Chad Silverstein argues that entitlement kills careers. No one is owed raises or promotions; you have to over-deliver and prove your value. Leaders should reward high performers, remove underperformers, and hire the right people even if it means creating new roles.
Chapters
One of the biggest problems I see today, especially with young professionals, is a sense of entitlement. And this thought about how you're owed something. And I've got news for you, you're not owed anything from anyone. And until you humble yourself and realize that people don't owe you anything, you're gonna have a real hard time, you're gonna struggle. People go into a new job and then within a couple months they expect the world to be turned over for them. And raises and promotions, you know, you have to earn it. And the way you earn it is you do more than what you're paid for. And that mindset is what high performers do day in and day out. When you get hired onto a job, when you're new on a team, you have to do more than what you're paid for. You have to over deliver. If you're getting paid X, then you should be doing more. And if you want to make more, that's how you get it. You don't give people an opportunity to talk about you in a negative light. You give people to opportunity to talk about all the things you've done that you weren't even asked to do. All the times that you went above and beyond to, you know, plug yourself into processes that you weren't even asked to be part of. And I think that the more that you can do, the more value that you can provide, the more you're going to get in reciprocity coming back to you. If you want to be able to make more money and if you want to be paid more for your services, if you start a new company, you've got to provide value, period. People who provide value get paid. People who over deliver get paid more. And you can have two people in a company who have the same title, the same job. One person makes a lot more money than the other person. Why? You know, the naysayers will say because of politics. And that may be true, but typically and most likely you're going to see one of the individuals who's a better employee, They're a high performer, they produce better results, they provide more value to the company, which in return wants to be reciprocated because the company wants to pay that person more to keep them. You know, I, I saw people fighting on a team the other day and they were talking about an individual who wasn't producing. And I asked the leaders if they would fight to keep this person on the team. And one of the leaders looked at me and said, yeah, I'd fight to keep this person on the team. And then another leader said no. So I challenged them. You know, like, which is it? You know, why is it the two leaders in this, on this team are one's fighting for someone and one's not? And so I think, you know, as leaders in an organization, you know, you're going to tap into people who are providing value, who are over delivering, who are higher performers. And if you're a leader, you should cheat towards these people. You know, I always used to say cheat towards the high performers. You should. You know, any time spent on low performers, any time spent on people under delivering, trying to get them up is a waste of time. I'm not saying you don't want to mentor and I'm not saying you don't want to coach people and you don't want to see the best. But I'm going to focus more on the high performers and get them to lift because that will have a bigger impact on everybody. One person can light up a team and one person can also drain a team. And if you're a leader and you're being drained because you're focusing all your attention on the low performers, the people who are underperforming, who are typically the ones sabotaging or complaining because they're not being paid enough and they're bitter, they're a victim, there's just no room for that in a healthy team. There's no way for a team to have chemistry and have flow. When you've got a weak link, it is true what they say, you're team is only going to be as strong as your weakest link. And typically when you get rid of someone on your team that doesn't deserve to be there, they have this entitlement, then you see the entire team rise up. And the worst part for any leader is hearing people say, what took you so long? And you know, everybody usually knows what's going on before the leader leader. If you're leading anything, you're lied to more than anyone and you're usually the last one to find out. People don't like the tattletale. They don't like to wrap people, people out. They don't think it's their place. That's a problem in itself. But I think as a leader, you just have to know that any individuals who are underperforming, who have that sense of entitlement, who play the card of being a victim, they just are going to hold you back. Better to make changes and find a replacement. The answer is always the right person. And if you find the right person in an interview process, hire them even if you don't have a position, position for them. That's a great discipline I use. You'll find a position and a role for the right person. But the problem is if you have what we call loss aversion and you're so scared to give up on someone because you have to start over, you have to train them again, you have to waste the money that you spent on the individual, you're just in for a world of hurt holding on to people like that. You're better to cut the cord and make the change and move forward than to sit and try to hope that someone kind of takes, takes the turn and turns the corner and all of a sudden doesn't have that same philosophy of entitlement. And if you're someone who has that sense of entitlement, you need to wake up because again, you know, nobody owes you anything. You create value and that's how you get more in return. So over deliver, do more than what you're asked for, do more than what you're paid for, and you'll see results a lot quicker. Sam.
