Chad Silverstein on why leaders must transmit hope, not fear. When COVID hit, he moved his call center remote in days. Effective leaders treat crises as temporary and act decisively to prove it.
Chapters
I don't know if it's the fact that I've just embraced the fact that I love being in a role that's more visionary and kind of just always out ahead of myself. And a lot of the things that I'm doing sometimes that can get me in trouble. But the one thing I do very well is I see everything is very temporary. My current situation is temporary. It's not going to stay this way. And I'm taking action. I'm doing things, I'm making changes, I'm learning, I'm growing, which means that things are going to change. And one of the greatest things that I've seen the best leaders do is not only do they have hope, they know things are going to get better. Even when things are tough. They know they're in the. In the valley, but they know they're going to come out of it because they've been there before. And they just. That's the gig. But they also can transmit that hope. And not every leader does that very well. In fact, a lot of people will stand up in front of their teams and scare the heck out of them, instill fear. And the best leaders, not only do they have hope, but they transmit the hope. And they give people that feeling that we're going to get out of this and we're going to get out of it together. And so when you are going through a tough time, and if you're a leader, a leader of anything, and you've got people that are looking up to you, that you're in charge of influencing, that's your role. Then you have to make sure you don't scare them. You got to make sure you give them the hope. And you gotta make sure that you're believable. And it's hard to do when you're going through a really hard time. I remember when Covid hit and my call center had to send everybody home. That was a tough, tough, tough week that we did that. And we were not set up for it, but we. We did what we had to do. And we gave people that confidence that we're going to be able to get it done. And we did. And we didn't freak out. But a lot of leaders who had the tendency to kind of go negative and scare other people around them. That is a quality you do not want to have. If you're leading, transmit and be hopeful and know that what you're doing and what you're going through right now is temporary and that it will get better. And that's something that you can actually control. You can control the way you see and feel and react and the way you are with your team and the way you communicate with them during tough times. Be transparent. Let them hear from you just like they would when things are going great and you're breaking records. Says something about you as a leader when you could take your team through tough times. So transmit hope and don't lose that. Don't lose that mindset.
