S1E9 Corey-osity Unleashed with Claude Silver

Welcome to Curiosity Unleashed, where we turn bold ideas into action and help businesses and leaders step it up.

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So welcome back to another episode of Curiosity Unleashed. We are so excited today to have the one, the only, Claude Silver. Claude, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you for having me, Deborah. It's great to see you today. Absolutely.

And you get the chance to meet Ken for the first time.

No, the one and only. Great to meet you.

Nice to meet you too.

Why don't I start out just telling a little bit about you, Claude? Try not to blush too much as I say it. So Claude is the world's first Chief Heart Officer at VaynerX. I do believe— were you the first person with that job title too? I see more people with it, but I think you were the first. You started it. Claude believes that showing up with heart and humanity is the key to unlocking greatness in people. I love that. As a leader, you see it as her job to infuse empathy into every aspect of the organization. And as a speaker, a podcaster, an industry trendsetter, and a LinkedIn influencer, you're now inspiring other leaders to do the same. So again, welcome. Thank you so, so much.

Thank you very much. Great to be here.

Now, I know you've got an interesting story about your journey. I don't think you really started out in the world of people in the traditional way. So can you tell us a little bit about how you moved into it, how you became the Chief Heart Officer at Vayner?

Yes, absolutely. I didn't start out in an HR field or anything like that, organizational design or anything. But I did start out loving people and being really fascinated with human behavior, starting with my own at an early age and really diving into the ways in which I was behaving, the ways in which I wanted to behave, the whys. So psychology has always been in my blood, I would say. My mom's a psychotherapist. Something I've always loved. So everywhere I went, whether or not I was a cashier at a grocery store or I was serving smoothies at Jamba Juice or finally went into agency life, I've always been somewhat of a manager, unorthodox leader, or an official leader. And I started in this world, this wonderful world of digital in 1998 in San Francisco. So it was the first dot-com boom where there were jobs aplenty. And my first job was that of a project manager. And I was at a startup, an internet, you know, a dot-com startup. And immediately I was managing teams. And that was just part of the role, which I gravitated to really well. I really, I believe in people. I love rooting for people and cheering for people without the, without the pom-poms. And I'm a person that, that believes in rolling up their sleeves. So I don't believe in leading from up here, from the clouds. I really want to be in the dirt. And so I understand what people are going through. And so throughout my, my career and my journey, I've always had that, that wonderful mesh of being able to actually be a practitioner and doing the work and also leading and cheering people on that were doing the work. So that's always been great and really enjoying conversations with clients and, and educating them. I've always thought about the educational part, as though I'm speaking to my mom who knows nothing about digital, who knows nothing about just getting her to FaceTime on an iPhone and being able to see her face is a big, big step.

So I'm impressed. I can't get my dad to do that. So well done.

Right. I know it takes a lot, but I've enjoyed that process of the teaching and the curiosity of really how someone is hearing things. And so One thing led to another. I was living in London. I was running digital strategy at Publicis London when I met Gary Vaynerchuk, who's my boss and CEO. And one thing led to another. And he offered me the role of SVP of client partnership here in New York. So I moved to New York. I was one of the— I was the first SVP that he hired, meaning old person and a person that had experience. The average age was 23. When I started at Vayner, and that was 2014. So a long time ago. This is actually my longest relationship, 11 years now that I've been with him. And so, I had a lot of experience and he put me in situations where he needed an elder or someone with experience to lead teams, to have exit conversations, to have those harder conversations. We didn't have HR here at the time. We were very small. And one thing led to another where it just found— I found that I was having a lot more pleasure with the people in the teams rather than talking to clients about, you know, making it green, making it purple, making it yellow. Like, I didn't need to be in those conversations anymore. And so I went to him one day and I said, you know, I love this place and I love the culture here, but I no longer want to do advertising. And he said, what do you want to do? And I said, I just really love people. I love the heartbeat. Of this place. And one thing led to another. And about 9 months later, we created this role, the Chief Heart Officer role. When we sat down to do it, he said a couple of things. One, you're going to be Chief Heart Officer. And I said, great, what are we building here? Because I had been here for 16 months. And he said, we are building the single greatest human organization in the history of time. Sign me up. Aspirational. Sign me up. That means my work is never done. 'How do we know if I'm successful?' was the next thing I asked. And he said, 'You will touch every single human being and infuse the agencies with empathy.' And we were 400 people at that time. We're 2,000 across the globe. And then I said to him, 'I've never done HR. I never wanted to do HR.' And he said, 'Great. You'll hire a very strong team around you,' which I did over time. And I changed the department name from HR to People and Experience because that's what It felt like we do. And that's what I think the role of HR is, is that of a coach and a mentor and a teacher. And really, that's how it all started. So I've been in this role for 9 and a half years. I've been at Vayner 11 years. And we're growing and we are reinventing ourselves. And there's a process of unlearning and learning. And so that's really been my journey in a very quick nutshell.

