Claude Silver on the Courage of Being Yourself at Work | EP 682

26:53You can do anything like that. There will always be people who are similar minded to you. Always. I want to unpack a couple of things you just said there. As I was preparing for this, I was listening to a couple of your past interviews that you've done. And one of them, you were talking about how one of the things that you and Gary obviously are concerned about is when you have an exit interview. And one of the things you talked about that you implemented is you do an interview. I think you mentioned it was just three questions when someone is in their first, like three to four months. And one of those questions had to do with something you were just talking about.

27:34Outside the group that you're working in, have you met other friends or other people that you align to? When I heard it, I was thinking it's an interesting thing because often it is those communities of people that we feel comfortable with, that we connect with, that make us stay and thrive where we are. And if we're not meeting those people, why is that happening? When you ask that question and you get the answer, they haven't met any friends, what do you do about it? Well, here's my list of 10 people for you to meet. I can't wait. Let's write up two or three sentences on yourself, maybe throw in a hobby or so.

28:10And I can't wait to introduce you to those people. So what I mean is I have a list and I've been capturing this list now for 10 years of what I call culture champions, culture champions. They are people that I know I can send you to John, if you are having a bad day, a bad moment, something happened that you got a terrible review from your boss, something's happening at home and you're having it, whatever it is. I know I can call someone in the LA office. I can Slack someone in the London office right now and say, Hey, when you have a second, can you go reach out to John and just go take him for a walk and a coffee?

28:47Now that's one scenario. The other scenario is John and I meet, I send out a note. Hey, meet my new friend, John. He's a social media strategist. Here's a little excerpt. I met John today. And then I'm writing, Hey, John, please meet my new friends. Hey, everyone. please make sure you get time with John in the next three months, get at least 15 minutes. And so right there is, and I usually do it on Slack or email. So right there I'm connecting and you should see people. Oh, I can't wait to get time with, Hey, welcome John. Hey. And it's so wonderful because that's how the culture grows. That's how it scales, right?

29:25It's not meeting me as one thing, but people oftentimes do come to me to say, who else should I meet here? Or I'll say, have you connected with someone on Team Gary, they really are doing some innovative things on AI and you might want to talk to them. One of the great things about being in this position for so long is that I know a lot of people now across the globe. And so I will say, John, I understand you're on this alcohol brand. Let's get you to talk to someone that's on banking. Let's get you to talk to someone who's doing something for AT &T. I don't know, there might be a shared interest there.

30:00That's really it. The connective tissue at Vayner is what it's all about. And it really is a connective tissue. That's what makes us strong. And when it bifurcates, then we need to double, triple down on being present. One of the things you talk about in the book is the importance of having emotional pillars. And you talk about emotional optimism, emotional bravery, or emotional efficiency. Can you walk us through what they mean, but more importantly, why they're so powerful when they come together? Yeah. So emotional optimism is actually where I started all this because I am an emotional optimist, meaning I am an optimist, but I also know and can feel when I'm sad.

30:49I can feel when things are up and down. I'm not always at a high. I'm dipping in diving just like everyone else. The emotional part means I can accept that the emotions are here, but I don't need to become the emotion, number one. And number two, not only do I not have to become the emotion, I know that Claude has the ability to get through it. Whether or not I have the ability to get through it with myself, or I bring in some support, I bring in some friends to do it, but I don't have to stay at the bottom of the ocean. I know that tomorrow will be a new day. That's the optimist. So it's really based around an understanding that I can control me.

31:31I cannot control anything else, but I can change the song in my head, right? Emotional bravery is taking action, even when it's scary, taking action when, say you had that chat with your friend and you're like, oh, I had a terrible review with that person. And the friend says, you know what? Why don't you write down the five points that you want to go back and talk to your manager about? And you do it with them. And then the next day they take a brave action based on emotions. They're scared. They disagree, but they take action, which is movement. And we need movement in order to feel like we're growing and we're doing something, right?

32:09Right. Motion. That's emotional optimism and emotional bravery and emotional efficiency is when we get to speed. As an individual, I'm able to get through my emotional dips much, much faster because I accept them and I don't have to dwell on them. I can get faster. And in teams, we have built resilience together. You know what makes me tick and talk. I know what makes you tick and talk. So when push comes to shove, we don't need to get into the drama of it all. we can get through that drama much quicker just by, okay, I get it. I hurt your feelings. That's on me. I'm really sorry. Okay. Okay, great.

