell you that I'm impatient. which is why my gardening is really helping me right now.
Mark Poiesz: Yeah.
Manisha: that I used to be very impatient. I always, you know, wanted things faster because I always felt we could. Right. what I learned to do when I was younger and I didn't really I wasn't managing a lot of people and you know, I would have enough people that my manager would give me a like you it's okay to slow down, it's fine. But as I started to manage more people and I was already aware of this aspect of mine, of being a little on the impatient side, if things were not moving where we need to move. and what impatience does is impatience gets you to listen less, it gets you to pause less. It lets you gets you through this cycle that is not always the best. I started to actually tell my teams before I even got there as they were getting to know who I was that this is the problem I have is I'm impatient. not to put the burden on them, but I gave them permission to call me out on it.
Mark Poiesz: Mmm. Powerful.
Manisha: Sometimes it's it's difficult to call your manager out or your leader out on on a behavior and you're like, we'll just let it go, they'll it'll calm down, right? I would allow them to call me. I would give them the permission to call me out and say that we can slow down. We don't have to do this right now. Or
Mark Poiesz: Yeah.
Manisha: ask me why do you want it so fast? And if I can't answer the why, then let's stake it'll force me to take the pause back. But if I can answer the why, then there's a reason.
Mark Poiesz: Did you ever have to overcome a lack of trust on their part for them to meet you where you just asked them to meet you?
Manisha: I was generally very transparent in the sense that I would tell them as much as I could of what is happening, w why we're doing what we're doing, if there is something that's coming that they should be aware of. It was a it was to me was a partnership. Right? Yes, there was there was a an org chart that said something, but to me, my relationship with my teams was a partnership. We had our roles, right? And when there were situations when I could not tell them something because you know, I can't tell them there's a layoff coming or, you know, if there's some big disc org decisions that are taking to take place that we don't want panic to happen or or, you know, discussions to happen on. Organizations are always doing things that you kinda want to keep quiet a little bit. I would already tell them upfront that they're things I will not be able to tell you. But as soon as I am able to tell you and things are better and clearer and and we have I'm very clear on how they affect you, you will be the first to know. Right? So there was a I think there was an expectation setting on what communication will look like. In the most part I think it worked. and if someone is not telling me they don't trust me, then it's more difficult to figure out what do I need to do to gain your trust if the communication it it's a all relationships are two way, right? So all you can do is this is the way that it is there and then you know, you you take your part and you step in. if someone will not do the step forward, then unfortunately we'll be where we are, but we'll still keep moving forward. Which is why you are not you're not you don't look at people as family and friends when you're going to work. You're doing work. And you are responsible for at the end of the day, as an adult, yourself and your emotions. People help you and they support you through it the same way as you help and support others. However you're s You're still an adult at work.
Mark Poiesz: I want to make sure we get to this idea of clarity precedes impact that I know is a core thing for you and your work now. Could you walk us through how that has looked like for you at perhaps a key juncture or more than one of your life? What does clarity look and feel like and how do you get there?
Manisha: So I think the first time that something was c clearer in terms of what I want to spend my time doing I left Intel and I joined Micron. And my hiring manager at that time told me everything, the mountain I had to climb as soon as I walked through the door. And he was amazing guy, you know, we became good friends, we still are very good friends. And he mentioned to me all the things the Micron had just acquired acquired Lexar, so there was a lot of transformation and transition going on. There were so many unknowns and and I was walking in one I had you know, jumped into a role that was bigger than I had ever done. I had started to do I had exercised skill sets that I've never had. and then I'm walking into an unknown of a mountain and he goes, It is it's not you're not walking into you know a a three-month high achieving job right you're gonna walk in and you're there's going to be a lot of work that he has to get done before we can see any kind of result. I don't think I've said yes to a job as fast as I said yes to that one. I took took the job, you know, w it hired a team, all great. Everything turned out to all the things that we wanted to do, right? But then when I reflected on why I took the job as fast as I can, when someone is telling you that you're gonna have to climb a mountain to even do your job to properly to start, I think, and this is the the clarity before impact was that I loved the idea of ambiguity. I loved the idea of solving something that was somewhat chaotic and making it really organized, predictable, process driven. Like that, if you gave me that, I'd be like, okay, I can manage it. But to make it that was super exciting. The gray areas and trying to find how do you break down the gray areas to make it predictable. How can I say that I trust this business to do this? To build that entire system in place. That was phenomenal. And so that's why I'm like, okay, that's that is what it is that I love to do, and that's where if I'm clear about this, then every job I take. will be very conscious on the job I take to get the impact that I want for myself and for the business because I'll be so inspired to do it, that almost every job I took after Micron, all the jobs at Amazon, in the Wayfair, the one at Upfront, even in my own time when I took it as as coaching, was all about a ambiguity space because I loved the idea of operationalizing a little bit of chaos. that to me was like almost the first time that I had a realization on what it is and where I can really cause impact because it's a unique skill to see grey areas most people fear from it. Right, I I would do better in that environment than if you put me in a highly operational, really functioning environment. I think there's a beautiful mind that does that better, even though I can, but there's another mind that does it way better. So that was just a lot of fun. And even in coaching today, as as a coach you know this, that you walk into the ambiguity of where someone is and you help them get the clarity that they need. And they come back and tell you the impact that they had. And it's so rewarding just to hear them say that.
Mark Poiesz: Yeah. Is that that sort of savoring of ambiguity? If Can you trace that all the way back or did you learn it from someone or somewhere? 'Cause that's not the most common thing.
