Chad Silverstein uses 300 and a coaching story to argue that real leadership means embracing an edge: being willing to be misunderstood, challenging people hard, and acting despite discomfort. His coach Chet picked on people in practice to push them. You can lead with conviction and still humble yourself when wrong.
Chapters
If you haven't seen the movie 300, I highly recommend you watch it. There's a theme in this movie about these warriors. They're just so damn tough. They, they will inspire you. So check it out if you, if you, if you've never seen the movie and when it comes to becoming built to lead, there are going to be certain things in your life, certain things with you personally and professionally, where it requires you to have an edge. It requires you to bury being a coward. It requires you to be able to take a stand when you may even be by yourself. And to do it with that edge. And you will be misunderstood. Maybe people will take your confidence as arrogance. Maybe people will take your sarcasm, you know, as, as a low, a low ball and a way to kind of knock someone down when you're trying to make a point and you know someone gets embarrassed by something maybe you said, but you were trying to teach them something. It could show up in many different ways, but you're going to rub people the wrong way when you're built to lead. You're going to rub people the wrong way when you know what you believe and you live it. You can't keep everybody happy and you gotta be comfortable with that to the point where it's not uncomfortable anymore. Now, I'll never forget seeing people's reaction to Chet in team practices when he was picking on someone. Think about that. You have a leadership coach coming into a team practice with 20, 30 people. You have brand new people in the room and you have the facilitator picking on someone. Ironically, he did it because he loved the person, he wanted to see the best out of them. He actually invested time being an irritant to them because no one else would. The person sometimes realized what a gift it was to be coached and sometimes they didn't. And you can only imagine that the new people couldn't believe it and they really didn't like him so much. And I will never forget how it made me feel watching that, because I wanted people to like the facilitator that I was bringing in to coach our team. But to see his reaction, to see his care, but not that much. To see how he didn't let it change who he was or how he was going to coach and to realize that he was doing it with purpose. He knew why and that was his way of doing it. And he was comfortable with that, knowing that some people weren't going to like him because of it. And I've really, really just admired him for that. I've Tried to adopt that my own life. To the point where now I'm getting very close. To the point where I just accept and don't care. When there are people just don't like me. I'm not their cup of tea and that's cool. And to the point where if I have a client and they fire me because I'm doing my best work and they don't like it, that's going to be okay, too. And that's not easy. And that's going to take a long road for people to build. So hopefully you're on that journey that you should care what people think, but not that much. That's going to change who you are and to figure out where in your life you're a bit of a coward. And to step up and to have that shoot in your eye and to have that edge wherever it is that you feel like you're building the momentum, where you're mastering your craft, where you're getting stronger and don't make any excuses for it. And know that people are going to come out of the woodworks and they're going to fight you on it. They're going to challenge you and you'll feel like you're alone. And that's why we say, don't want to be a leader. Because that is hard stuff that most people can't do. They don't want it. And they say they want to be in a leadership role, but then when push comes to shove, they crawl back into a hole and then they just kind of back off and they go with the crowd. Don't be that type of leader. And when the time comes and you need to humble yourself because you're wrong, you own that too.