Do you know what I love? I love the whole story of how you went into it and why you went into it. But I think a key takeaway for me is just sometimes, and I'm sure you see this all the time being in a people function now, we just have this idea of what a person needs to be and look like to go into a role. And no wonder we have problems with diversity because we always have that one view. And I love that both you and Gary looked at the role in lots of different ways and gave you that chance. Because I think that's one of the biggest mistakes we make. That's why we don't have the diversity. I don't know what your thoughts on, you know, how you hire people to look through those lenses and give people who might have never done the job before an opportunity. Because sometimes I think they do a better job because they haven't lived it their whole career.

Yeah, that's right. So, not only did I change the name of the department immediately, I did two other things. I removed the need for a college education on any job description with the exception of being a lawyer, obviously, and some other roles. And I also changed the way we hired. So, rather than culture fit, which was getting us apples, apples, apples, apples, and everyone looked the same on the floor, to skill set fit and culture addition, which is what we still do today. And that allowed us to start looking in different places. For talent. And that allowed us to retain talent in different ways in terms of putting people in places of strength. And now, we really match people up with the skills. Can you do this job? Can you bring something new and different into this role? And are you a good person and you still love talking about music? Okay, that's a great addition to the culture. But you don't need to love Pearl Jam just because I love Pearl Jam. For example. That's not why we're going to hire you anymore. And that really has diversified the floor. Also, we have a residency program, which is a place where we get people that— it's like an internship, but actually it's for people that have already been working in the world. So you could be my age, you can be 30, you can be whatever, and wanting to get into a new career. It's a 3-month program in different departments where you get paid and you learn while you're also working and understanding what it takes to become a tactician and a practitioner of that job. And then most often you get hired into that department.

I have to say that is incredibly moving to hear that when it was your turn, Gary said, well, what role do you want? How are we going to make this work? And all that. Too many times in my background is engineering. And too many times in engineering, you get hired as an Android developer. Now, I don't care if you've fallen out of love with Android. I don't care any of it. You're an Android developer. You have that branded on your forehead and that's it forever. And so the idea of being able to move to a role and have a role made for you is— that's exciting. But then the whole residency program is just— I want to jump up and down and scream because You know, I do think in a lot of companies, the interview process is broken. We're asking the wrong questions. We're focusing on the wrong aspects. We're not looking at the people and what makes that person special.

Yes, yes. The passion. I want to speak to someone that enjoys what they do. They're passionate about it. It's not a chore. Then it won't be necessarily a job, but it's something that just comes naturally to them. They are gifted in that. Space.

Just takes my breath away. Now, I am going to ask the question that I was planning on, but slightly differently. I prepared for this call by looking at your interview with Glenn from Reward Gateway back when VaynerMedia was 700 people. So it's now over 2,000. So we're talking a little while ago.

Do you remember that? It was when Glenn and I were— had just written the book and you were kind enough to to do an interview with us. And he came to, he interviewed you in San Francisco.

Yeah, he came to New York.

Oh, New York, yeah.

Yeah, he came to New York. What's so funny, Deborah, is actually I was going through my Dropbox yesterday and I found the manuscript.

Wow, wow, crazy. Sorry, Ken, continue.

