Chad Silverstein reflects on leadership, emphasizing that everyone must practice self-leadership and influence regardless of formal authority. He discusses a common leader-specific challenge—criticism, gossip, and backstabbing—and advises cultivating a strong core, thick skin, humility, and a skeptical filter for secondhand negative information ("don't believe what you hear"). He encourages letting results speak and being cautious about those who repeat damaging claims.
Chapters
When I first started working with Built to Lead, I used to hear coaches always say that you shouldn't want to be a leader. And I used to laugh when I'd hear that, like, you know, most people want to be a leader. And look, even if you're not going to lead other people, you got to lead yourself. So you're not off the hook, even if you're not in charge of other people. And I don't mean that from a management perspective. I just mean from an influencer perspective. Because if you're leading people, you want to influence them, and hopefully in a positive way, whether it be through your modeling the way or through your purpose and whatever you're aiming at. Your big dream, helping them become the best version of themselves so that they can, you know, contribute to the. To the bigger. Something bigger than themselves. You know, everyone wants to be part of something bigger than themselves and have a shared, common purpose. It's how you can rally the troops. It's how you can build a great culture. But there's one thing that all leaders have to deal with that a lot of the people who are not in a leadership role don't have to deal with as much. And that is when you're gonna hear people talk about you behind your back or to your face, but behind your back. It's hard. It's hard because if you actually care and you have good intentions, it's hard when you hear things that just either, you know, are not to be. They're not true, or they're hurtful. Nobody wants to hear that stuff. And this is why you have to have such a strong core. You have to be able to have some thick skin. You know, Chet, as my coach, had some really thick skin. And I used to see people call him out in practice, and it would just, like, bounce off him, and he'd say, good. You know, he likes when people disagree with him. He wants. And he doesn't care as much about what they think. And I cared too much. That's why the mantra that I talked about earlier on, in an earlier day was, you know, care, but not that much. And I have to adopt that because I do care too much. I feel things very strongly. I'm hypersensitive, and I can't let things get to me too much. But sometimes I do because I'm human. And there's certain areas that I'm not as strong as I am in other areas. But you better be very clear that if you're shooting for any kind of leadership role or you're in one right now. That type of sabotage or that type of backstabbing or gossiping, it's going to get bigger and bigger as you get bigger and bigger. And that's just a hard thing to accept, that the more successful you become, the more people come out of the woodworks to knock you down. That's why it's important to kind of be quiet, humble, not show off, and quietly win. You can let your results speak for themselves. You don't have to share it. One of the best things you can do is having other people talk about you in a positive way where you don't have to talk about yourself and the things that you're doing. But you better be comfortable with the fact that people are going to talk about you and you're going to hear things that are not so nice. And my one piece of advice is don't believe what you hear, because many times it's taken out of context. And then the person who does share it with you, that's the person I'd be questioning. Why are they telling you this? And there's a lot of nuances to this. So just know where you stand, know where you are with your core, and make sure you bake some stuff into your worldview about gossip, what you believe about it, so that when you hear it and when it strikes you, you'll be able to filter that through, figure out what you believe about it, and then move on and not let it get to too much.
