Karen Mangia
Vice President at Salesforce, TEDx speaker, and author
Karen Mangia is an internationally-recognized thought leader whose TEDx appearance, keynotes, blogs and books reach hundreds of thousands of business leaders each year. She is the author of Working from Home: Making the New Normal Work for You (Wiley), Listen Up! How to Tune in to Customers and Turn Down the Noise (Wiley) and also Success With Less (Marie Street Press). A prolific blogger and sought-after media interview, she has been featured in Forbes and regularly contributes to Thrive Global and ZDNet.
As Vice President of Customer and Market Insights at Salesforce, she engages current and future customers around the world to discover new ways of creating success and growth together. She serves on the company’s Work from Home Taskforce, where she is helping the company’s 50,000+ worldwide employees to better adapt to a work-from-home environment. Passionate about diversity and inclusion, she also serves on the company’s Racial Equality and Justice Taskforce. Prior to Salesforce, she spearheaded Customer Satisfaction and Experience at Cisco Systems.
Strategic – Her strategies for customer listening, customer success and customer insights are central to the market impact of multiple companies, from Fortune 500 giants to privately-held businesses around the world. She is the Chair of the Customer Experience Council for the Conference Board and Executive Sponsor for YPO (Young Presidents Organization).
Passionate about customer success, Karen began her Fortune 100 career at AT&T – an experience she details in her new book, Listen Up! She holds a BS degree in international business and a Masters in Information and Communication Sciences, both from Ball State University, as well as an Associates Degree in Hospitality Administration from Ivy Tech.
Recognized with the Centurion Award, Hall of Fame Honoree and a Graduate of Distinction from Ball State University; part of the 40 under 40 in the Indianapolis Business Journal; and Ivy Tech Distinguished Alumni Award. She is a trained chef, and is active in numerous community organizations, including serving on the board of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and Ball State University.
I hope you enjoyed this Tip and interview and found them useful. Most importantly, I want you to put the Tip into action!
Every day of the Summit, I’m awarding a prize for the Best Comment. So, leave a comment to share what action you’ve taken or are going to take, or your biggest “aha” and how the Tip or interview is making you think differently.
And remember, you can get input from me here when you comment or ask a question. So go ahead and share what you are thinking and doing with this Tip!
Ponder – Paused – Prioritized will help with maximized performance. I can come back to work with a fresh mind.
Periods of maximum performance require periods of maximum rest. Great takeaway, Linda.
Thanks for the video. The tips were so useful.
Thanks for your feedback, Audrey. Here’s to your success!
You’re welcome.
I have being able to learn that periods of maximum performance require periods of maximum rest if I am to be a high performer in my business.
Besides, I have always thought that more activity will bring about more outcomes and success but this might not necessarily be the case (as learnt today) if such activity are not channeled in a productive way.
Well said, Oluwakemi. Clearly defining success or your next goal becomes a filter to prioritize where to spend your best time and energy to get results.
I have reminders in my diary to take a short break away from my laptop throughout the day. I may only get a drink or have a walk/stretch but doing this regularly keeps my mind focused rather than getting brain fog.
What a great reminder that even brief breaks make a big difference, Tracy! Great tip about adding this time to your daily diary.
Always look forward for my activity I have planned at the end of workday. Also schedule a quick stretch or virtual workout 3 days a week on my outlook.
Creating upside – making your transition ritual to end the workday fun and enjoyable – is a great strategy to keep your boundaries. Great to hear from you, Crystal.
Divest before you Invest!!! Oh my. If anything, I invest before divest because I burn out. I am usually doing it without thinking. And it makes so much sense and I won’t look like a dunderhead.
Be kind to yourself, Andy. A pearl of wisdom from my grandmother to you – you can always begin again.
The idea of Progressive Tolerance resonates. We take on “one more thing” lots of times and then can’t get it all done. Or we let some behavior “slide” and it becomes less and less how you want to be treated. Keeping focus of our values and goals while reflecting on our situation and relationships can keep us on the path to our version of success.
How we treat ourselves – and how we set the expectation with others about how we expect to be treated – is critically important. Success begins with expectations. Thanks for your feedback, Virginia.
Hi Karen! I’ve always believed in the power of balance in work and this really resonated with me. Also, I love the 3 P’s- Pause, Ponder, and Prioritize!
Thanks, Annie. Success With Less = Pause + Ponder + Prioritize
I agree. The 3 Ps are easy to remember and handy. Thank you for sharing your insight for success during these busy and uncertain times.
Angelique, I’m often reminded the simplest messages are the strongest. Thanks for your feedback.
Thank you, May and Karen for the great content! This interview is even better than I’ve imagined. Thank you for sharing the wisdom and very practical advice such as trying not to put every minute into use at the expense of one’s inner peace, Karen. My next goal is to work for Salesforce, making a career change from hospitality to technology. My next step is to become a certified Salesforce Administrator. My next smallest step is to squeeze 2 hours a day to study Salesforce functionality on Trailhead. Thanks again for the inspiration!
Maggie, Thanks for your kind feedback. What’s easy to say is often hard to do: just breathe. Congratulations on your Salesforce aspiration (I LOVE working at Salesforce). Trailhead is helpful. So are our Salesforce Saturdays and Salesforce User Groups. You can find them online all over the world. You’ll have the opportunity to build a network, and there are study resources that will help you on your journey as well. Wishing you all the best.
Thank you. The explicit instructions are helpful. And the implicit message that being “on” or “busy” is not always healthy for the individual and employer is very valuable.
Outcomes matter most – for you and for your employer. Thanks for your feedback, Jonathan.