The question as written is, where did your unique job title come from and what does it mean to you in practice? Now you've already answered that, I'm going to spin that a little bit and say, your world has changed, your job, the people you've worked with, the organization you work in, all that has changed. What does that mean? How has your job changed from chief heart officer, you know, 7 years ago to now?

Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. And I mean, the answers are on my fingertips because it's something I'm surrounded with every day, which is one, the scale. So, it was one thing to scale myself at 400 and another thing to scale myself at 700. And now that we're 2,000, we're global. We're in different time zones. We're in a myriad of different languages that I absolutely don't speak in different cultures, which means more autonomy for the people that are on the people and experience team in those areas. I only ask that we continue to keep our core what it is, which is we are kind. We hold space for people. We are not judgmental. We are the calm in someone's storm. And we are partners. There's nothing I can tell someone that they don't already know, if you know what I'm saying. I'm just maybe highlighting something for them. So the scale at which we operate now is larger. I think the stakes are higher because we're an agency. In the agency world, if you look at it outside, the public-traded agencies are really going through a massive undertaking, I would say, of probably destruction to only be rebuilt at some point. We are an independent agency and we pour so much into our people here and into the learning and the education to what makes us so different. You know why we are— I think why we are the fastest growing independent agency is because of our culture. And because of the opportunities we give people. And the opportunities meaning back to putting people in places of strength. So, if you are hired as a copywriter and it turns out that your interest is much more client partnership, we'll most likely put you there because we also see that that's your interest. We are not beholden to you being a copywriter. You're not doing us any favors if you're not in it to win it, right? So that's something I'm thinking about a lot. I'm also thinking about talent today and Gen Z and the generation that's going to come up is asking for different things. They are changing the world, that is for sure. We will be working for them in no time. And they challenge us in very different ways and the things that they care about. And so how can I support them and partner with them? How can we partner with them without coddling and creating entitlement? That's a big deal. To create that boundary while providing for them. But really, if they have a splinter, rather than taking the splinter out for them, showing them where the first aid kit is, for example. That's very, very big and that's needed across the globe wherever we are, right? We need to really empower people rather than do it for them. The other thing I think that I no longer do, which I used to do because probably of my personality and Gary's personality, was we were probably much more apt to give out fourth place 5th place trophies to people. And now, we're really focused on a culture of accountability and feedback as well as performance. So again, putting people in the places where they are the strongest and giving them what they need in terms of L&D and tools and whatnot. And then, we have expectations of them. The expectations is you are going to crush that over there. You are going to know how to point thumbs rather than fingers at someone else. You are going to know how to be the bigger person in situations rather than blaming the client every day. You know, what, what did you do? What did you do to make that not work out? So there's a whole nother layer of accountability that we now put on our people that I feel very comfortable about. I really do. I feel like this journey has taken us from a place of being kind of softer, more coddling into COVID, which was a whole nother, you know, practice for every single person. And to now, you know, the world has changed, the The stakes are higher. Clients don't have as much money or time necessarily to give us. So, we need to make sure that we are retaining the clients and expanding those client partnerships and client relationships that we have, which means we need people who are really good at that.

I just have to say that's absolutely sublime. That whole pointing thumbs rather than fingers.

Yeah.

Just amazing. Wow!

It's a concept, right? But that is a big, that is a value of ours, which is don't blame the client. Client is a client. What are we doing that didn't quite work for them? Or how can we make something? Did we really understand their market share? Do we really understand the problem that they're telling us? Did we listen to them and hear them? If not, then we need to bring them in again and have what we call an elephant meeting, which is let's talk about the elephant in the room. Right? Because this is about partnership. This is about us being the best at our game. And in order to do that, we really need to understand what that client is asking for.

No, fantastic. Thank you.

Yeah, it's interesting because what I find a lot of times in organizations is you hire adults and you treat them like children. You don't give them that empowerment. You don't give them trust. As a matter of fact, Ken and I did a Disrupt HR talk just yesterday. And we did it more as like as a comedy or something. And what was your line about not adulting me or something? What was that, Ken? Putting you on the spot.

My boss is trying to train me in something I learned in university as if I've forgotten how to adult.

That's so— that's right.