32:48Let's go. Rather than some kind of gossip train going, Claude hurt my feelings and Claude hurt my feelings. The next thing you know, you're playing a game of telephone and I don't even know what the story is. So efficiency is so important because if I go back to what I just said in terms of emotional bravery, we want to go, we want to move. people don't want to stay stagnant for the most part. And they certainly don't want to stay stagnant in the workforce because people are always trying to climb that ladder. So these three pillars are a flywheel. They're happening in a day. They're happening in a minute.

33:20They're happening in a month. They're happening whenever you can take notice of them. But first and foremost is having self-awareness. And that's really where the book starts, which is understanding yourself and understanding what is the, how are you punishing yourself and how are you holding yourself back when you choose not to show up? And we all know if you get real, you all know how you do that. So those are the three pillars that have always, I would say, kept me grounded, but also kept my eye on a prize. Prize is going forward. And oftentimes when I'm at in the workplace when I'm sharing this, I'll say to people like, you see this in Invisible Inc?

34:00John, you have it too. It says, help me grow. That's what we want to do. So this framework really is to help us grow and get out of whatever doldrums we're in. Because we all like to stay there for a long time. I love what you just said. And it also ties back to the previous answer you had when you said that when someone is in that position when where they haven't met someone at work it really starts with yourself and this really resonates with me because i often talk about self-awareness being the cornerstone of what i call mattering because we can't feel like we matter if we first don't know ourselves and we don't feel like we matter because if you don't feel like you matter it's going to be hard to get someone else to make you feel like you matter That's right.

34:50I'm going to tie this into your book because you write similar, similar, but a little bit different that belonging is a verb. And I love that. How do we create this feeling of belonging on a daily basis, especially in a work environment where it could be hard to feel that way? Right. So it's a two-way street. How do you create belonging for yourself? and how does the team or the organization or culture create belonging for you and others. So it's a two-way street. How you create belonging for yourself, I truly believe, is by being authentic. And that's what we already talked about. How I feel like the organization or your team or an other, me, can create belonging for you is fairly simple and straightforward.

35:37It's by being present. It's by listening. It's by showing you I'm listening, whether or not we're on a Zoom or we're in the room, right? Showing body language, whatnot. I also have to get very clear that I'm not here to judge you. That's not my job. My job is X and your job is Y. And I want to make you feel like you matter, like you belong, like you have a home here. So psychological safety is extremely important. And psychological safety at its core means you, the person, feel safe enough to speak up. You feel safe enough to speak up without someone interrupting you, which happens all the time, interjecting, talking over you, ignoring you.

36:21And that, listen, at a workplace, just like in a family, it's all, there's a lot of, dare I say dysfunction, but there's a lot of stuff that goes on. And it's not everyone is at their best every single second of the day. There is going to be someone that's going to jump in and interrupt you. That is going to happen. However, and this is what I said in the beginning, you got to dip your toe into things. You got to take a, you got to take chances and see if it really is going to suck because you think it is, or are you going to be pleasantly surprised that, wow, I just had the greatest 15, 30 minute talk with John because he was so present.

37:01He was so present. The other thing is we don't have to have all the answers. That's where I think some of this goes awry. Leaders feel, I think for the most part, we feel like we have to have all of the answers, but I'm not any smarter than you. The only thing I have is different lived experience than John, but I'm not any smarter. Yes, you are in the Navy. You understand how to steer subs. Okay, I don't. So I'll never know that, but that's not what we're talking about? We're talking about emotional intelligence. Hopefully that, yeah, that answer. Sorry to interrupt you. It's really the one thing I say on repeat is every single person is allowed to take up space.

37:45You are allowed to take up space. You were hired for that reason. You were not hired to sit in the corner. You were hired because you had something that we wanted, which was your curiosity, your intelligence, your vibe, your whatever it is. We hired you for a reason. So please share. So I want to talk about psychological safety a little bit more since you brought it up. And if anyone wants to do a deeper dive into this, they can also listen to my interview with Amy Edmondson, an incredible professor at Harvard Business School. But if people aren't familiar with it, there's another thing that they can look at, which is Google's Project Aristotle, which found that psychological safety is the number one predictor of team success.