Thank you for the reminder. A speaker many years ago encouraged the audience to do the same. He showed a picture of a cow in the field chewing his cud. He asked us to imagine what would happen if the cow was hooked to the milking machine and was never unhooked. I can only imagine the poor cow being sucked inside out. For the cow to do her work providing milk, she must have time to chew her cud. This image and story have stuck with me for over 20 years. The importance of having time to yourself to recharge so you can be productive.
What a vivid and memorable story, Randi! I often think of what would happen if a high performance athlete were “on” all the time….same outcome. Thanks for your feedback.
Thanks for the valuable insights and hands-on tips. Really liked your suggestion for the three questions (Does it have to be? Me? Right now?) including the reminder that delegating a task could be a development step for the other person.
Thanks fof the interview!,
Thanks for your feedback, Veronika. I hope the three questions help you reclaim some time for what matters most to you now.
What Karen said is very powerful in order to take clarity on what we do each day, our priorities and how to deal with external request that sometimes that take us away from them and lose focus. #CMK2021
We’re dealing with more distractions than ever before. Success means making time for what matters most. Thanks for your comment, ReVa.
Thanks for the great content. The divest before you invest really resonates because it happens all too often that more work is piled on without anything coming off. It is the “just fit it in” mentality. Other work gets pushed off but not reprioritized against work teammates are doing very often so things tend to sit and weigh on my mind. I will make use of the 3 P’s to take the time to define the scope of new work so can present to manager and get other things cleared out.
Thanks for sharing what resonated with you, Theresa. Sometimes the most powerful mindset shift is moving from, “What can I add?” to “What can I remove?”
Yes, girl, yes! Pause with a capital P! 2.5 years ago I told my clients I was hitting pause and would be unreachable for one month. I couldn’t hear my own thoughts and hated what my life was looking like. Cut to: I sat on the couch, cleaned out cabinets and files (very meditative), and then traveled to see people and places that mattered to me. On my return, I committed to a new path and began transitioning to a new intention in my world that was a better fit for who I am now … not who I was 20 years ago. All because of a desperate internal plea to pause. Thanks for sharing your journey and lessons.
P.S. My dog is the best at making sure I get outside, and now I build in time to write bad lyrics and play bad chords on my guitar rather than working or doom scrolling. I’m also back to a regular meditation practice. All are vaccines against “progressive tolerance.” Thanks again!
Your story is inspiring, Karyn!!! Thanks for sharing. And glad your pause lead you to a new a healthier place where you’re in a position to enjoy your life.
Enjoyed the presentation. Very insightful. All success comes from the Almighty. So God willing keep success in perspective by remembering the Creator of all things and success will be granted to you.
Keep safe, strive hard and pray for peace!
Thank you for your feedback. And I echo your wish for peace.
Thank you, Karen!
That was actually what I wanted to hear in order to share with my career coaching clients. They are so often overloaded with jobs, duties, and responsibilities that their mind and bodies dream about rest. It should become clear for them, that the high-performance players act differently.
All the best to you!
I’ll never forget the time I met with a senior executive who shared the most important part of his leadership strategy – no Friday afternoon meetings. What I took away is that if he could find time amidst his responsibilities to create calm, I could, too. Thanks for sharing your feedback, Magdalena.
Great thanks to Karen and May bringing this important message to us.
Pause, ponder, prioritise are the important steps in this agility environment especially COVID-19 gives us rapid change and we need to schedule a time for ourselves to reflect and make a new choice.
Well said, Kenive – reflection time is critical to move in a new direction with speed and agility.
I love that the formula for achieving more is actually about doing less. This resonates with me. Last year I found myself like many working from home for the first time on a consistent basis. Not being able to push away from the computer or phone was a struggle. My 8 year old son helped me to really recognize this; he said, “Dad, I hate your computer and your phone!” What he was really communicating to me were his feelings that I was not available for him as I was always working. I recognized that my life was imbalanced and, more importantly, that I was not being loyal to the people in my life that mattered the most.
Karen, I am so glad to hear you say that more activity does not equate to more outcomes, more promotions, and more success. I think it leads to more burn-out and frustration and, as I learned, it can hurt those we love. I have been more mindful about taking breaks to “leave work and get some rest” including being more available to my son when he gets home from school. Recently, he asked me, “Dad, do you still work for that company?” which I consider a battle win in the war of work-life balance.
I’m looking forward to making the three Ps part of my routine.
Thanks!
What a great story, Geoffrey! Thanks for sharing your journey. Sounds like your son is part motivation, part validation.
My husband has had a long term serious illness and the video reminded me of something that he said to his doctors. “Don’t keep me alive just for the sake of it – keep me alive so that I can live!” We need to give ourselves permission to live and enjoy our work rather than just work….
I will certainly be using some of these tips to achieve that.
Sending my best to you and to your husband, Chris. Thanks for reminding us of what it means to live and to live well.
Loved you insights Karen! I find that the hardest part for me is to take something out of my schedule to make room for something new. Everything is so much fun. I want to learn more and accomplice more. To do so and to do it in the best possible way I always tend to tell myself that I need to do it all. Less than perfect is not good enough and that way, with so many parallell project, everything tend to take so much time to accomplice. I know if you let go of something in your life you can let in something new but it is just so hard do. Which one of the task is it that you need to let go in order reach your goal and be successful in you own way?
The question to consider is what do you want to be good at, Aviaja? And then assess how much time and effort you are investing there. One task I personally let go of this year is starting my day with email. Now I start my day with meditation, movement and gratitude. Then big creation tasks – like blogs or new content. Email – especially email that does not need a response – is now at the end of the day.