Chad Silverstein offers practical leadership advice focused on motivating employees by demonstrating genuine care and investing in their development (time, teaching, opportunities). He recommends asking each team member “What’s the best gift a leader can give you?” and then listening carefully to tailor support. Silverstein warns leaders can be “way too nice,” which invites being taken advantage of; his prescription is to set clear expectations from day one, start tougher and loosen standards after employees prove themselves, and accept some inevitable misuse of time as part of running an organization.
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So what do I, how do I motivate employees? You know, I think the way that I believe is the best way to motivate employees, to show your employees that you care about them and to invest in them. And I think the problem today is everyone is so focused on money and making a profit and fattening their own paychecks that you forget that people can see right through you and they see that your decisions are self motivated to benefit you and not necessarily the whole. And when a team can see that their leader is with them, that they invest in them, they care about them, there's something that, that does for people on a team that makes them work harder, makes them more invested. And the term quiet quitting, it's there for a reason. People aren't happy. I think if you want to motivate your employees, you have to show them that you care about them and that you're invested in them. And that might be through time that you spend with them, it may be through teaching and giving them experience and knowledge. And I think the best thing you can do as a leader is ask your team this question, Ask them, what's the best gift a leader can give you? And then shut your mouth and listen to what they say because whatever you hear that comes out of their mouth, they're telling you what they want from you. It's a very powerful exercise. It's an incredible question to ask. What's the best gift a leader can give you? You'll hear all sorts of different things and write them down and burn them in your head because that's what that person wants. And if you can give them that, whether it's the time, whether it's the knowledge, whether it's opportunity, whether it's whatever it is, then you can be someone that has a huge impact on people's lives. And when you can do that on a mass scale within an organization, boy, you have built something very special. You're very blessed to have people that are to going, going to get what they're looking for from their leader. Can you be too nice or too good to your employees? Do they take advantage of you? Can you be too nice to your employees? You can be way too nice to your employees. And yes, you can expect to be taken advantage of anyone in a leadership role, owner, founder, entrepreneur, you're going to have people take advantage. You're going to have people waste time while they're being paid. You're going to, it's just part of the game. And you, you can't get bitter about it you just have to know that that's normal. I remember when we started talking about not letting people be at their desk and have their cell phones because of compliance issues, but we knew they'd be wasting their time. But you can't rip people's phones away from them. They're going to have their phone, they're going to spend time, they're going to call their family, and it's just a nature of the beast. And I think you have to accept that now. How you handle that is going to be basically setting a precedent for what type of a culture you want to foster. And I definitely was way too nice early in my career. I was trying to be the therapist for all my employees to try to help them through their problems and try to be the savior so they were happy when they were at their desk. My thought was if I had a happy employee who wasn't worried and wasn't dealing with something bad, then they could do a lot better for me. And unfortunately, that just doesn't make any sense because everybody struggles with something. Everybody struggles with something. And I think you have to be a tough leader. You have to be able to have clear expectations. And my best advice for any leader is to be very clear with your expectations up front. As soon as someone comes in. Be tougher. Right from the get go, it's a lot easier to loosen the reins and become nicer than to start off really nice and then have to get tougher. So start off tough, lay down the law, tell them what the expectations are, and when they prove themselves, then you can loosen up the reins. And I think that's a much healthier environment to put people in because you'll be able to weed people out quick. And I think I didn't do that early on. I definitely got taken advantage of and it's just something I got used to. And it can be hard at times, but it's part of the game of owning a company. Being an entrepreneur and being in a leadership role can be very lonely.