38:33Doing what you do, if there's a leader out there listening, how can they start to create psychological safety in their team? Is there like one step you would recommend? There are several steps, but the one step I really recommend is to get very honest with yourself about how you show up every day as a leader. Do you show up as the smartest person in the room? Okay. Well, that's a deterrent. Do you show up like this? Hey, John, what's going on? How are you doing? Not interested and busy. How do you show up and how do you know you show up like that? That's one of the things I will say immediately, because if you think you show up Like, all right, guys, let's go.

39:19Let's go. I'll tell you right now. One of the things I just said might have offended someone. Cause I said, Hey guys, let's go. We have to be so careful right now. I should just say, all right, team let's go. Right. There's someone who's going to say, I'm not a guy. Cause that's the world we live in right now. So we have to be aware. You and I continue to come back to self-awareness. We have to be aware. How are you showing up? And how do you know you show up like that? And maybe get someone to mirror back to you, right? And then of course, it's listening. But I always say it's listening to do something.

39:57As leaders, we are asked to take the ball. They gave us the ball and take the ball and do something with this ball. Maybe move it up the field for them. Maybe show them it's possible to move it up the field. But people come to us as leaders because they need something to happen. outside of just being heard and being listened to, which is the utmost and really being understood, really being understood. And it's so easy because I've been there too. It's so easy to judge yourself through another person's eyes. I bet you he thinks I'm dumb. Well, he probably is not really thinking about you, Claude, right?

40:40He's probably not thinking too much about you. She probably thinks I'm silly and it's dumb. She's probably not thinking about you, but you're thinking about how dumb you are. You're putting a lot of energy into that, Claude. It's just this mirror that I believe we need to hold up and be brave enough to hold it up and say, okay, yes, I'm not perfect, but I like what I see and I have things I can work on, but I'm really going to double down on my strengths. And my strengths are, I'm a good person. I lead with empathy. I feel like I'm generous with my time. Those types of things. It's pretty simple if you can just get out of your head and into your heart and your body and just get real.

41:26Because I don't think I ever talk about anything that isn't common sense. And when I say common sense, I understand but might not be common to everyone, right? But I'm meaning just the things we learn about that your book is gonna help us with, your children's book. We learn how to be kind. We learn how to share. We learn how to emotionally regulate in these early years, right? Or we don't learn how to emotionally regulate. And then we can see how that person ended up at work and spilled their emotions everywhere. And it's just fascinating. I think behavior is really incredibly fascinating and it's such a two-way street.

42:04Yeah, well, so the whole children's book is all based on behavioral science, which is embedded in it. You wouldn't see it outwardly, but one of the major concepts that I have embedded is this whole idea of ripple effect, trying to teach kids that their actions can create ripples, especially acts of kindness. How do you see those small acts rippling through a company culture like you have with Vayner? Because sometimes people think my act of kindness isn't going to matter to anyone else. But ultimately, these things can spread globally. Globally. Well, we already know that emotions are, you can catch emotions from others.

42:45You can catch emotions. It's been proven. HBR did a study on it like in 2015. When you share attention, when you give someone attention or they give you attention, it unlocks serotonin in our brain. that hormone serotonin, which gives us a feeling of calm confidence, which gives us a feeling of happiness, which gives us a feeling of I can do this. It's like eating a chocolate bar. Oh yeah, it's good. When you give someone generosity, which I believe is more of an energy than attention, it unlocks oxytocin in our brain. And the oxytocin is what newborns get with their moms immediately. It's a sense of belonging.

43:26When someone gives you that or attention, and there are studies here too, people take notice and it is a ripple effect. When John gives attention to Joe and I'm standing there, I'm picking up on it. I might even be smiling and I have no idea what you're talking about, but it feels good. There's a good vibe there. And that spreads. One of the things that I love is when I'm in the hallway at Vayner or I'm in the kitchen and I hear noise, I love it. People are mingling, people are sharing, right? They are like in and out and the kitchen is not that small. So they have to be really on top of each other.