And we wonder why our employees are not engaged, not motivated. You know, how can you be engaged if you don't have a sense of ownership, a sense of pride and value in what you're doing. So, I love, especially as you grow, you need that even more.

Yeah, absolutely. And also, one of the things that we have to get better at is also making sure that we're giving out roses, that we are celebrating because it's so easy, especially with a disruptor for a CEO and chairman who is on to the next thing and such an entrepreneur. It's easy for us to just go fast, fast, fast, fast, fast. But we have to stop and hand out the roses, whatever they are, whether or not it's a small rose and, hey, thank you so much for showing up. That was remarkable. Thank you so much for working those 3 weekends in a row, whatever it is. But we have to do that on a micro and a macro scale. And that's very important to us and something that is on my head a lot, as well as for the first time ever, we're going to write a culture playbook here. And we're in the process of writing a culture playbook, which we haven't had. We've been this wonderful culture that has been able to grow through osmosis and through a lot of high touch, really hands-on. How I spend my day is very high touch. How every other person spends their day is high touch. Now, I want to be able to give someone an actual book, online book of these are the expectations. These are the behaviors in which We appreciate and we grow here. And this is what it takes to be here. You have your foundational competencies and your functional competencies. But please don't mistake the fact that you can be the best engineer here with your functional skills. But if you don't have these foundational competencies, leadership, accountability, communication, and growth mindset, you're not going to cut it. It's not going to work.

But again, you're setting expectations. You're clear with them. You're giving them the roadmap and then you're leaving them to deliver. I think that's instead of just expecting them to just understand what it takes to be successful.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly that.

So, I'm going to change a little bit and talk about another area that I know you're really passionate about. And in our last book, you were kind enough to let us interview on the idea of empathy, empathy and compassion. And it's a word that's used all the time, all the time. So, I'm just curious for what does it mean to you? And especially as you've grown, how do you build it into the fabric of the organization so everybody understands the importance and knows how to do it?

Yeah, so two things that are very, very important to me when I speak about empathy and when I act on empathy. The first thing is empathy is a feeling. It is an emotion. How we show empathy is through kindness and compassion. You, me, and pretty much everyone here was taught kindness and compassion as 1, 2-year-old, 3-year-old, 4-year-old. So it is not foreign to us. We may have forgotten it. We may forget to give it to ourselves, whatever that is. You know, everyone has their own lived experience, but it is not foreign. To show kindness, to hold the door open, to care about another person. I believe that everyone can do that. So that's the first thing I want to say about empathy is it is an emotion. I will never, ever know what it is like to walk in your shoes, Deborah, or Ken. And so I don't think it is putting myself in your shoes. I just can't. And nor can you put yourself in my shoes. However, We are all humans and we have very similar emotions. Our lived experience is what makes us different. For me, empathy is about being a partner and being a passenger with you while you go down your road, while you are driving your car. I cannot drive the car for you, but I will be a passenger with you. I will listen. I will create and hold a very safe space for you. Whatever you want to talk about, let's go. We can do that. But I'm not going to take your emotions on. That doesn't— that does you no good, and it certainly does me no good. So empathy for me is riding shotgun with you on your journey for as long as you need me to, or as short as you need me to. That is it. And I can commit to being able to do that because again, I don't have to take it on. It's not mine. I'm not going to get wet. I'm not going to get sogged down by it. But I am going to do my best to be your partner in crime as you walk through whatever it is you walk through with kindness and with compassion.

Do you know, I love that two things jumped out. The first part about, you know, you're never going to be in the other person's shoes. And you also, you can't— related to that, you can't change them. Sometimes I've seen leaders who are like trying to understand someone's feelings and then they think you could just miraculously change. So, I love the second part, which is riding alongside them. It goes back to when you use the word coach before. That's exactly what a coach is doing is they're riding alongside you. They're there supporting, listening to all of those aspects.