Manisha: I think in my case it's kind of obvious. I mean I I I was I left like we moved all the time. But there was always something new. we moved to Zambia when I was four. We moved to Botswana when I was when I was seven. Then I went to a different country to do my A levels in my undergrad, then I came here. So I think there was such a huge change in my entire environment all not all the time, but enough times in big junctures of my development that I got I think I took the idea of not knowing in my stride. Right? It didn't I it didn't create a fear that it does for a lot of people, the unknown, change. That creates a lot of fear. Human nature does not like change. We know this. But in my case, maybe I would not have liked it. But in a lot of cases it we didn't really it's not like options were put in front of me to say we you you we don't have to move. Right, my dad moved for for opportunities to give us better lives and he did an amazing job of doing that, and we ended up moving, and then then by choice I just made those choices to move. and then, you know, maybe seeked ambiguity to some degree, because I wanted the excitement of parsing through it all to get to the known and then know it. And it still happens today, but right now I'm much calmer because I get to do it with with the journeys of so many people. I get to do it in my garden. I get to do it with cooking. I have absolutely no idea what I go into the kitchen to do and what comes out is unique on its own. So I you know
Mark Poiesz: All all I know is I am hungry and I have these ingredients.
Manisha: You know, and then you and then you innovate. You're right, and then it works sometimes. so yeah, I mean I think I think embracing ambiguity is is one skill that I would encourage more people to have. I was given it by the lifestyle or the or the choices that my parents made. I was given it. But we have a lot of change coming our way. Right? The way our i the way the world is changing. between the environment and how small the world is getting, how exposed we are to all the different cultures and people around us that are so interesting. how fast the jobs are changing, the AI is coming into the workplace and we're learning to adapt it's never been so fast. there's a lot of change coming our way. and it's a skill that the faster we adapt to it, the faster we embrace it, the faster we can get impact and we can get we can actually use it to our advantage rather than rather than freeze. Right? the single thing that happens in this world is change. Evolution will tell you this. We don't recognize it as much as because it That one single thing that is which is changed that is happening is not obvious on a daily basis. We're evolving as humans over thousands and thousands of years. planets are shifting, this is happening, but change is always happening around us. But right now, with our dependence on technology and our dependence on people and infrastructures that feed us, clothe us, house us. That are not in our control. We're so much tightly connected that a single change affects us, and opening our mind to say, let's go with it and figure out what it means is is a skill that I would really, really love to see the world develop as we all learn to be more flexible and learn to move towards it rather than create wars because of it or discrimination because of it because we are angry w with the change. Right? You
Mark Poiesz: Absolutely.
Manisha: can embrace change and have love as well.
Mark Poiesz: When it comes to clarity for yourself from here, where do you see things going?
Manisha: I don't know very clearly yet. And sometimes it makes me comfortable, sometimes it doesn't make me comfortable. I think I'm still going through this metamorphosis of of unwinding a change that I want, but I don't know where I want it to go yet. Like earlier I talked about this void, and the void is still there. The difference is that the void is still there, or at least it's smaller in some ways. And I'm maybe more comfortable with it being there and allowing things that I really want to go in it, or maybe not go in it, some days. Some days it makes me very uncomfortable that it's there and it could be filled with something that was impactful and something I could get affirmation from, right? That's still happening so many years later, so much realization later, so much awareness later, and patience later. There's still days that I asked myself, should I go back to work full time and do something? so that I can get the affirmation that I was so used to. It felt so good. And then there are certain days where I'm just so happy that the affirmation was someone eating whatever came out of my kitchen and saying, that tastes so good. Or someone walking through my garden and admiring my garden and that affirmation is great. Or the five bees that are there, the five varieties of bees being so buzzy and happy, that affirmation is great. Right? So, but there are days
Mark Poiesz: Yes.
Manisha: that it's not enough.
Mark Poiesz: Thank you for sharing that. That's a that's a beautifully human and vulnerable share about where you stand right now. So the idea is that you have the attention of everyone in the world, all seven or eight billion of us, for a very short period of time. And you get to advocate for one value that you think everyone would be better off if they adopted it more centrally for themselves. What one thing do you advocate for and what's your sales pitch about it?
Manisha: Curiosity. Curiosity allows you to open your mind and and see things in the way they are versus holding your judgments and biases and insecurities on top of it. You can be judgmental or you can be curious. You cannot do those things together ever. They're two completely separate muscles. If I'm going to be judgmental, I've shut my brain to anything new. If I'm going to be curious, I've chosen not to close shut my brain and be judgmental, and I'm curious and I'm willing to learn. If we all were just a little bit more curious, with an open mind and wanting to learn rather than tell, wanting to learn rather than closing out and saying this is what it is, then I think we would just be a much kinder world. And we would move forward in anywhere that we want to go, in a much more positive way. Like if we all became just a little bit more curious, fifty years from now this world would be a very different world.
Mark Poiesz: What a wild picture. Yeah. Fifty years of that. Not just a moment of it or a day of it, but a fifty years.
Manisha: big change, at least w w where we've landed up with the messes that we've created as a human race in this world, the pests that we've kind of become, right? It will take us a good amount of time to reverse it. But I think just a little curiosity from every single person We could do it.
Mark Poiesz: Thank you. If people want to find you or keep up with you, where would you point them and how do they do so?
Manisha: I do some writing on LinkedIn so they can find me on LinkedIn with some of my writings there. I'm not the greatest writer, so you know the ideas are worth reading, but take it with a pinch of salt in terms of beautiful language. And then you can always reach out to me. you can find me on LinkedIn. I have I have my web page as well, which has some tools of what I offer as a as a coach. yeah.
Mark Poiesz: Thank you so much, Manisha. I really appreciate you sharing. I'm coming back and thinking about your garden and how clearly what you're cultivating there is much more than plants and a an abode for bees. So maybe maybe we sh can all do something similar as a result.
Manisha: Just a little cultivating. It doesn't have to be a garden. It can even be a pot or a person. Right.