44:04So the ripple effect is absolutely real. And I really believe like, one of the things I say, if we go back to leadership a little bit. I say bad leaders leave a mess, which by the way, ripples. Good leaders leave a mark, but great leaders leave a map. Oh, I love that. And we want great leaders. The map, leaving a map is a very selfless act to do. If you think about it, leaving a map is what Gary does, what I I hope I do, which is I work for you. Let me just give you this. So speaking of this global environment, I want to go back to my time at Dell. And back at this time, I was chief information officer, and we had this global project to implement a new quote-to-cash system.

44:54And if you think about a company like Dell, where you're selling a lot of things, this quoting system impacts a lot of people. I think it was like 40 ,000 people on six continents. and we were running into so much pushback because Dell was one of those companies where it went from global systems to localized to global to localized and now we wanted to implement another global system again and people were pushing back. And it makes me think of your concept of team citizenship and why it's so important. And in the book, you introduce rules of team citizenship and I was hoping you might be able to talk about them and maybe introduce one that people struggle with more than others.

45:39Yeah. And let me get the book. Hold on. Page 99. Good citizens make good teams. You know this from being in the armed forces. Talk about a team. Talk about having to show up with others. So it's in part two, which is called showing up with others. And let me give you some examples. So showing up with others in the context that I'm talking about, it means being okay with showing your flaws too. It means just being okay with being you. It also means being someone people would want in the room. So being someone that either that offers something to that room, whether or not it's value, whether or not it's presence, whether or not it's psychological safety, whether or not it's an energy.

46:25So one of the things that I talk about is the appreciation circle, which I think is a really wonderful way to appreciate one another when you're on teams and make other people know that you value them and you see them. It's a real simple exercise that anyone can do. You can do it on your soccer team. You can do it with your bunch of girlfriends on a boozy brunch, or you can do it in a corporate setting. And that's something that's really exciting to me when I see people do that. Let me see here. One of the things I also say is use trust to build bridges, not walls. That's really important as well.

47:01And I talk a lot about trust, I would say, because when you're on a team, that really is like the blood of a team. It's the trust that you've created because that trust, by the way, will get you to emotional efficiency as well. It'll get you to that place of like, all right, we're in this together. We can do it. So in order to trust, in order to build trust, you have to take that step forward, ignite the trust through being open and vulnerable and ready to step into whatever is next. If that means you're stepping into a pile of mud, well, you're going to do it together. There's an agreement that you all have about being citizens on a team that you're all going to do the same thing.

47:43You're all going to do it. Or on a team, we all have different roles, but that's my role. My role is to step forward and I'm going to step in mud. And your role is you got to go climb that ladder, right? Just doesn't really matter. The other thing I talk about is be an energy source. So rather than being a drain on your team, be a source of energy, radiate. And that could be anything from you're the person on the Monday morning standup that goes, Hey, I want to start something. I want to start a fun ritual every single Monday morning. I want us to do a fun appreciation circle real quick. Everyone goes around the circle and picks one person to appreciate, but starting now, right?

48:23These things don't have to be hard. I'm not talking about rituals that have anything to do with the secular world. I'm talking about something enjoyable. Let's go around the circle every Monday morning and say, what did we binge watch this weekend? Something like that, right? So here's a little, this is what I wanted to get to. And there's a little chart I have here. Energy radiates when you say the following. I've got your back. How can I support you? I believe in you. There's nothing you can break that can't be put back together. Tell me more. Here's what's going on and what it means. Hey, how do you work best?

49:02These are all ways that I'm showing with my language that I'm supporting you. I'm creating trust, belonging, and I'm here with you. And I'm not draining the system, I'm adding to the system. So there's a lot there about being a citizen, because I really think when you all put on that jersey together, that says you're on the same team there, I think there's a lot of pride that can come from that. I love it. And my book that came out last year, also called Passion Struck, I talk about this a shift of eliminating toxic influences that drain our energy, both in our personal life and our business life.

