144: Middle Managers, Maximum Impact, with Natasha Kehimkar

Resilience isn’t a solo grind or a wellness checklist—it’s a system that lives in people, teams, and the way an organization actually works under pressure. 

We sit down with strategic advisor and executive team coach Natasha Kehimkar to reframe resilience as connection. When pressure spikes, leaders often go inward—exactly when community and connection matter most. 

Natasha explains why belonging is a performance driver, how isolation quietly erodes collaboration and trust, and organizational resilience. 

Most corporate playbooks cover finance, IT, and safety, but skip the messy middle where strategy fails: people. Natasha lays out the building blocks—aligned leadership behaviors, psychological safety, and shared learning frameworks—and makes a compelling case for investing in middle managers. This is your core, the layer that translates direction into daily action and carries most employees through change. We break down why training alone rarely sticks, how to scaffold learning with real scenarios and feedback, and ways to turn off‑the‑shelf content into habits that fit your context.

If you care about engagement, delivery speed, and reputation, you need a resilience strategy that goes beyond slogans. Walk away with a clearer blueprint for connection, alignment, and practical leadership development that strengthens your culture without soft‑pedaling performance. 

Natasha Kehimkar is a strategic advisor, executive team coach, and organizational transformation expert. Natasha and her team at Malida Advisors enable leaders and organizations to level up and thrive, address unhealthy friction, and drive transformation through expert coaching, inclusive leadership, and high-impact people strategies.

You can learn more about Natasha on LinkedIn.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Framing Resilience & Personal Backstory
• 4:30 Reflecting, Learning, and the Lemon Analogy
• 6:35 Introducing the Resilience at Work Model
• 9:45 Connection, Community, and Leader Isolation
• 13:55 Vulnerability, Safety, and Trust Erosion
• 17:55 Purpose, Values, and Self-Knowledge
• 21:35 Mindset, Meaning, and Safer Self-Disclosure
• 24:35 Assessments as Low-Risk Dialogue Tools
• 27:45 Team Dynamics and Assumption-Busting
• 29:35 Defining Organizational vs. Team Resilience
• 32:05 The Core: Why Middle Managers Matter

Transcript

Natasha Kehimkar: 0:00

I also think about the investment in middle managers. We underestimate the impact of our middle managers. And when we think about an organization being resilient, the bulk of the population reports to people in those first and second line manager roles.

Manya Chylinski: 0:21

Hello, and welcome to Notes on Resilience. I'm your host, Mania Chelinsky. My guest today is Natasha Kahimkar. She's a strategic advisor, executive team coach, and organizational transformation expert with Melita Advisors. We talked about personal resiliency, organizational resiliency, team resiliency, what are they all and why do they matter? It was a very interesting conversation, I think you're going to enjoy. Welcome, Natasha. I'm so glad we're talking today.

Natasha Kehimkar: 0:56

It's a pleasure to be here, Manya. Thank you for having me.

Manya Chylinski: 0:59

Well, to get us started, before we get into the topic of resilience and compassion, what is one thing that you've done in any area of your life that you never thought you would do?

Natasha Kehimkar: 1:12

That is a really great question. Because I'm usually game for pretty much anything that I never thought I would do. I don't know. You've stumped me.

Manya Chylinski: 1:22

So maybe you just have a started life with a really big imagination. And you you haven't been able to think of anything that you haven't done yet.

Natasha Kehimkar: 1:31

I mean, there's stuff I won't do, but uh if somebody offers, is there stuff I won't like I haven't done? My mother raised me to be bold and she wanted me to be self-sufficient, and so that's what I am. Partly because of her will and and my will as well, but it was uh the world's your oyster. It is up to you what you achieve. Wow.

Manya Chylinski: 1:56

I love that. I love that you just do the things that you want to do. Yeah, excellent. Well, thank you for sharing that. And let's segue into the topic of resilience because I imagine you also consider yourself a very resilient person.

Natasha Kehimkar: 2:14

Yeah. Um, I have a group of close uh friends, uh, we're all former chief people officers. And at one point they called me a survivor. And I thought, I haven't been through that many difficult things. And they said, Well, yes, you have.

