A short motivational leadership talk by Chad Silverstein urging listeners to practice radical self-reflection and personal accountability before blaming others. Key points: leaders must close their own 'integrity gaps,' solicit and accept honest feedback, frame mistakes as learning opportunities, and model behavior they expect from their teams.
Chapters
How many times have you told yourself that you need to change, that things need to change, that he's the problem, she's the problem, that you want to get out of your current situation? Well, there's only one way to do that, and that is to look inward and make changes. And like Yoda says, do or do not, because there is no try. Trying to change, trying to start to work out, trying to be a better leader will get you nowhere doing it. Having productive actions, having truth tellers in your life that will hit you in the face with feedback that might hurt. Holding yourself accountable, celebrating the wins, overcoming obstacles and challenges and embracing when things are really tough and knowing that tough times are a blip and they will pass. This is what strong leaders will do in order to think through growth and progression and know that they're a work in progress and we all are. But to be a really strong leader, one that is a leader that people are willing to run through walls for, people are willing to follow. And for you to have influence on your team or the people, your clients, investors, you've got to know who you are. You've got to know where you're going. You have to know how you want to live. You have to know why you believe what you believe. And there's no easy way around that. You got to do the hard work. At Build2Lead, we understand that the biggest problem in any system is you. We also understand that it's you who probably wants someone like me to come in and try to fix the people on your team. And it's just not how it works. Until you can admit that you're the problem, and until you get busy fixing and closing all of your integrity gaps, no one can look and fix other people around you. No one can do anything that is going to create this magic button that's going to get pressed and have everything all of a sudden be the way you want it to be. In order to grow your company, in order to live the kind of life that you want to live, it's important that you look inward, see yourself as a problem, and be able to get busy closing those gaps. We tell people, hard on yourself, not down on yourself. You can't just be bummed out every time you screw up and make a mistake. You get better by making mistakes. Every time you screw up is an opportunity for you to grow and learn and turn that experience and transform it into an opportunity for a lesson learned. How you frame that in your brain says everything about you as a leader. It says everything about the people that you lead and what they're gonna think when they screw up. If your team screws up, you hit them over the head with a 2x4. You can be sure they're gonna lie to you the next time. They're gonna shy away from you because they're scared. Or you can embrace it. You can learn something from it, and you can show them what you expect when people screw up because you don't want them to do it again. And you want to learn that lesson, so you want to transform that experience into something that can be a benefit and not a negative. How you think about things, how you frame these things in your mind says everything about you as a leader and how your team will perceive you. Do you have any clue how your team perceives you? Ask your team for feedback. Guarantee you hear crickets. Nobody will tell you a thing, and it's because they don't trust you. Ask them enough times and someone at some point will give it to you. And you better be ready to hear what they have to say. And you better not triple d them. Destroy, deny, defend what they say, because if you do that, they'll never come back. If you want the honest truth, you've got to be able to take it. Listen, try to understand, ask good questions. It's their truth. You can't tell them they're wrong. I did this with my team. I used to have a lot of fun with my team, and when I got feedback that I'm not the same as I used to be, I was hurt, and I wanted to rattle off 10 things I did over the past week that proved this person wrong. But that was their truth, and I had to hear it, and I had to own it. I didn't have to apologize for it, but I had to hear it. I heard something else that I did have to apologize for something that I did that I didn't even know I did. As a leader, you do these things day in and day out, and it's important that you're open to it and that you humble yourself and that you look in the mirror and you constantly work on you. And by doing that, you'll get other people doing that, because if you live it, you can give it. If you want people to be and act a certain way, then you need to show them what that looks like. That goes for at home, with your kids, to the people that you lead on your team. The question is, are you built to lead? The bigger question is, do you even want to be built to lead? It's probably not for you. It's only for a few.
