Chad Silverstein on the difference between leaders who stay constantly activated and high performers who deliberately switch between relaxed and intense. The key skill: knowing your triggers and when to ramp up effort, not burning out by staying always on.
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Few leaders know what actually triggers them to kind of flip the switch. And having self awareness and knowing what triggers you and also knowing when to trigger yourself. It's an important skill because you know when you have to be on, you want to make sure you're on. Unfortunately for most leaders, they're always on, but you want to make sure that that doesn't lead to burnout. It's a hard thing. I remember just thinking for 25 years of running my company, I never felt like I wasn't on. You know, if you're the leader, eyes are on you and you know people are going to be quick to shoot you in the back. You're the first person that's easy to be blamed for things that aren't going well. And it's important to be able to like flip your switch. And I think like this day says, you know, to most of the time be cool and calm and to be chill, to not react. And that's a hard thing to do. You have to build the skill to be able to do that. That's, that's, you know, emotional intelligence on the highest level. And knowing when to flip that sw, knowing when to turn it on, that's, that's critical. And not being triggered by something that kind of makes you angered. That's not the trigger that we're looking for. That's not the on that we're looking for either. We want to, we want to abstain from that and we want to make sure that our on helps us become higher performers because we know when to turn it up. So I'll give you one example. In my company, I had people who were numbers driven and at the end of the month, with a few days left, they would either hit their goal and then anything above and beyond. It's really where the, where the money was made. And it was always amazing to me how when people hit their goal, that's when they left and they started taking more breaks and they started using their PTO days. And I just, I couldn't understand it. I didn't understand why you hit your goal on the 27th of the month. And now everything that you do from the 28th until the end of the month is gravy. And they just did not take advantage of that. Whereas the high performer is going to flip the switch. And as soon as they hit their goal on the 25th, 26th, 27th of the month, now they turn it up and they start working even harder. And I think that's why there's always just few high performers because it's just a mindset. And it's a mindset that you want to be aware of and you want to build. And there's a skill to being able to trigger yourself and know what those triggers are and knowing when to turn it on. And again, most of the time, like today says, to be chill and to not always be on, on the highest level to, you know, towards burnout. So know your triggers and know when to turn things up and when to, you know, keep them down.
