What does People leadership look like when growth depends on your managers and not just your systems?
In this episode of The Leader Lab, Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez, VP of People at SonderMind, joins Micaela Mathre to break down what it takes to scale teams, culture, and leadership in a fast-growing organization.
From her early career in employment law to leading People functions across startups and large organizations, Sara shares why the fundamentals of HR remain consistent: people are complex beings, and supporting them effectively requires both empathy and strategy. It’s also what makes this function uniquely industry-agnostic.
You’ll hear how Sara approaches one of the most overlooked challenges in scaling companies: developing managers early and intentionally. As she puts it, culture doesn’t scale through policies; it scales through managers.
She also shares why investing in manager training, especially training rooted in brain science, is not just a learning initiative, but a core business strategy.
Throughout the conversation, Sara offers a candid look at:
She also explores how her team is experimenting with AI, from internal tools that coach managers in real time to company-wide programs that build practical AI skills across functions.
At its core, Sara’s approach is simple but powerful: invest in your people early, equip your managers with the right tools, and create a culture where learning happens out loud.
About the Guest:
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez is the Vice President of People at SonderMind, where she partners with leaders to scale teams, strengthen culture, and build operating models that support sustainable growth in mental and behavioral healthcare. With over 15 years of experience across startups and global organizations, she has led People functions through rapid growth, transformation, and organizational change, always with a focus on building strong, human-centered teams.
Quote:
“Culture doesn’t scale through policies. It scales through your managers—and investing in them is a business strategy.” – Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez, VP of People at SonderMind
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Transcript
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 00:00 I’ve noticed, especially in many startups or many companies, is that if you wait until the organization feels overwhelmed, like it’s already too late. So I think I’m constantly just asking myself and my team, like, as we grow, how do we ensure that our managers are also growing? I think about that question often because when you do take the time to think about it at its core, I think the truth is that culture doesn’t scale through policies, right? It scales through your managers, and your managers are the people who are actually shaping how the work happens day to day. And so investing in manager development, I don’t think is just a learning initiative. I actually think it’s a business strategy.
Micaela Mathre 00:40
Welcome to the Leader Lab podcast. I’m Micaela Mathre, Chief Marketing Officer at LifeLabs Learning. If you’re a senior people leader, you’re navigating a workplace that’s changing faster than ever. This season, we’re exploring what it really takes to build resilient and adaptable leaders, managers, and teams. Let’s dive in. Welcome to the Leader Lab, everybody. So thrilled to have you all with us today. My name is Micaela Mathre. I am the Chief Marketing Officer at LifeLabs Learning. Today, I’m absolutely thrilled to be joined by Sara Marzitelli Sanchez. She is the Vice President of People at SonderMind, where she partners with leaders to scale teams, strengthen culture, and build the operating models that support sustainable growth in mental and behavioral healthcare.
Micaela Mathre 01:24
We will hear more about SonderMind, I’m sure, as the conversation goes on. But if you’re not familiar with them, they connect people with licensed therapists and psychiatrists nationwide, making high quality mental healthcare more accessible and personalized. So looking forward to diving into that a little bit more. Sara, in particular, brings over 15 years of experience working across venture backed startups and global organizations. She’s led people functions through rapi growth and transformation across high tech, real estate, tech, fitness, and consumer brands. We are so thrilled to have you. Welcome to the Leader Lab, Sara.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 01:58
Thank you. I’m very happy to be here and happy Friday. Yes, thank you.
Micaela Mathre 02:02
Thank you. Just so folks know, Sara, where are you beaming in from today?
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 02:06
I am actually in Victor, Idaho, uh, for those that don’t know, it’s about 30 minutes outside of Jackson hole. Usually give that landmark and people, people understand it. So happy to be here from the Midwest.
Micaela Mathre 02:20
So glad to have you, and I am calling in today from Charleston, South Carolina. So I’m really looking forward to theconversation. Let’s go ahead and dive in. We start every episode of The Leader Lab with the same question. We are obviously at LifeLab’s really interested and really committed to behavior change, and that is the focus of a lot of the work that we do. So I’m curious, what is one small behavioral shift that you have made recently as a leader, and can you tell us a little bit about the impact of that change?
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 02:51 Yeah, it’s a great question. And I love thinking about this one. For me, recently, I’ve really been working on particularly with my team asking one more question before offering a solution. So often in team settings or meetings, people are coming to me for my opinion. And I’m usually pretty quick to give it. I just sort of react. But I’m taking a moment to pause before I do that and ask more thoughtful questions to the team. And what’s been really interesting and insightful to watch from that is that people usually have the answers already. They more so just want validation. And so it’s great to see sort of them go back into their brains and uncover whatever solution it is that they were questioning that they need some thought
Micaela Mathre 03:37
That was such a great example, but takes conscious effort, right? I think especially I’ve noticed this in my own career, the further I’ve gone in my career, the more experience I’ve had, the more I’m like, Oh, let me jump in because I can see around the corner. But it’s really so critical. And I like your call that when you ask the question, you actually realize that they have a sense of where to go as well. And it’s just giving that space to really Yeah,
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 04:01
I think it’s more so been about validation for a lot of folks in a lot of ways. They’re already thinking of it. They’re already forming an idea. And they just want someone to say, hey, that’s the right direction. But I think if we just pause and ask a couple more questions, they kind of come to the conclusion on their own. So it’s really nice to see. And it’s just something
that I personally need to be better at if I’m being honest.