Manya Chylinski: 2:30

It's interesting you say that. The first time someone else called me a survivor, and it was a I'd not thought of myself in that regard, it was a little shocking to hear that outside perspective.

Natasha Kehimkar: 2:45

Yes. And one thing that I find really interesting is we don't consider ourselves that special for having worked through whatever we work through. And yet that also sometimes means that we don't reflect on our progress. So we tend to look at the horizon line and don't look back and say, oh, look what I achieved. I can totally do it again.

Manya Chylinski: 3:07

I think I read somewhere that where you and I are today is where you and I wanted each of us to be five years ago or two years ago. And to remember that we have made that progress. It's why is it so easy to forget what we've done and just be looking forward all the time?

Natasha Kehimkar: 3:25

That's a very good question, Mania. I think it's something to do with our more of an achievement culture. One of the things that's actually a hallmark of resilience is the ability to learn from past experiences. So, at least for me, speaking for myself, as I've gotten older, I am more aware of who I am and how I'm showing up. I'm more conscious of what my experiences were and how I am owning them and how I am using them in challenges that I'm facing right now, today. But it's that lack of time to reflect. I do wonder if it's a bit of a cultural construct that we have put in place that we're always competing, sometimes with ourselves, looking ahead, looking ahead, looking ahead, and not reflecting on our learnings. What did we learn from that experience? What did we do well? What would we do differently? Sometimes we don't want to look at it. And so the analogy I have is I really do not like the statement when life hands you lemons, make lemonade. I really believe preserve your lemons, like create preserved lemons. What do you do when you preserve lemons? You are transforming them. Rind that you couldn't eat before, you now can eat. It's got a depth to it, and there is a uh uniqueness to it that you don't get from eating a regular lemon. Preserving your lemons means you have to put it on the shelf for a period of time or keep it in the fridge for a period of time. So my perspective is I may not be comfortable looking at what's just happened. I may put that on the shelf for a period of time. But eventually, if I take it off the shelf and I re-examine it, there are things I can learn. There are new flavors for me to gain.

Manya Chylinski: 5:05

So I really like that analogy. Thank you for sharing that. Um, I also really like lemons. So both lemonade and preserved lemons are something I would be happy to have. You know, you were talking about resilience, and you have done some work with the resilience at work model. Can you tell us a little bit what is that? And what are you seeing as most effective in leaders today?

Natasha Kehimkar: 5:30

So I really was looking at this topic of resilience at the beginning of the pandemic because all these popular, popular publications kept saying resilience, resilience, resilience. And all we kept hearing were sleep, eat properly, go for a walk. And most of us, our work days are packed. There is no walk. Or if it's a walk, it's not a walk by myself, it's a walk and talk, right? I am on a call while I am walking with you and we are doing work. My brain is never fully in nature doing a walk. The resilience at work model is it's fascinating. So it's research-based, it's been published work, and it's started with research into hospital in hospital settings. And often you'll read about resilience when it comes to first responders, for example. But the model identifies seven critical elements for individual resilience, but there's also team resilience and leader resilience. And what's so remarkable about it is that there is, of course, self-care is there, but it is but one element. One of my favorite elements out of the model, uh, which comes out of Australia, by the way, is uh out of these seven components, the one that I think is talked about the absolute least is the idea of being connected. What does connected mean? It means having a sense of belonging. You are a part of a community. What do you usually see when a leader is going through major pressure and major stress? They go inside. Yes. They hibernate. Leaders will go inside of themselves. They will go inside their shell. They tend not to be as connected and as in the network as you would expect, as in normal times, as in regular times. In high pressure moments, they hide. But one of the critical components of resilience is about staying connected, staying in community, finding your network. Now, maybe if you're in a toxic work environment, your community is not your peers. That may be the case. But your community might be your network. It might be the people you've worked with in previous organizations. Maybe you get together once a quarter like I used to with some of my colleagues, former colleagues. We get together once a quarter. We're all in different places. That's how we sort of learned and kept connected to the magic that we had as a as colleagues once upon a time. And this was a way for us to get through difficult times in our own lives and our own organizations, but be together with others who are there to support us and we know mean well for us.

