Chad Silverstein delivers leadership advice on scaling a business by empowering employees to solve their own problems rather than relying on the leader for answers. He emphasizes letting go of micromanagement, delegating decision-making, and using a simple coaching technique—responding to questions with questions (e.g., “What do you think?” or “Give me three solutions”)—to build independent problem-solving, increase team effectiveness, and drive scalable growth.
Chapters
It's so hard when you run a business, especially when you start a new business and you're responsible for pretty much everything, to not be involved in everything. But as you grow and as you add people to your team, you have to learn how to let go. You have to learn how to delegate. You have to learn, you know, how to be able to let other people who are really good at what they do do their thing without stepping in and undermining them and making other people feel uncomfortable because you're micromanaging and standing over their shoulder, you know, checking all their work. And if you really want to grow and you want to scale, then you want to empower your team and you want to figure out ways to make them smarter. You want to figure out ways to, you know, work on them versus kind of always being with them, trying to solve all the problems. And if you can get your team to solve their own problems, not only will it free up your time, it'll free up more of their time and you'll be more effective as a. As a team. And one of the things you can do as a leader is not answer their questions. And as someone who likes to solve problems and someone who likes to, you know, be someone that people look to, to. To get some advice and be able to figure out how to overcome a challenge. It's really, really hard to be able to just not answer something that you know the answer to. That can just give the person what they're asking, what they need in order to move that project forward. But the problem is by solving the problem for the person who's coming to you, you cripple them, and you basically do everything you can to not empower them because they're going to be habituated to keep coming to you for all the problems. Start answering their questions with questions and just question their answers. It's. It's a. It's a very simple technique, but when they ask you a question, ask them back a question. And typically it's something as simple as what do you think? Or what would you do? Or give me three solutions that you think you would come up with and then have them pick the one. And you can always guide them. You can always kind of bring them back and circle another way, but get them thinking. You know, the problem today is people don't think. They're so used to going to the Internet. They're so used to now using AI. They're so used to being able to have whatever they have at their fingertips or have you that they can go knock on your door and get the answer from you because you've been doing it forever and you definitely know the answer. But again, it really stifles a person from growing. So start answering questions with questions. Get people thinking about the solution and not just kind of just coming up with ideas and empower people to come up with the answer on their own. And you will just get so much more out of every single person that you work with. And when you can do that across the board, you get, you get that momentum and that traction and that 10x growth because you've empowered people. And when you empower people who are coming together and you don't need all of them, you just need a few, and you empower them to solve their own problems, that's going to be a very, very powerful strategy that most people never bother to invest in. So invest in your people and invest in making them smarter by solving their own problem.