That's exactly right. So, what I said to the team, the people and experience team at the beginning of the year because 2024 was a beast, a beast for everyone. What I said at, you know, January 4th or something was, or January 6th, was I don't want you to be therapists. I don't. I don't want you to have the same conversation with someone 2, 3, 4, 5 times. That's one too many, right? I want you to be a coach and I want you to be able to connect them with the right people. While you're doing that, then you take care of yourself. It's so easy in this world of HR and people to forget yourself because we are givers. We are empaths. We want to be of service. That's why we get into this world, right? It's certainly not to push paper around, right? It's not to be the bad cop. So, how can we make sure that we're not getting saturated by the heavy emotion that someone has but we're able to connect them to whomever it is, whether or not that's our EAP that I'm really happy about, whether or not that's someone that's going through the same situation or has a special needs child or whatever it is. That's the part. That's community for me. And that's what we're building here. It's a community. It's a global community and one that I'm super stoked to be at.

Great. Thank you.

Come back to your upcoming— I want to come back to your upcoming— what did you call it? Your culture playbook.

Yes.

Did I get that right?

Okay. Yes.

Now, my background is engineering. I knew an awful lot of people as I was coming up through the ranks who they could tell you what the third argument was in this one function call on Android and how it changed between Android 12 and Android 13, you know, and, well, bully for them, you know, well done, well done, golf clap. But how is that really helping them deal with the people in the organization? How is that helping the team move forward, right? So, with the upcoming playbook, let's say you're trying to teach somebody to reflect on the impact they have on people. So, the question would be, you know, how are you making others feel? So, how would you approach one of these technical wizards who might not have the right people skills and teach them the importance of how are you making people feel?

Yeah. So right here, you don't see my messy board right in front of me here. But I have written something in my chicken scratch, which I firmly believe in, which is it says, "Be someone people want in the room." That's how I'm going to start. And Ken, engineer, what does that mean to you? What does that mean? And you're going to say, "I'm their champion," or "I'm someone that knows all the answers," or "I am—" going to back them up. You're going to say 1,000 different things. And I'm going to look for the time that you say, 'Well, I'm the one that knows all the answers.' And then I'm going to say, 'But how do you know you're the smartest person in the room?' And they're going to say, 'Well, clearly, I'm the SVP.' And I'm going to say, 'No, no, no. The room is the smartest one in the room.' So I'm going to work it backwards that way. That's most of the time. How are you? I'm very curious. How do you show up? How do you know you don't show up with your phone in your head? In your phone? Are you sure? Like, do people— are you the person that people want in a room? That's how I will go into that conversation. And so, most often, right? How are you leaving people? What do you want people to say when you leave that room? What do you want them to say about you? Wow, this is the greatest manager I've ever had. This manager gives me autonomy and gives me great feedback. That is never too critical, but it's something that I take as a gift. Like, yes, that's the person I want. So I'm going to really ask that person and inquire, like, how do they know they are what they say they are? Because you have an entire room that is receiving you very differently than you think you are being received. That's how I'm going to start that conversation. So it's very much from a human behavioral standpoint. You know, I'm not going to be able to go into Android with you. So you can't get me on your smarts. That's not how we're going to do this. But I am going to say I have had such wonderful conversations with your teammates in the last 3 weeks. And they all say you give them such powerful feedback and they love working for you. That's what I'm going to tell you. Why is that, Kat? Tell me why. How did you learn that gift of feedback? And then I'm going to shine my light on you so you feel like you are the only person I ever talk to about this. And you're going to feel great. Like, I want you to feel like I want you to feel like I want your team to feel. I want you to feel seen and recognized and like you matter. And so, I'm going to try to do all of that with examples. And if it's not working, then I'm going to course correct because I'm going to read your body language. That's what I can do. But I cannot get into the code of Android 12, 13, or 14. And thank goodness other people can because that's their strengths. Yeah, what I want is I want all of our leaders. And I think we've done a good job, a really good job in the last couple of years. I want all of our leaders to be adults. I want all of our leaders to leave people better than they found them. That is the key. I don't want to have to have the people in the Experience team go clean up. The slop. That's not a good use of our time. So, if you are a leader and you are an adult and I am saying that over and over and over and you're in enough meetings with whomever, me, Gary, whatever, you get it. You know what it takes to lead here and you know what it takes to be a rising leader here too.