Manya Chylinski: 8:06

Wow, that community and that connection is such an important piece of the concept of resilience. And I look at my own experiences and times when I pulled in and hibernate and sort of locked the door and kept other people out versus the times when I really reached out to people. And I can see a difference in my own response and how I feel about what the situation was that was happening. When we're talking about leaders in particular, I love that this model looks at personal resilience traits, but also team resilience and leadership resilience, because I'm one who argues that, you know, we all are pretty resilient, but we're living in systems that are impacting us and they need to be resilient and paying attention to our needs as well. But you think about leaders in particular, and they are not necessarily wanting to share what their challenges are, like whether they've been through a trauma or that something is happening in their life right now. When people don't share those stories, how is that showing up in the workplace or like in the teams that we're working in?

Natasha Kehimkar: 9:19

When these challenges go unspoken, they start to manifest in sometimes subtle but also very powerful ways. So common patterns that we might see are defensiveness. There could be withdrawal, right? They're not contributing as much, finger pointing, so shifting blame, or you might see drops in collaboration or even innovation, which innovation will take a little bit longer, but the drop in collaboration, you actually feel it before you recognize it. Right. And some of these lead to more errors occurring, or they lead to missed deadlines, or you start to feel a little uncertain. Can I really trust so-and-so with this project? All of those questions start to creep in. These are surface symptoms, is how I would describe it, but they erode trust and they erode psychological safety. And I recognize, you know, we ask leaders to be vulnerable, but what have they spent their entire careers doing? They've spent their entire careers defending, winning, competing, being first. And now we're saying be vulnerable. And if you're a person of color, we are asking a person of color who would take who has had to put the shields up for a long time to now drop the shields and be vulnerable. What an incongruent experience and what an incongruent ask that we're making of leaders. And so when we think about resilience and compassion, vulnerability, it is uh sometimes you'll hear leaders share a vulnerability that's really it feels kind of weak. You know, it feels kind of like that's kind of lame. Like, seriously, that's what you're sharing. And it is a first step. When that happens, I I believe when that happens, if we welcome it, if we make that person feel good for even sharing that, they are going to feel like it's safe to share a little bit more next time. It may take some time, but what we don't want is we scoff at it and they feel like, oh, well, that's I it wasn't a big enough thing for me to raise. I didn't do that right. And so why am I going to bother sharing anything else? And that's when you see the defensiveness and the withdrawal and the blame shifting come in. Right.

Manya Chylinski: 11:57

I'm glad you pointed that out. How hard it can be to let ourselves be vulnerable, especially for people in leadership positions who have been taught that that is not what they are supposed to be doing. And, you know, I am someone who I share my story on a stage and I've talked about my own mental health struggles and took me a while to get there, but I forget that a lot is behind that. I didn't just start by standing on a stage and shouting my story. It took little steps to get there where I said something and felt safe. Another I said something and didn't feel safe, so I pulled back. So that is a we ask so much of our leaders because we are both saying you need to be the winner and you need to be the go-getter and you need to maybe keep certain things from us. And also, by the way, you also need to be completely vulnerable and empathetic and compassionate and pay attention to that side of it. How does anybody manage to lead anything these days?

Natasha Kehimkar: 12:58

As you were speaking, I was thinking, yeah, be transparent, but don't tell me everything because I want you to exercise some good judgment. Right. Well, I want you to be firm and I want you to have a point of view, but I want you to include me in the decision-making process.

Manya Chylinski: 13:13

Right.

Natasha Kehimkar: 13:13

I know that things can't always go my way, but I'm really upset when they don't. So these are, it's like a parallel universe that we're asking these leaders to straddle, and it's very, it's very, very challenging. How does anybody lead in these scenarios? I think it's really about knowing yourself. This is something that we see in coaching, executive coaching, or um, even when we do our leadership development work, we ask leaders to articulate what they value, what matters to them, what their aspirations are, who they want to be known as. Like, what do you want to be known for? Um, and those exercises often will get people to reconnect with their why, know your purpose. Like, why are you on this planet? Right? Why are you here? Why do you do what you do? Why do you put the energy to, you know, wake up every day, put in all the hours? Why do you do what you do? When we have people connect with that, that's when they're able to connect the way they lead to those values. But I fear that sometimes as as in the go, go, go, go, go world, we we disconnect from purpose and we disconnect from our why. And when that happens, that's when we do see resilience get kind of shaky. That's when we do see leadership get kind of shaky. Like, actually, that's not the kind of leader I want to be. What just happened?