Micaela Mathre 04:21
Do you have a particular question in your back pocket that you tend to ask, or is it usually contextual to the conversation?
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 04:28
I think it depends on the situation. But I think the easiest one that comes to mind when I think about it is like, what do you think about that? Or why do you think that way? Or tell me what your thoughts are about whatever the topic is. And it usually just goes a little bit deeper into their own mindset and their framing of how they’re thinking about something. And
it’s almost like talking out loud when you answer that question, you’re almost coming to the conclusion yourself, which is great.
Micaela Mathre 04:51
Ooh, I like that. That’s a good one for folks to take away. All right. I’d love to hear a little bit more, Sara, about your background. So if you can give us a little career tour, what brought you to what you’re currently doing at SonderMind, tell us about kind of that journey.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 05:06
Like I want to say most to HR folks, I didn’t naturally start in HR. Actually, I started in the legal sector. So I initially thought that I wanted to go to law school, work in the public defender’s office, and I started working in house at law firms, and for big consumer organizations, and I was mostly focused on labor and employment law. And so a lot of my responsibilities and my function was really around supporting HR leaders, helping them navigate complex employee relations matters, dealing with lawsuits and garnishments and writing policy and procedure, you kind of name it.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 05:42
And these were really big companies, I mean, 15,000 to 100,000 people, I decided at some point, I can’t exactly remember when that I didn’t want to go to law school, I was at J crew at the time, and my boss was just really great, we still have a relationship today. And he said, Why don’t you spend some time shadowing some of the field HR team, you still do your regular job and see if you like that exposure, sort of the other end of HR. And I really enjoyed it. I was out in the field in stores, seeing things live, working through people problems from a different angle. And that was sort of my trajectory into HR.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 06:19
After that, I, I call it my first startup, I went to a really small women’s fitness brand, there was a big backing big company in the UK, but the US business was actually really growing pretty independently. The company was sweaty Betty, a lot of people might know it in the athleisure space. And it was my first foray into not just solely leading a people function and setting up everything from the ground up.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 06:42
But we were such a small team, I think I was the fifth corporate employee. We were doing e commerce and brick and mortar, I was setting up shop floors, we were building a website, we were doing influencer events, and it was actually really fun. It was, I was there for about two years, we opened a number of boutiques. And ultimately, after that role, I said, that was really fun. I really enjoyed that. But let me go back to big corporate America where I came from.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 07:13
And I went back to a really big consumer retail brand, you know, a couple weeks in, I realized, I think I made a mistake. I think I’m meant to be in the startup space. And I really did a lot of self reflecting, and figured out like, what are my non negotiables? Like, what’s important to me in my next role?
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 07:30
The New York HR community is so great, I connected with a number of leaders in the space. And one introduction led to another. And I met Brad Hargraves, who he’s the one of the original founders of General Assembly. And he was on his next biggest venture, which was in the real estate space, and co living was really big. And we work was sort of doing all that. And so fast forward a little bit, four startups later, I made my way to SonderMind.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 07:55
I’ve scaled companies, you know, from being as early as 65th employee to hundreds, to joining a couple hundred in and scaling to over 1000. And I’ve typically joined companies call it post series C, that means a lot of different things for different businesses, but there’s usually been a little or a base infrastructure on the people’s side.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 08:20
And my job was really to take it to the next level and build on that and there was there was a team in place and there was some foundational stuff in place, which was great. But again, it was really about scaling all of the programs and the tools and the processes and the systems and making sure we had the right people process and systems in place to grow.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 08:50
And so it’s been an incredible journey about four years later, and I’m still here and, you know, SonderMind is incredible because the mission is so important to what we’re doing. But I think the people at SonderMind are really what makes everything so much better.
Micaela Mathre 09:07
Hmm tell me a little bit about that. How would you describe the culture?