It's interesting you picked that. You focused on the, are you the smartest person in the room? Because about 10 years ago, it finally occurred to me that despite all the lies I was telling myself, I was not in fact the smartest person in any room. And that really was a superpower for me at the time, being able to say, "I don't know.

What do you think?" Yeah, yeah.

I couldn't be a leader until I could say that.

Thank you for that honesty because that's really, really true. Ideas come from everywhere. There's no way there is the one smartest person. We are a collective of great minds and I do think that's one of our— one of the ways in which we do flourish. And when we aren't flourishing, that's because we've got a lot of politics going on, or we've got people that think that they are the know-it-alls. And so those are the things I have to be mindful too of watching and being in enough spaces so that I can feel that energy. I can feel what's going on. Thank you.

That was a great— what a great answer.

Oh, thank you. It's interesting because when you were talking about the role of HR, you know, I go back 20 years ago. And it almost was the role of HR to pick up the pieces. So, I was smiling as you were talking about as leaders explaining to them that that is not our role in HR. That is not what we're all about. How do you get leaders to embrace the ownership? And you talk a lot about feelings. How do you help them understand that feelings drive performance and the interconnection and that they need to take that responsibility?

Yeah, a lot of the times I focus on them and what's blocking them. Just like I would focus on anyone. I mean, everyone's a leader of themselves, right? We're all CEOs of our own self. So, I focus on them. Like, what's your block? Like, have they not had enough time with Gary? Do they not feel seen? Are they not getting the salary rise that they want? Like, what is blocking them from being all that they can be, for being the leader we hired them to be? Because it all starts with them. And again, let's go back to pointing thumbs, not fingers. Have you not reached out to Gary's admin to get time if that's your block? Have you not shot him a text? Have you not gone to one of the other offices that you're responsible for and had real meetings with people and finding out what makes them tick? Like everything starts with you. It doesn't start with them. So really focusing on them and trying to remind them why we hired them if I need to. And then, listen, your job is to turn your spotlight on your team. And we got to get from good to great and great to exceptional. So how are we going to do that? What is it that they need? And they can all tell me what they need more of. Coaching, stronger leaders, better talent. Like everyone knows what it is they need. But they have to be able to articulate that. And then we need to be able to act on it. You know, I don't want to do anything that's cheap and cheerful and fake it. Like, okay, great. All right. So, we need to pipeline for those 3 roles. All right, come talk to me in 6 months. No, if that's what we need to do, then we need to go do that recruiting for you. So, it's always a mixed bag, isn't it? You know, everyone's got their own stuff. And as I say, like, you know, we all come to work after having 2 or 3 hours of being awake, whether or not you've got a sick dog, you're getting the lunch ready for the kids, you did You got in a fight with your spouse, like, and then you come to work. You can't just erase that whole morning that you just had. So, how can you share that vulnerability with your team? Because guess what? They also are going through those first 2, 3 hours of wake-up time too. So again, it's, you know, this all comes down to being able to be more human, taking that armor off, relating to people, remembering that We were once juniors too. We started off not knowing anything, had no idea how to push our chair into a boardroom after we left. Yeah, yeah.

And I love how you started with the idea of understanding their individual blockers because I'm asked quite often to go to companies and get in front of a bunch of leaders and tell them why they need to own and drive employee engagement, or why they need to do appreciation. And I'm doing it in a generic way without understanding what the blockers are. So like, is someone really bad at saying thank you because they were never thanked or they feel uncomfortable? So, that's a really good tip is start with understanding the individual blockers before you can move to that next step. Yeah.

And Debra, the only way you're able to do that is if you have enough self-awareness yourself. That's the key here. I mean, that's really the key. It starts with understanding where what I'm good at, what I'm not good at, understanding that I woke up on the wrong side of the bed, understanding that like my triggers are X, Y, and Z. I know that I'm a big girl. You know, I can't just go and point things out on people if I haven't done the work myself. And I think that's one of the things that I really enjoy about this role. Not only have I done the work of self-awareness, but I was in agency life for so long. I did the work. I know what it's like to work those 13, 15-hour days and to never get So I want to be able to reverse that for people with that understanding of like, I know it sucks, or I know it's amazing you won that pitch and you guys worked 3 weekends in a row to do that. Like, that is amazing.