Manya Chylinski: 14:32

Right.

Natasha Kehimkar: 14:32

I've lost touch with my purpose.

Manya Chylinski: 14:35

But as you were saying, I'm thinking that some of that awareness comes with experience. It's so in in my case, I don't I was reasonably self-aware, but I don't think I was aware in this way until after my own experience of trauma. And I think, you know, oftentimes we say with age comes wisdom, but it's the amount of experiences that you've had and the different experiences that you've had. And I it seems as if many people are not inclined to that kind of self-examination. And I just I wonder, is it only when something bad happens to you or when you've gotten older and had so many experiences you can't deny it? Or is there a way to learn some of this earlier?

Natasha Kehimkar: 15:23

One thing that comes to mind for me is when we think about fixed mindset and growth mindset. If we are, well, we know we can't live in growth mindset in all aspects of our lives at all times. There are moments when we're fixed mindset. Like, please do not put me in a stick shift car, fixed mindset, can't do it. We'll grind the gears, we'll destroy your car. Don't make me do it. I can do lots of other things, not that. But, you know, that's a sort of a silly a silly example, but there are there are, I think, experiences that we poo-poo. They are not enough. They are not important enough or big enough or significant enough. Um, using the term trauma, for example, it makes me think that I have to have experienced something traumatic that is objectively traumatic, that would be, you know, uh somebody else would judge. But really, I think it's got to do with how you assess, how you judge. And you can choose whether or not to share what you experience. That is totally up to you. Maybe you don't feel like it's significant enough to share, but if it shaped you in some way, if it introduced a little um a little rock in the way the the um stream flows, then it shaped you somehow. So I think important to at least be aware of those things that I am shifting with awareness and intentionality. I'm not allowing things to shape, shape me. I am shaping myself.

Manya Chylinski: 16:53

Yes. Yes. That takes that awareness and a little bit of work sometimes, which certainly isn't always feeling like the thing I want to do, just speaking about myself.

Natasha Kehimkar: 17:06

I totally get it. And and I'm with you, by the way. Uh, one of the ways that I found I have found to be particularly helpful in opening the door to these kinds of conversations without me having to tell you my entire life story are assessments. And I mean like validated assessments, not junk science assessments, where it uncovers in a work setting an attribute or a characteristic that I have in the way I work. That's important to how I interact with you, with my colleagues, with my team. What happened to get me to that place is up to me to share or not share. And most times I will not share it. But these kinds of assessments, when they open the door to dialogue, and I mean specifically, do not label people with these permanent, you know, negative labels of you're not good enough because you have this attribute. But it's more, okay, I understand how I'm wired. I can tell you how I'm wired, and we can together say, okay, you're wired differently. Let's anticipate that and figure out how to collaborate effectively together. I feel like uh assessments can be a safer way of introducing the discussion of identity and who I am at work and how I show up, how I work, especially when things are high pressure in a way that is less, it's lower risk to me as an individual. And then we're not, we're not comparing traumas. We're not, we're not getting into a competition because it's not a competition. You have magical attributes and I have magical attributes.

Manya Chylinski: 18:32

Let's just talk about what they are. Exactly. I'm thinking back to a time early in my career where we did assessments as a team and we talked about what that meant. And it was one of the first times that I was really seeing oh, we are all coming at this same job from completely different perspectives. And it was so eye-opening, and which is what the managers wanted, and they wanted us to find ways to work together more smoothly, um, whether that happened or not. But I I just recall the discussion after we all shared what our our version of the assessment was, and being almost dumbfounded to think, how did I not even think about this before? How differently we're all approaching this.

