Chad Silverstein on why leaders need to connect their teams to company history. He warns founders often forget to explain why things matter, and shares how traditions like March Madness contests and a dedicated philanthropic month build belonging and keep culture alive.
Chapters
This was a discipline that I got working on early on as I started going through the eight playbook for leading leaders and leading teams. And I think there's something to be said about being able to connect the people on your team to where you came from and to never forget that. I think, again, the curse of knowledge seeps in with founders and people who've been in the company for a long time. And they assume that people just remember or know certain things that helped or help, you know, help them get to wherever they are. And the fact is that, you know, brand new people have no clue and have never heard anything. So I think being able to, again, be a storyteller and connect people and have traditions and honor the past and be able to celebrate the small wins that happen and do it in a way that creates like a little bit of your identity, your culture. You know, we used to do things every March where we do March Madness and we'd have contests and everyone knew March Madness time. You know, we had one month where we were doing philanthropic things and donating and having competitions within the company and putting people in teams. And so it became like a thing. And I think for building a great place to work, you gotta make people feel like they're part of a community, that they belong. And you do that by creating traditions. If you don't have any, and if you do, then celebrating them and connecting people to them, tell those stories that happened, you know, back in the day when, you know, you were either by yourself or you were building your team and let people in and to know what they're part of. I think that's a great quality of a leader who can do that. Leaders are connectors.