Yeah, Ken and I are passionate about awareness. We, um, in our latest book we did the 3 A's, which is it starts with awareness, then acceptance, and action. Because I think too many people just go right to action. Okay, you're a new leader. You're just all going to go to the same 10, 15 training courses without understanding what you need and where you're beginning and where you need to end up.

So, that's super important. I love that.

I wanted to take a slight turn here and talk about a phrase that's been in the news for the last 5 years heavily: emotional intelligence. Now, Deb and I, we're both big believers in it. From our perspective, from our definition of it, what does emotional intelligence mean to you? And because you are at the lead of such a large company and so many different people in so many different cultures, what do you have to do to try to get emotional intelligence across in all of those different cultures as well, some of which have not heard of emotional intelligence? Exactly.

In Asia, compassion for self and compassion for the other are the same exact thing. We see that differently. For example, I need to know that. I need to know that there are some cultures, Asian cultures that do not use the word empathy and we use the word empathy. So, you have to be able to understand that and then talk about kindness and how you show that. We spend a lot of time recruiting. Spend a lot of time recruiting. And in our recruitment process, and then once we get here in our orientation and onboarding process, we are really talking a lot about behaviors here. We are talking, and those behaviors all encompass emotional intelligence. That is not to say that cognitive intelligence isn't important. It is. It's a given. That's all you do in school, right? After you go into 7th grade, or you're only talking about cognitive. You rarely talk about feelings. Which is unfortunate. And we need to bring that back. That's a whole nother conversation. But by the time you have started here, you understand those core competencies I told you about already. Every single role in every single department has different core competencies that are based on growth mindset, leadership, accountability, and communication. And we explain how you bring those to life. And when you are ready to be promoted, how that next role brings that to life, and therefore, and thus, right? That is so super important to us. The other thing is we are very big on creating that space of belonging here. I call it belonging and bravery. That is what the culture fundamentally is built on— psychological safety and belonging. And those things, how do you make someone belong, is not something you read. A lot of people are going to read a book and be like, okay, okay, okay, now I have no idea how to do that, right? That's why I go back to like when you were a kid, you learn these things when you were a kid. You learn these things when you hold a door open or someone gives you attention. How does that make you feel when someone shines a spotlight on you? You might get bashful and shy, but inside, how do you really feel? So it all comes back to the fact that we all, all of us, all of us have very similar emotions. And we also have similar ways of showing those emotions. It is the experiences that we've had in life and how you were raised most of the time is how you are then going to walk through this world and whether or not you are going to say thank you or not, because you learned that at the dinner table. You didn't learn it at the dinner table, right? Or you didn't learn it in high school, and now it's an expectation of you here at this job to be in relationship with all of these people like We have to make sure that we are spending enough time sharing with people why it is so important to be the bigger person, to be kind. That is what we care about here. You can go to all these other agencies here in New York City. They care about a ton of other things, and that's fantastic. But if you want to be here, you need to be open to the fact of being generous, of being humble, working on all of these things, of having the ability to regulate your emotions so you don't scream at people all day. And if you do, then let's learn how to say, 'Thank you.' Say, 'I apologize for that. I was having a shitty day.' You know, we don't expect people to come in here and be among apples and apples and apples. Like I said, you know, I think it's Brené Brown that says, you know, 'True belonging doesn't mean changing yourself. It means being yourself.' You don't have to change yourself to fit in. You just need to be yourself. And these are things. So, everything I'm talking about is if it's all about emotional intelligence is what I'm sharing with you here. That is who we are. And we believe that we call our culture the Honey Empire. We believe that when you put that much attention, emotional attention and support around a person, their performance exceeds what you think it would be normally. The empire is the business results. The empire is the wins. The empire is that you are being promoted. The honey is how you act on a floor and how you react, how, how you share yourself. That's the deal. And that's what this generation, Gen Z, is all about. I mean, they're all about their feelings. And so we're, we're at a place, and I'm very happy that we've been, I believe, ahead of the game here So we have an ability to attract and retain these wonderful talents that are coming in on their first, second, or third job. And it's a labor of love. I mean, it's not every day, not every day is going to be a bed of roses. And it is definitely not utopia here. That is for sure. But we really aim to treat people as we want to be treated as well. And I think that that's the beginning and the end.

