Chad Silverstein on building teams: start with a small core group where trust flows naturally, then invest hard work there. As you grow, you'll need difficult conversations about changing roles or removing people. Leaders must own their shortcomings first, stay curious, and accept that your core team may shift.
Chapters
Finding that flow, that relationship building that you have on your team in order to kind of build the trust and the chemistry that you want to. You want to build on a successful team that's finding their flow. It's so hard. Takes a lot of time, patience. But there's always going to be a core group of people that are at the heart of it. You don't need everybody, you definitely need a few. And so you got to know who those few are and you got to build with those few, and you got to be able to put in time with those few. You've got to be able to go through things with those few that most people would not want to. And whether that's addressing the hard stuff or it is spending time with them when it feels like it's wasting time, there is just a benefit to being able to build with a few people on your team. That is going to be the core, the rock that's going to be able to spread and be contagious throughout because you're not going to be able to do it by yourself. And a lot of times you have to go through the really hard things. I remember early on in my company, I had some people that I was really, really close to, and some of them had to be removed from our leadership team. Some of them had to shift positions in our company because the company outgrew them. And I was super close with these individuals and we talked about everything in the company. And then I had to go and I had to have the hard conversation about pivoting and changing their role. And I remember having to overcome the fear of just the insecurity of having that really, really hard conversation that I knew would break them at the time that they would hear it. But I still had to do it. And as a leader, so do you. You can't avoid those tough situations. You can't avoid the building with the people that you're closest to. And you've got to accept the fact that as hard as you want, work towards building this incredible relationship with the few, there's probably a good chance that it may not last. And you may have to search out and find another group of few people that you can do and start over with. You know, the fact is that if you're growing and you're a leader, the people who got you to where you are today may not be the same people that take you to here. And you gotta make sure you're growing. So the first step is to look in the mirror and make sure that you're doing the hard work before you're calling anyone else out on your team. And once you take a hard look and your team sees that you're doing the hard work and that you're calling yourself out, you've earned the right right to then call anyone else out and talk to them. And the way to do that, especially if you're going to read this day in this discipline, is to first not come out attacking, is to be curious and it's to ask the best questions. It's to get people to see things you know about themselves that you see very clearly without having to call them out on it. And sometimes you got to call them out on it. And so there's timing that has a lot to do with this. And to know the right time is, is. It's a nuance that you have to get good at as a leader. So there's no right or wrong answer, there's no best way to do this. But there are certain disciplines that as a leader you have to build, and that's being very curious. It's building with a few. It's having an aim as to why you're doing what you're doing, and it's having the hard conversations when you have to have them and not avoiding them. And it's being prepared for the unexpected, which is maybe having to go build with new group of people and, you know, cutting some of the older ones who aren't working out the way that they need to be in order to stay within the core group of your leadership team. This is the truth. And you have to really honestly be, be more hardcore on yourself because there might be a time where you have to pull yourself out of the team. Not an easy thing to do for a leader, but that's the gig.