Natasha Kehimkar: 19:27

Right. And instead, what do we do? We judge each other, right? So busy saying, oh, that issue that whatever is some so-and-so is having is a fatal flaw. They are like values disrupted, they're not in sync with me. I have uh disdain. I have, you know, disrespect I don't respect because they are just they don't care as much as I do. Meanwhile, what's actually happening is they approach challenges, decisions, problems differently than I do. They're not there to poke holes in it, they're actually de-risking things, or they're not there to create chaos, they just approach problems by brainstorming. Right. Right? That they are there are such amazing attributes that all of us bring that if we were able to talk about them at the beginning, not when we're in the middle of a you know, clash of the titans kind of conflict. How much more successful and painless would these uh big initiatives or big changes or big challenges actually be?

Manya Chylinski: 20:24

Yes, much more so. I want to take a step back. We're we're talking about teams and team dynamics, but earlier on we were talking about individual resiliency, organizational resiliency, and team resiliency. And I was realizing, I know what I think team resiliency and organizational resiliency mean. Can you share with us what they actually mean?

Natasha Kehimkar: 20:48

Your question about individual team and organizational resiliency, leadership resiliency, uh, the attributes according to the resilience at work model are different depending on what you're talking about. However, the one area that I have not seen a lot of literature written about is organizational resilience. And this is actually something that our firm specializes in. Because when we look at resilience in the organization sense, typically we see writings about finance and IT, security, right? Um, or physical safety, we see those things. Meanwhile, when you think about getting from strategy to results all the way through execution, the thing that is most likely to fail, I don't believe it's the technology or the product or the science. It's going to be the people. It's going to be the organization. And so when I think about organizational resilience, I personally think about psychological safety. I think about aligned leadership teams and leadership that is aligned throughout an organization. I think about the community of learning because learning is another way to get alignment in your organization. Right. I'm not talking about indoctrination. I'm talking about alignment through common frameworks and uh ways of approaching challenges that then everyone can have their secret sauce. Right. I also think about the investment in middle managers. We underestimate the impact of our middle managers. And when we think about an organization being resilient, the bulk of the population reports to people in those first and second line manager roles. And if they are not singing off the same song sheet and they are not able to articulate whatever change and challenge and a direction forward for your employees, you're in trouble. I remember someone once described it as your core, right? When you think about your core, you can't stand up, ride a bike, lift the suitcase over your head without engaging your core. Similarly, if you want to get through any challenge or any uh vision, mission that you have for your organization, you're not going to be able to do it without your core. And your core are your people leaders, your middle managers in particular.

Manya Chylinski: 23:05

Interesting. I've been, I've had a lot of conversations recently where we're talking about the importance of that management layer. And it seems they sometimes get forgotten in the conversation between executive leadership and the frontline staff. Why is that? Since they are the core.

Natasha Kehimkar: 23:24

That is such a good question. I wish I had the answer, the magic answer. I do think that what's interesting is as I when I was in corporate settings, every single organization I talked to said that they needed to work on management development. And then when push came to shove, they weren't willing to truly invest in management development because it felt like a financial burden because they thought immediately of training. And training is one of the ways we grow our people leaders for sure. But there are other ways to do it. And what I realized was it wasn't actually the money, the financial investment, it was the energy investment. It was the attention and focus that I have, I have the opportunity, not I have the challenge or the problem of mentoring people leaders, helping them understand and come into their own about what kind of people leader they want to be. I think people automatically think training, and we know that training is a fraction of what people actually, when they gain knowledge and experience, it's a fraction of that comes from training. Most of it comes from on-the-job experience. When we do training, for example, we have a lot of scaffolding around it because we know the training is just a portion. The opportunity to have their managers articulate what's important and for them to focus on, for them to have their real life experience and then have a community of people to talk to about what they're experiencing and learn from that, learn from one another. These are all mindset. They are pure network. These are these are the elements that I think have to make up that investment in your people leaders. There's an awful lot you can do for free if you're willing to put in the personal investment, the personally invest yourself as an executive in your people leaders. It goes far, it does far more benefit than anything else.

Manya Chylinski: 25:13

Right. So interesting. You think about that layer, the management layer in the middle, and they're so trapped between the organizational objectives and then their people who have human needs and are looking to their managers to help them with that. So I like the I like thinking about how do we develop those leaders because I worry that leadership development programs are missing that important element.