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 09:10
I would say if I reflect back, I was a little skeptical about going into mental health. Reason being, post-COVID, there was so much saturation in the market. All of these companies came up out of nowhere. They were trying to capture market share, whether it was clients or providers or both. And with that, quality really suffered was one observation I had.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 09:35
The second observation I had was, this isn’t true of everybody, so bear with me, but so many companies were preaching the importance of mental health, whatever product it was that they were selling. And when you dug deep into their cultures, you realized they didn’t treat their employees well. There was toxic work environments. They weren’t essentially walking the walk and talking the talk. And so I actually met the SonderMind team through a VC connection.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 10:03
And I met Mark Frank, who is co-founder and CEO. And he just had a different way of thinking about things. He was very intentional, really thoughtful. I could just tell immediately that he deeply cared about the people in his organization, and that really stuck out. And then obviously, I had to come to my own conclusions through that interview process and understand, are my instincts, can I validate them? I met a lot of the people there.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 10:30
And I think just what sticks out is everyone who works at SonderMind is either impacted directly or knows someone who is impacted directly by the challenges of getting good mental health or behavioral health care. And so I think that just leads to a more empathetic population of employee, which has its pros and it has its cons for sure. But how I described the culture is that people genuinely care about the people next to them. You’ll constantly hear new hires say, I know how busy everybody is, but it’s so great. No matter what question I ask or who I tap on the shoulder virtually or not, everybody is so willing to like stop their day, take the time out and really invest in whoever it might be to explain something or take them through something.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 11:17
We have values, of course, like everybody else does. But we have a couple that always stick out to me. One is called Lightful. It’s about assuming positive intent in others. And the other one’s about being bucket worthy. It means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. But for me, it’s about keeping your own cup full. And like you can only bring your best self to work if you’re taking care of everything else that’s important to you, family, friends, things outside of work.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 11:41
And I would say Mark and the leadership team really exude our values in a big way. Like they show up constantly every day and make you realize that, yes, we’re all here to support this great vision. And yes, we’re all here to work hard and push the boundaries and solve hard problems. But at its core, if you’re not taking care of yourself, first and foremost, how can you
help our business? And so I think that’s what really sticks out to me that continues to be true about Sonderrein and it’s just
really special.
Micaela Mathre 12:12
Wow. That’s so unique. And walking the walk, it really sounds like as well in terms of the leadership modeling for the team of the company. You have been in the HR function in so many different industries and so many different types of scales. So I’m curious, like how different is the HR function across industries? You just have such an interesting trajectory and background. Like it does it vary a lot. Do you see a lot of parallels? Is it more similar than one might think?
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 12:38
I actually think the fundamentals are probably consistent across any industry. I mean, at the end of the day, people are complex beings, right?
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 12:47
And so there’s the people component of HR and teams and scaling teams. And then there’s the business component too. And I think my lens has been, I just, I love learning. I love solving hard problems. I love challenging situations. I’m a huge builder at the end of the day. And I think it’s great that this is a particular role that can be so industry agnostic. Yes, there’s uphill battles you have to face in terms of understanding a new industry and a business model.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 13:21
And I will say this is my almost sixth year in the wider healthcare space. Healthcare is incredibly complex. I still feel like I’m learning every day, which is the most important thing to me. It’s just great. If you can take something that you learned from one business and apply it or evolve it to the next business, I think that’s really great.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 13:44
And so there are a lot of similarities in the teams and the companies, regardless of size or stage. But I think there’s also a lot of differences as well. And I think as long as you have a open mindset about like seeking to understand and learning and challenging, you can really make this career in any industry and that’s really great.
Micaela Mathre 14:05
And what I’m hearing from you as well is kind of leading with the curiosity, first and foremost. You’ve been in these senior roles leading the HR function at so many organizations, which tells me something, I’m going to assume here, that you’ve been able to really understand the business model.
Micaela Mathre 14:21
As you come on board, like, do you have any tips for our listeners? Like, what does that look like? Obviously, like you lead with this people forward lens, but you also seem to understand the mechanics of the business and how to speak that language with the management team. Can you talk a little bit about, like, when you first come on board, how do you think about understanding the business and the mechanics of business?
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 14:42
I think it is the most important thing any leader, not just an HR leader, but any leader should do in their role. What I’ve done and what has constantly worked for me, and I will caveat this and say I do sometimes question if my approach, which I will share in a minute, is scalable and if I can keep doing it.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 15:03
But what’s constantly worked for me is every time I join a new business, my biggest priority is meeting with every single employee in the business at every level. Now, I will say the largest that I’ve joined has been 300 and that was a challenge. I used to have it be time constrained and I recognize that I can’t do that. But the reason that I do that is is twofold.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 15:28
One, it intimately lets me understand the business very quickly. What are people’s roles and functions? What are the tools? What are the systems? How do we make money? How do we reach out to our customers? What are the challenges in the business? And I get it from a lot of different lenses and angles. So that’s part one.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 15:49
Part two, it lets me meet the people face on and sort of create those relationships early on and sort of removes that barrier of, I hate to say this out loud, but HR is scary. And when you put a face to a name and you start to understand people’s roles at every level more intimately, they also recognize that you’re a human and can be authentic and are actually here to help.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 16:14
And so the result of that practice that I’ve been consistently doing lets me connect the dots across the business and across departments to say, I heard this thing over here, but I also heard this thing over here. I wonder if they both know that they’re having that challenge. So it gives me an understanding of how the teams and the functions are working together.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 16:36
But it also gives me sort of this 30,000 feet view to say like, what do we need to do? Do we need to fix anything? And it helps me shape my own people strategy. But again, I think it’s so important, especially for smaller teams or if you’re new into an organization, it creates rapport really quickly and it accelerates your learning of the business just so fast. And that is the most important thing.
Micaela Mathre 17:06
So fascinating. Do you have a template for those conversations? Or are they a little bit more organic? Like, how do you know?
