Chad Silverstein wanted to rebrand collection agencies by building a company clients wouldn't recognize as one. Leadership is full of contradictions: few absolute rules, context matters, and you need a strong core to stay consistent while adapting. What contradictions do you live with as a leader?
Chapters
This blog post that Chet posted In June of 2011, I remember it, I remember because I remember him telling, telling me that I had gotten clarity a lot quicker than a lot of the other Built Elite clients that he was working with. I was not quite in it a year and I just worked really, really hard. I was writing like crazy. I was sending him my writing just non stop. And, and you know, I had been blessed to be able to practice with them every week. And I think, you know, my learning was compounded with the fact that I was surrounded by people who love build to lead so much, as much as I did. And I was working with them outside of working with a builder. And you get clarity when you're working on yourself and you're putting in the hours and you're getting clarity on the writing and you're following the process. And I was, I was getting clear on my aim. My aim at the time was to change the perception of collections at my collection agency. I knew that collection agencies had a bad rap and I wanted to change the negative stereotype that people felt when they touched the collection agency. And yeah, I designed everything in my company around a different concept. That the goal was that if you touched our company, you wouldn't believe that that was a collection agency. And you know, it's, it's important that you understand that throughout the process you'll see contradictions everywhere. It's not always black and white. It always has something to do with the context of whatever it is that we're talking about. So a lot of times you're going to have something shared in the playbook or something in practice, or you're going to hear something from me and a melody line and you'll disagree. And when you do, that's a good thing because there's a really good chance that you're right or that you just want to share your belief on whatever it is that we're talking about and whatever we're working on. And a lot of times, even though you may hear something from the built to Lead band, we may agree with you because in a different context, you're probably right. And so leadership is full of contradictions. It's never an always or a never. It's never black and white. There's always going to be an and or a however. There's always going to be an exception. And very rarely do we find situations where, you know, there's no exceptions and it can never be any other way than this way. So, you know, that's why leadership is so tough and why we tell people don't want to be a leader because there's no easy answer, there's no solution. That's kind of a one stop shop that you just kind of have to do this and you'll be a leader and you'll see that in different scenarios and with different people, it's going to require you to be different, yet stay distinctly you. That's really, really hard. But as you get stronger and as you build out this strong core and as you aim at something that's a worthy ideal for you, you'll see that things will become more consistent and you're going to see that you'll have less contradictions, that people are going to know what they get from you. And that's really important because the last thing you want is people not knowing what they get from you. You know, what kind of a mood are you in today? You know, they don't want to set you off. And a cool, calm, collected leader who's built to lead, who knows who they are and knows where they're going. They're just cool and calm, they're collected, they just are who they are. And it doesn't matter where they find themselves, they're going to be the same person distinctly themselves. And that's the aim and that's why we're building a strong core. It's why you're working on what you're working on, why you're going to get your clarity and keep working, keep putting in the time. Understand that it's not always going to be one way. There's going to be different ways to get the same result and everyone's a little different. So the question is, what do you believe and what are your thoughts on the topic? Feel free to share. Bring it to practice and tee up some contradictions and we'll fight for performance.