Natasha Kehimkar: 25:45

I really appreciate what you're saying here, that leadership development programs can sometimes lack the compassion, the empathy button. And we're not talking about managers serving as therapists and counselors. Right. Right. We're not asking managers, uh, people leaders to go in and solve the problems of the world. We're not asking that. I find that it's when leadership development programs lack the practical in-context learning, that's when we don't have the ability to combine the practical skills with the practical empathy and compassion that we're looking for in our people leaders. So, what do I mean by that? It means we go through concepts, we share frameworks and tools, but we're not allowing people to pressure test that in real scenarios or scenarios that are relevant to their work environment. Diminishes the opportunity to get real-time feedback as you're learning a new skill set. The magic of learning and development is not in the uh learning of the skill or understanding the framework, it's applying it on the job. It is being able to integrate the skill into your regular rhythm of work. And what happens is when the you're getting the McDonald's, the learning and development, and everything is kind of off the shelf. If you don't create something that's a little bit more customized and tailored to your environment, then it's on you as an organization to bring that application through. You have to translate the McDonald's into the application in your environment.

Manya Chylinski: 27:27

Yes, absolutely. Oh my goodness. But that's that's so true. The magic is in the application and not in, you know, you're not having a class for the sake of having a class. And if you are doing a training just to check off and say you've done a training, then there are probably deeper problems. We are getting close to the end of our time. So what do you think is the biggest risk to organizations if they aren't thinking about this kind of resiliency and compassionate leadership?

Natasha Kehimkar: 28:01

I think the biggest risk is in belonging and disengagement. Our team members now are looking for really meaningful connection both to their work and to their leaders. And they want to know that they matter. And when organizations ignore this element or these elements, they are grappling with burnout and overwhelm, lags in delivery, right? So slowing down pace. There could even be reputational harm, right? Because people are can be quite vocal about um their disengagement from their companies or from their job. And so it harms the reputation and it impacts who's going to want to join an organization like that. What kind of people are you attracting? Longer term, I think that that is what erodes resilience. That is what uh erodes organizational agility, right? An ability to be nimble in the face of change. And so when I think about the risks of not embracing compassionate leadership and not embracing the uh opportunities, you may feel like you're in a microcosm of a team, but there is a ripple effect through the whole organization. It does shift the culture and you don't, you're usually not paying attention to it. Right. It will shift the culture. Uh, and I'm not talking about having a soft culture, everyone's holding hands. I'm not necessarily that's good for some people. It's actually not great for me. I that's not what I personally need, but I need to feel like I belong, that I'm wanted, that my contribution that I make, whether it's uh great in service of a goal or it's challenging a goal, it's challenging a way of doing things, that it's welcome and wanted, and that we together believe that as a collective, that is what's going to help advance our organization and make it even better. Right.

Manya Chylinski: 29:50

Absolutely. Oh, thank you for that. And as we wrap up, can you share with our listeners a little bit more about yourself and your work and how they can learn more about you?

Natasha Kehimkar: 30:00

My team and I am Melita Advisors, we are a strategic advisory firm and we help organizations unlock that exceptional leadership and build future ready teams. That's what we do. We are focused 100% on organizational alignment because everything we do in organizations, when we are aligned, we are that much stronger. If people want to learn more about our organization, you can visit us at malidaadvisors.com. We also have on invitation only executive forms. That we run on specific topics. These are small curated uh conversations that we do on uh on Zoom in a virtual room. And we talk about topics that are important to the time of year we're at, or they may be topical just based on the news. But it's a safe space for us to have conversations about important things that are relevant to our work. So feel free to uh hit the get in touch button and let us know if you want to join one of those. But in the meantime, MelitaAdvisors.com.

Manya Chylinski: 30:55

Excellent. And I will put links to that in the show notes to make it easier for folks. Um, Natasha, thank you so much for your time today. I've really enjoyed our conversation. It's a pleasure, Manya. Thank you so much for having me. And thank you to our listeners for joining us for this episode of Notes on Resilience. And we will catch you next time.