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 17:11
And I intentionally don’t want a template for those things. I usually just frame it as like, hey, I’m new here, I’m coming to the business, this is my role, this is how I can help you. I would love to understand a little bit more about you, the person, but also what you’re doing and what your biggest challenge is. Like any conversation, you get all sorts of information from that, that can evolve. And I like to keep it pretty organic, no formal agendas. My approach I think is a little more organic and authentic. And so that just aligns with how I like to operate.
Micaela Mathre 17:46
Great. And to your comment earlier about building trust with people, I think that also comes through. I don’t have a formula for this. It’s a personal connection as much as it is you gathering context that you would then use together.
Micaela Mathre 17:58
Shifting gears a little bit. So about a year ago, the team at SonderMind came to Life Labs. And we have for the past year been working together on some foundational manager training for the organization. So I’d love to pick your brain and just hear a little bit more from you on maybe starting a little bit more broad, how you think about manager development, what that looks like. You can speak specifically to the scale of SonderMind, what it looks like from some of the work we’ve done together is that you’ve been very intentional about building out scalable programming internally for managers. So tell me a little bit about your philosophy, how you’ve done this at SonderMind and previous organizations.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 18:42
Like I mentioned, I’ve always sort of run relatively lean people teams, regardless of the size of business that I’ve been
involved in. I think that varies based on the organization. My general philosophy is if you have the right, the right people,
number one, the right processes and the right tools, like no matter what size your team is, you can make things scalable.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 19:05
And for SonderMind, and actually, as I reflect on it, I think this might be the third company I’ve rolled out life labs at, can’t
fully recall. The reason that we sort of went in that direction is my team isn’t big, like I mentioned.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 19:20
And so I’m, there’s a lot of things that we do internally that we can support managers, but when it comes to being an expert
in people manager training, I tend to like to outsource where we need to and where it makes sense.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 19:34
And so for our manager training at SonderMind and previously that made sense for our business at the time, I think what’s
important is so many people or companies or leaders assume that because someone is a really great individual contributor, they will be a great people manager. You want to believe that to be true, right? But that is just, it’s just not always the case.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 20:03
And while SonderMind’s headcount has relatively stayed flat, I would say, give or take over the last couple of years, one of
the things that’s really important to us is about promoting from within, giving people opportunities, giving people, you know,
unique career paths, trying different things in different parts of the business. And we’ve done that with managers and we’ve
done that with individual contributors.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 20:24
But what we’ve done that with individual contributors, we really see, hey, this great person is awesome at their work. Let’s
put them over a team because we think they’ll be awesome at that too. And you realize they’re not necessarily equipped
with the tools that they need. And for some people, I think the thought often comes to them that says like, it’s people
management. It should be, you know, pretty straightforward, like how hard could it be?
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 20:52
And I think the biggest challenge that folks tend to have is adapting from that individual contributor mindset to that people
manager mindset. And so we’ve we’ve rolled out multiple cohorts for either new people, managers, people who have never
people managed before or just people who have been managing before.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 21:15
But we wanted to put everyone through the same training to ensure that there is sort of this SonderMind way as part of it.
And it’s always just a really great refresher for folks, too, who have been people managers for a long time. There’s so many
different tools and tricks and different tidbits of information that help make people better managers. And we really felt that
we could create these small cohorts of people and sort of align people with different backgrounds, but maybe in the same
phase of their people management lifecycle and give them a little more focused training.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 21:49
And I think one of the reasons that we just were big fans of Life Labs, I will say, because it’s rooted in brain science and a lot
of that sort of is the the core of how we think about things at SonderMind, too. And so equipping managers with support,
whether they’re transitioning to a new people manager role or just coming into the business, I think is just important to give
them more tools in their toolbox to be successful.
Micaela Mathre 22:19
Hmm. That’s such an interesting parallel. I didn’t even think about that, but the work that you do at SonderMind is so rooted
in the sciences, right? And candidly is one of the reasons I joined LifeLabs as well, because I’ve been through manager
training in the past, also my backgrounds in scaling startups. And when I took our workshops, I was like,
Micaela Mathre 22:35
Oh, this is the most relevant and full training part of and even now we actually just went and put our leadership team
through manager core in January. I’ll take it, but we’re like, we need to refresh and kind of level set. And I think there’s a lot
of value in that shared vernacular. You may have, you know, had a method for giving feedback at a previous organization
when you come to, you know, a new company with 20 years of experience.
Micaela Mathre 23:06
But giving everybody a similar framework to operate off of, I think is a multiplier in ways that you just don’t get if people are
kind of, you know. I read this management book 15 years ago, I’m coming from this corporation where I did nine months of
manager training, like it’s just exactly inputs were there specific signals when you kind of first came on board at SonderMind
that you’re like, Oh, I need to think about manager training a little bit differently than maybe they had before you were
there.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 23:34
I will say we really didn’t have anything when I joined. And so we started with, what can we do as an individual team, right?