49:48And I refer to it as the mosquito audit, but it ties into what you were just saying, because I was trying to help leaders address gossip, energy vampires, toxic dynamics, and all of those things destroy trust, which was your whole lead in to the citizenship topic. Yeah. It's easy to destroy trust. It's also easy to build trust. But I think that trust can, if we're not careful, trust can be very fragile. So we need to continue to fill up the gas tank, the trust gas tank. We don't want to take advantage of it, take it for granted. Claude, I don't want to leave this interview before I ask you this question, because chapter 14 really hit home for me.

50:32You say every decision, and I believe this is true, every decision leaves a tattoo. Can you share a decision that left a tattoo on you as a leader and what you learned from it? Yes. I would say probably 10 years ago, Gary and I, we were a very different company there, and we were looking to understand who were the top performers in the company and who weren't. And what I should have done was gather all the department heads and team leads together and have a conversation. Instead, what I did was I sent an email out and that email was then sent to the press and didn't look good. And that was a moment that is tattooed on me and not in a bad way, just as a reminder that face-to-face or at least phone is better than an email.

51:34And so whenever I have to do something, share news that someone might question, I have to do it like this. I have to get us all into the same room, which is, you know what? I'm glad I learned it. I'm glad I tattooed that. Thank you for sharing that. I did want to ask you before we close out, what do you wish every CEO knew about creating a culture where people just don't just fit in, but truly belong and how it could completely change the impact that their company is making, not just on the people within it, but more going back to joyful service, the service that they're providing the world at large.

52:15I'm glad you brought it. I'm glad you made it macro too, because so what I would give every CEO to know is by putting more heart into your organization and by putting more people in there that actually are there to hold space for other people, you create enormous amounts of retention. You create enormous amounts of job opportunity. Being that word of mouth is a lot cheaper than hiring a recruiter. You create a lot of people that are wedded to knowing the fact that you can feel good at work. And that in itself spreads because when you go out to lunch with your friend and you go, God, I really love my work culture.

52:58It's not a utopia, but I really love it. And they go, I don't like mine. Oh, terrible, terrible. And that other, I don't like mine. You should come check us out. You can tell me. So it's talking about, again, the ripple, like I believe happiness and joy, enjoy spreads. I truly do. And I believe when you come from that place of I work for them, they don't work for me. They know that this is the number one thing I'm doing. Number one thing I'm doing is really leaning in and hoping to co-cultivate this person's experience within the workplace and make them want to stay and thrive here for a very long time.

53:38I want them to have an incredible growth journey with us. So imagine that scaling. People would be happier at work. I certainly would. Claude, it was so amazing to have you back on Passion Struck. Where's the best place for people to go to learn more about you and your work? Thank you so much, John. You can go to claudsilver.com. You could go to LinkedIn. I'm always writing something and get back to everyone that writes me back. And you can also go to beyourselfbook.com and learn more about the book. Awesome. Well, always such an honor to have you on the show. You're welcome back anytime. Thank you so much.

54:19That's a wrap on today's conversation with Claude Silver. This episode reminds us that belonging isn't built by policies or perks. It's built by presence. Leadership is less about control and more about connection. Here are three key takeaways I hope you carry with you this week. First, authenticity isn't a performance. It's a practice. Second, culture lives in the stories we tell and the compassion we extend. And when you lead with heart, you don't just inspire others. You invite them to show up fully. If today's episode helped you rethink what leadership means, consider paying the fee by sharing it with someone who needs to hear it and leaving a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

54:59You can download the free companion workbook for this episode and explore deeper reflections at theignitedlife.net, my sub-stack for living with intention and purpose. You can also catch video versions of the podcast on our YouTube channels at John R. Miles with PassionStruck Clips. Next on PassionStruck, we explore another powerful force, resilience. I sit down with Nick Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic and author of The Running Life, a father, a son, and the simplest sport, to explore how running became his lifelong metaphor for endurance, discipline, and meaning. The other thing that's really important is this principle called cognitive offloading.

55:36And so that's the principle whereby once you start to rely on a tool, a technological tool to do something, you get worse at it, right? So you use a calculator all the time, you forget how to do long division. You use ways, you forget how to navigate. That's fine. Who cares? We don't, it's better to have a calculator do long division than we do long division. But when it comes to thinking and writing, I don't want to get worse at it. So I don't want to rely on an AI for it. Until next time, lead with empathy, act with intention, and as always, live life, passion struck.

56:16Thank you.