Chad Silverstein reflects on a stressful leadership test during a YPO event run by Navy SEALs—being put in a boat at night with unclear instructions—and uses the anecdote to illustrate how leaders should seek honest feedback, study their tendencies under pressure, and make small incremental changes to improve decision-making during crises.
Chapters
This day is really hard. It's hard to know which camp you fall into. You know, the denial. Deliberate or decide when disaster strikes. And when you think about it and you reflect, it's just hard to judge yourself. It's going to be a lot easier for someone else to kind of give you some feedback about the way you respond when tough things happen. I participated in a YPO event many years ago with the Navy SEALs, and they put us in a boat in the middle of the night and told us to do. You know, basically they gave us, you know, a project to go do, and it took all night, and it was an absolute disaster. And it didn't make much sense to what we were being asked to do. And we later found out that they wanted to see how we would react to being in a stressful environment and not have clarity on what we were doing or why we were doing it. I remember being very upset when I found out about this originally, because I couldn't believe that they had us doing nothing except rowing in this boat in the middle of the night. And I didn't realize that they were teaching us one of the biggest leadership lessons I could ever have in my life, which was how do I react under stressful situations where I don't have clarity and I don't have what I feel I need in order to make a decision or I'm not in control. And as all the guys who were in the boat assessed each other and how we reacted when we didn't even know we were being tested, it was really interesting. We learned a ton about each other and about ourselves. And so, you know, it's kind of a hard thing when you have disasters kind of going on around you or tragedy strikes or something really tough happens personally or professionally, to be able to, like, in the moment, you know, judge how you react. And usually as you're going through it, or it's over, you don't want to. So I think one of the best things you could do is get some feedback from people. Maybe it doesn't have to be a complete disaster, but during tough times, whatever it is, in your job, your company, you can get feedback from people about how you react when things are tough and to study yourself. That's what great leaders do. They study themselves, and then they make changes, little subtle changes to get better. And if you realize that you're someone who does something, like you delay making decisions, and everyone around you is wondering, why are you not making a decision? It's about time. Go like, but they're too scared. To tell you that you'd want to know that so that you don't have that tendency paralyze you when the next tough situation comes up. And so you want truth tellers around you who can help you, you know, help you see what you can't see, who you really are when being tested. You're blessed if you have people that can do this, and if you don't, keep asking, expect people not to tell you the truth until there's trust. And once you find out what your tendency is, which one that you fall into, that you do really well or you don't do really well, you know, make changes, small changes, incremental small changes that make you better. And that's the key. That's the key to be able to, you know, act when you're challenged, fight through and conquer all the different obstacles that you have to run through in order to get to wherever you're going. And you'll be able to do it with others that care about you and hopefully be that person for the people that you're working with.