What can we do to immediately support people, even though we don’t have like a full program in place? And so we came up
with our own internal, we call it like a manager best practices guide.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 23:58
Call it a two-page document that the second someone joins or becomes a new manager, it’s like, hey, we’re going to get you
into training. We can’t do that just yet, but here’s some self-learning tools that you can use to sort of get up to speed on like
how we think about this just fundamentally sort of high-level expectations on how to operate as a people leader.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 24:17
And so they also are partnering with their HRBP as well to sort of get that introduction, if you will. I think if I think about it, I
think timing really matters with these kinds of investments, right? Because they are investments. Right now, or maybe a
year ago, when we brought this on, we were hiring a number of roles across the business, right? All different functions,
which meant teams were growing, new managers were emerging.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 24:43
I’d say expectations were increasing too. Our business has been growing 40% year over year, and that makes things harder.
And like I mentioned previously, we do do a lot of promotion with it, which is really core to who we are. But reflecting back, I
think what I’ve noticed, especially in many startups or many companies, is that if you wait until the organization feels
overwhelmed, like it’s already too late.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 25:07
So I think I’m constantly just asking myself and my team, like as we grow, how do we ensure that our managers are also
growing? I think about that question often because when you do take the time to think about it at its core, I think the truth is
that culture doesn’t scale through policies, right? It scales through your managers, and your managers are the people who
are actually shaping how the work happens day to day. And so investing in manager development, I don’t think is just a
learning initiative. I actually think it’s a business strategy. It’s so interesting.
Micaela Mathre 25:40
You said a couple of things that stood out to me, and it has actually been a theme on the podcast. And I’ve heard from a
number of other guests around promoting from within. So I think some of the best companies, some of the most effective
companies ever are organizations that build really strong culture, promote from within, and then they grow that.
Micaela Mathre 26:00
And it is surprising to me how often that promotion from within does not come with the support and systems to make those
folks effective. In what we’ve described as a very different role, to go from impactful individual contributor to somebody
suddenly who’s solving. You know, you and I were talking before we started recording about context shifting. And how we do
that as leaders in our organizations all day, every day. But how much of a context shift it is to go from that IC role into that
manager level role and that support being like really critical.
Micaela Mathre 26:39
And I loved your comment, Sara, about like, if you’re feeling the pain from it, which I would sometimes describe as like, I
think we oftentimes hear from folks on employee engagement surveys is where some of this tends to come out. They’re like,
Ooh, like we have inconsistencies or managers who are underperforming based on some surveys.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 26:57
So we have to do X, right?
Micaela Mathre 27:01
Yes! How to go do that thing or, you know, regrettable attrition. I think oftentimes like we hear this and I think it’s absolutely
true. People don’t leave bad jobs. They leave bad managers. Of course.
Micaela Mathre 27:12
The other side of the coin that I think a lot about these days is just how much pressure is on that middle management tier,
right? We have just a totally different context and we’ll talk about this in a second.
Micaela Mathre 27:26
I want to pick your brain on kind of AI in the world of HR, but we have a totally different business context now across every
single business when we think about the impact of AI and I think about the expectations that we’re now putting on people
managers to manage tech in a different way.
Micaela Mathre 27:44
So I’m kind of curious in this new world in the new context of what I think of is like the AI transformed workplace. How do you
see managers who are succeeding and doing really well and maybe those that are struggling and need a different kind of
support?
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 28:00
I think maybe one pattern that I would say probably stands out pretty consistently, the strongest managers probably see
their role as developing people, not just delivering outcomes, delivery outcomes is obviously important, but they see those
things go hand in hand.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 28:15
When I’m thinking about SonderMind in particular, I think the best managers, they’re clear about expectations. I think they
create psychological safety. And I think this is something that I personally like to do. They give feedback regularly instead of
saving it for formal reviews. That’s really important. And it’s really important to emphasize the word feedback.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 28:41
Feedback does not always have to be negative feedback. It can be positive feedback. And that is just as important because
when you’re giving both regularly, it just creates a better relationship and dynamic and trust between the manager and the
employee to have more open and honest conversations.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 29:03
I think the best managers are the ones that recognize that also management is probably not about having all the right
answers, right? It’s where they are creating the environment where their teams can do their best work. And I think if I think
about the ones maybe historically who’ve struggled or are still operating under an old mindset or as an individual
contributor. I think the ones that struggle in that transition are probably the ones that are still focused on solving problems
themselves, rather than enabling their teams to solve problems. And that shift from doing the work to leading the work is
actually one of the biggest transitions in leadership, and it is so hard for people. It really is incredibly hard.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 29:49
I’m thinking back to a conversation I had yesterday with one of our Sundermind people leaders who was an incredibly strong
people leader. And she said, I need to stop doing this myself. I need to remember I have to delegate. And me delegating also
challenges my own team and gives them opportunities to learn and it’s a really good reminder that even someone who’s
been managing for a number of years, it’s how do you empower your team to do work and you be the leader of also doing
that.
Micaela Mathre 30:22
So interesting. So we, I don’t know if you’ve taken it yet, but we just launched a workshop on delegation. And I’ve sat in on a
number of these, we have our memberships of public workshops. And something that comes up often in that is it’s a mental
shift.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 30:37
It’s totally a mental shift.
Micaela Mathre 30:40
It’s like, okay, I understand. And we have some great tools that we teach in the workshop on how to delegate, but getting to
the mindset of when it makes sense and how you have to let go of control in a way, right? Like you’re literally like new way
of, yeah, producing results that are not like you own them at the end of the day, and they’re not you doing them.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 31:06
Yeah, I think it’s really hard for people to get out of that. Well, I can do it faster, and I can probably do it better. So let me
just do it myself. But like, that is not your job anymore. Or that’s not your primary job anymore, right? It’s it’s a really, really
hard mental shift.
Micaela Mathre 31:22
The other thing I totally agree and have conversations like this with my directors often as well Like the other thing is that I
try and remind folks. And this is kind of going back to the talking about the business model. I always remind them I’m like
that doesn’t scale you don’t scale like we have a place where you are stepping into this role.
Micaela Mathre 31:41
You did a great job in the previous role, but I now need you to be a multiplier and you can’t be so in the weeds on
everything. Or you won’t be able to scale and I think that and and just candid conversations. I’ve been having with my
leaders is you have runway to fail.
Micaela Mathre 31:57
I’m like, okay. It’s okay if you produce something that it’s not as good as it would have been if you were doing the work start
to finish. That’s we’re gonna learn, we’re gonna do better, we’re gonna get feedback. And I think that’s where feedback is so
critical though.
Micaela Mathre 32:13
Like you were saying like having that culture of like you don’t hold on to feedback and you don’t keep it until that exact right
moment. Or the feedback conversation or the one-on-one. It’s a culture around like no we do this in real time because then
we all learn and grow faster.
Micaela Mathre 32:28
Are there other things you’ve done that’s on your mind to really kind of instill like a culture of feedback?
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 32:34
We are evolving and learning and trying to get better every day. But we still do, you know, your annual performance review
and your mid-year performance review. We still do all of those things.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 32:46
We have encouraged and constantly reiterate that like feedback in the moment is so important. So whether that’s, they’re
hearing it through formal training or reminders or whatever, I think it’s constantly something we’re saying. You have to tell
people things. I think, I don’t remember if it’s like six or seven times before they actually understand it or hear it, right?
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 33:06
And so we constantly have to reiterate that message. And we give people tools and resources and we coach them how to do
these things to a manager who I don’t talk to often, messaged me the other day and said, hey, I really want to give your
PeopleOps business partner some incredible feedback over the last few months. And I said, thank you so much. I’ll happily
share that. But why don’t you go put that in Slack?
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 33:30
Because the power of public recognition goes so far for people and it’s so underutilized. And so whether I’m in an executive
meeting or a wider team meeting and you hear someone say this person’s so great, might be a Slack message or an email
say, why don’t you go shout them out?
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 33:48
There’s something psychologically really important that that employee knows the whole company just saw this message
about me. That’s really, really great. And that’s so important. So it’s about reinforcing the positive feedback, again, and
some of the opportunistic feedback.
Micaela Mathre 34:03
One of the things honestly that has always really stood out to me about the feedback workshop that LifeLabs teaches is that
what you were kind of talking about the end there, the micro yes of like a quick Slack message to be like, Hey, I have a little
feedback for you on that client call. Let me know when it’s a good time. You give that a heads up that feedback’s coming.
Micaela Mathre 34:21
We have such a great culture about LifeLabs that sometimes folks will say, uh, can we talk about that tomorrow? I don’t
want to do it right now. I got stuff to finish. And it’s like, yeah, absolutely. Like I can hold and we’re not waiting three weeks
cause that’s not the business, but I think that micro yes is like so useful.
Micaela Mathre 34:39
And even, even for positive feedback, just, you know, like I have some like great, we call them diamonds from like our
Playing Cards method. That it’s like, I have a diamond for you. That’s really like specific. And in real time, just sharing that
with folks, because I, I agree your comment about public recognition. And I think we all instinctively know this, like
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 35:00
We know it. We know it. We just don’t do it.
Micaela Mathre 35:02
We just don’t do it, because it’s like we’ve experienced it. I can tell you the last time that somebody said something positive
about me in the workplace in a public space. I can literally recall it right now. Yeah. Yeah. I know what it was and it made me
feel so good.
Micaela Mathre 35:14
And you know, when you’re having really tough weeks or you’re just like, gosh, am I even doing a good job? You go back to
that space. This came out and I think that’s just such a good reminder of like simple and yet it takes time and intentionality.
Micaela Mathre 35:30
And I think something as a leader that I’ve really tried to do as well is be like really specific in those diamonds that I’m
selling. Because it’s not as effective to say like, oh, you did a great job leading that client call. It’s like way more effective to
be like, here are the three things I heard you do on that client call that were so exceptional. And then people feel like they’re
seen. Like I feel like you paid attention.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 35:52
I got some advice. I don’t remember when but I think it’s such good advice. I would love to pass it forward, which is I put a
reminder in my calendar because I personally live and breathe by my calendar is just the who I am and how I operate. But I
have a reminder in my calendar every Friday to give positive feedback to my team members, whether it’s through Slack or
directly.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 36:12
So when you think about it, like, absolutely, there’s got to be something that someone on your team has done great in the
last two weeks. And if there isn’t my question, are they doing the right things? And are they focused on the right things? And
even if it’s small, like you mentioned, you, you did really great in this call, you did great leading that trading, whatever it
might be, you can find something that is worth sharing in a very positive way that just gives people that extra boost.
Micaela Mathre 36:38
I love that. It’s like the practice of gratitude journaling, right? We’re like, at the end of the day, back about the day, and
you’re like, what was good about the day? It’s like that for the workplace. It’s like what was a positive thing.
Micaela Mathre 36:49
I’d love to shift gears a little bit and talk about AI. We can’t host this podcast without talking about it. It’s everywhere. You
know, I think we are very much living in the AI transformed workplace. Curious, especially given kind of the size and scale of
Sondra Mine and also your team. Is there any experimentation that your team has done with AI around coaching tools or
training, upscaling? And were there things that you’ve done where it’s actually added value in your leadership
development? Talk to me about about what’s what’s worked for you. This is top of mind for so many of our listeners.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 37:28
I can’t talk about AI at SonderMind without giving like massive props and shout out to a company called Kinfolk and what
Kinfolk initially was set out to do was to be an integrated bot, if you will, embedded into Slack that we train on our
knowledge base that answers everyday questions for employees. We’re really training it to be an agent and to be a, let’s call
it, in the simplest way, a people operations business partner in your back pocket for your manager.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 38:03
And so we just went through our annual Career Connect, which is our review process. You know, we can have managers talk
to it about like, how do I give difficult feedback to this person? And we can embed learnings from LifeLabs or learnings from
our other trainings so that we’re coaching SonderPal to coach them in the right way and like reuse tools and things in their
back pocket that they’ve already been given. And so that’s just one component of it.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 38:28
And then ultimately it will be an agent that can like go make changes in our systems like request time off and it updates in
UKG or change a title or a manager or whatever it might be. And so that alone, I think has really just taken off in a big way to
the point where other teams have now come to us and said, we want to take Kinfolk and we want to build it on our, you
know, knowledge base and use it for training and other different avenues. So it’s been really cool to see.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 38:59
And I don’t know what the numbers are, but if you think about 75% of tickets that we were constantly answering, how many
hours and time and dollars is that back in my team’s pocket that they can focus on different things? We spent a lot of last
year, I think like a lot of companies just understanding what are the tools that people are using. And while people are using a
lot of tools, adoption hasn’t been consistent, right? I think that’s probably people’s biggest challenge.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 39:30
All of these companies and these CEOs are saying, you have to use AI, you have to use AI. And people are like, what the hell
does that mean? I don’t know where to start. And so we’re building this program that we’re going to launch at our company-
wide offsite, which is in May, and it’s going to start really basic. I mean, if you don’t even know where to start, whatever tool
you’re using, Claude, Chachibiti, Gemini, you can describe to it what your role is and what your scope is and ask it itself, how
do I use you to be better at my job, right?
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 40:05
And so modeling that for people in real time so they can actually see will be great. And then we’re going to do this entire
workshop where people learn some basic skills or some basic prompts, go away, build something, we’ll give them specific
tasks based on what function or role they’re in, they come back and they share.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 40:23
And then post the event, we’ve actually built out a 12-week program that the whole company will go to where each week,
the challenges get a little more progressive and a little more difficult, if you will. And we’re going to gamify it and give prizes
and all of that and make it really fun. But ultimately, the goal will be to essentially tag every role at Sound Remind to some
level of AI fluency, right?
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 40:48
To your point, is this role a multiplier? Is this someone who just needs basic skill set? And our whole goal is we don’t want AI
to replace anybody, but AI is here to stay. And so we are using our company resources to equip you all to be better in your
jobs. But you also need this as a life skill because it is not going away.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 41:10
So let us show you how to use some of this and show you the cool things that you could do in work and outside of work and
experiment and try and fail and let’s see what you can do. I mean, like I mentioned, we use AI for weekly updates. I
sometimes joke that I can’t even turn on a computer, but I’ve created my AI agent to scour my Slack and my Gmail and
write my update for me so I don’t have to spend time thinking about what are all the things that I did this week? Where did I
spend time? It’s just taken so much of the not so fun stuff of everyone’s job. Yes, and streamlined it. I got rid of it, but made
it easier.
Micaela Mathre 41:56
To your point, too, of bringing up the time for you and your team to focus on some of the more high leverage and impactful
things. I’d love to know if you kind of think big picture about this on your mind, like how much of the AI fluencing upscaling is
falling on your team to drive on? Is that really coming through?
Micaela Mathre 42:13
I think one of the themes we’ve seen on the podcast is literally these initiatives around internal upscaling. And I think so
many organizations are, yeah, whether it’s experimenting, launching actual programming, it’s coming from within the HR
function, which I think is really exciting for HR.
Micaela Mathre 42:30
I’m like, this is a great time to bring some of these changes, but the people leader has such a unique voice in. Yes, but
here’s some of the things like what you just shared with me was so unique around like, you know, everybody’s afraid AI is
going to take their job.
Micaela Mathre 42:47
So some of the framing you’re doing for your team is like, we want to teach you how to use it because it’s here to stay. It can
help you in working in life. And that makes it a little scary. And I think that’s just a different framing than maybe if it was
coming from, you know, within your technology function or your product. I think it’s a little bit different. So I’m curious, like,
where does that fall? Is it really one of your initiatives and one of your key focus points?
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 43:11
It is an initiative for me, but I would say we have such an awesome grassroots effort at SonderMind. There’s so many people
experimenting across the business, which is really cool to see. So think about it in terms of like, I’m leaning the company
programming, but it’s being shaped and facilitated by internal SonderMind employees. People who have decided that like,
they really want to invest in this.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 43:37
And we’re seeing some of our most junior employees, like really get, just create the most awesome things, right? And we
have employees teaching other employees across the business. We actually have a Slack channel dedicated to just AI
learning. We don’t require people to join it, but if you want to join it, you can. And we have monthly workshops that are led
by individual employees who more or less volunteer to say, hey, there’s something you want to teach or learn. And they
showcase like, these are cool things that you can do. And we actually have a lot of participants come to each of them every
month. So it’s really great to see.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 44:14
I think there’s definitely parts like any business where people have skepticism, right? I’m not gonna say that’s not true,
where people are probably nervous. But again, I think the framing is like, this is like when the internet came out, right? Like
you have to embrace it because if you don’t, you’re gonna be left behind.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 44:34
And one of our shining stars at SonderMind is like, we want this to be a career-defining place for you to work. And that
means different things to different people. But if we can equip you with skills to hone your job and be better and to hone you
in life and be more efficient and better, like I think that’s just really incredible.
Micaela Mathre 44:53
And it goes back to what you said earlier, too, I’ve got the role of like good managers and leaders being both about
outcomes and as much as people development as a key part of that. Thanks for all that insight, Sara.
Micaela Mathre 45:05
I think you shared like such great things with our listeners that were both like tactical. And it’s so helpful just to get under
the hood a little bit and know what is working. What are you learning? Where are you going with things?
Micaela Mathre 45:17
So our final question we like to close out with is really a chance for you to share with our audience one small behavioral shift
that you would recommend for listeners who want to build more resilient, adaptable teams. I think it’s a nice segue off of
what you just said, which is the AI transform workplace requires us to be more resilient and adaptable than ever before. So
I’m curious if there’s a behavioral shift that you’d recommend.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 45:47
Based on what we just talked about, maybe one small shift, I think is to normalize learning out loud. I think we talked about
this a little bit, like sometimes things don’t go as planned. And I think often people are probably looking to assign blame or,
you know, maybe taking time to like pause and reflect and say like, what did we learn from this?
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 46:13
I am working on trying to constantly be better here too and really encourage others to stop and ask that question. Like what
did we learn from this? How can we improve this going forward? I think it really helps change the tone of the conversation
from judgment to curiosity.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 46:30
And it’s undermined, you know, one of our core values is authenticity. And I think this is one of the ways that it really shows
up in practice. To me, authenticity isn’t just about being open or transparent. That is part of it. But I think it’s about leaders
willing to acknowledge when something didn’t go perfectly, when they’re still figuring something out, or when they learn
something the hard way, or, you know, maybe simply just when they didn’t know the answer.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 46:56
I think when leaders model that kind of behavior, it creates permission for everyone to do the same. I used to be so afraid of,
you know, showing up and not knowing the answer to the question. But now it’s so valuable to say, I don’t know, but I will
find out. Let me come back to you on that. And that’s really, really important.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 47:17
And I think, you know, resilient teams aren’t the ones that avoid mistakes. I think they’re the ones that learn faster. They
learn faster than the challenges, they evolve. And I think that really comes back to leaders being authentic, just authentic
enough to like, learn out loud and learn out loud themselves.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 47:37
We often say it sometimes also it’s undermined that done is better than perfect. And that’s sometimes harder for people to
grasp as well, right? Like it’s okay, let’s take risks, let’s try, let’s push the boundaries, let’s fail together and learn from it.
Micaela Mathre 47:52
I love that, especially because as we’ve been talking about, so much of what we are tackling, facing, experiencing in the
workplace today, we haven’t been here before. It’s like uncharted territory.
Micaela Mathre 48:03
And so I love that concept of learning out loud, and also we are modeling that. And I think one of the best ways to model
that is, like you said, just say, I don’t know. Like, I actually don’t know. I don’t know what it looks like to do this effectively in
this workplace. But we’re going to figure it out. We’re going to learn together.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 48:22
Figure it out together, we’re in this together. We succeed as a team and we lose as a team, you know, or we got this.
Micaela Mathre 48:30
That’s such a great message. Thank you so much for joining us today on the leader lab. Sara, I have thoroughly enjoyed the
conversation. Thanks for having me find you or follow up with you. What is the best way to get touch? Are you active on
LinkedIn? Give us the rundown.
Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez 48:44
I’m active on LinkedIn. If there’s any active listeners from Denver, would love to meet up in real life. Big, big fan of that. And
then my email is saramarzitelli@sonderMind.com. It’s always a great way to reach out to
Micaela Mathre 48:58
Lovely. Wonderful. Thank you so much.