I just celebrate that whole approach to leadership, to creating the culture in an organization. I just hope your employees understand just how lucky they are because most organizations are not like that.

I think most of them do. They all feel like, you know, they come in and talk to them 6 months, 9 months, and they're like, everyone is so kind. I mean, when is this going to end? You know, or like, is this I had someone in here yesterday, is the honeymoon going to end? Well, it's going to end in the way that you're going to come to me one day and you're going to say, I didn't realize I had to unlearn all of these things to really be successful here. And that's right. You have to. I've had to unlearn things, too.

But, you know, it's great. I love that you are out there sharing your story because, you know, if you think about on TV and movies, the stereotypes of your industry, It's the exact opposite. And you've shown how you can be successful. I mean, you just talked about how much your company has grown. So, you can actually break the norm, focus on feelings, and be successful. And I think the people, you and Gary out there, hopefully, it'll change the industry and even outside of your industry. It is.

It is slowly but surely. We're migrating, I believe, to a place where we understand that leading with heart and being Being a human is more important than being a dictator. And you're just not going to get great performance from this generation and other generations to come by treating people the way we were treated, us Gen Xers. That's different. I don't want people to have to suffer in silence and go, you know, talk in cliques over there about how shitty things are. I want people to be able to talk about it and say, Yeah, that person didn't treat me well and I want to figure it out. I want to figure out what did I do wrong. Absolutely.

And as you said, it's all about unlearning because that's not what I was taught. You know, when I was first a leader, it was the exact opposite. So I'm like you. I'm glad that this generation is forcing us and pushing us to be better leaders. It's only going to end up in a better place. That's it.

It's time to just remove that armor. It's not necessary anymore. Yeah.

When I was in the Army, they said, they taught us that if you aren't hearing the people on your team complain to you, it's not that they're not complaining, it's that you aren't listening to them. They're still complaining somewhere else and they're going to be inventing things that are so much worse than reality.

That is right. You got that right.

Sorry, Deb, go ahead.

No, no, that's okay. I've got a very quick question for you in that if you could go back to your younger self, and we've talked a little bit about this already, and give yourself a piece of advice. And it might be a piece of advice that you're giving to your leaders all the time. What would that be? That one or two things?

Yeah, I think the first thing would be to take up space and to be big in a room, remembering that everyone does have something to share. I think that would probably be it. I thought, you know, I thought of myself as really unintelligent for a very long time, which kept me from, you know, options that were in front of me. So I would go back to that 21-year-old and say, you know, take up space, ask questions. Like, that's, that's actually a smart thing to do. I think that's, that's probably the biggest thing. And to, to not be afraid to reach out for support. You know, you don't have to go about it alone. Yeah.

And I think as a leader, sort of supporting what you just said, We need to encourage our employees, give them the floor, let them speak up when they don't have the courage to do so. A previous company, one of our values was speak up. And I loved it because it gave people permission who might be a bit doubting of themselves or a bit shy. It's like, I just want to live the value. Can I speak up? And as leaders, we have to support them in that. That's right.

That is our job is to create and hold that space for people to And to remind them that nobody's doing this alone.

We're in this together. We're a team. We're together. If it's good news, great. But if it's bad news, who cares? We're together in that. That's right.

When you win, I win. When I win, you win. Yeah.

Yeah. Claude, this is the part of the call I really hate the worst. We're almost out of time.

We want to keep going. We didn't get to ask you half the questions on our list.

No, no, seriously, we did not.

Well, I'm happy to come back because I missed those first 15 minutes.

We're going to have to schedule you again, absolutely. But for now, it is time for us to move on. So how can people contact you or find out more about the great work that you're doing in the organization or just on your own behalf? Thank you.

Yes, LinkedIn is where I'm really vocal. I really enjoy the community there. I've learned so much. From those people, which is great. I have a book coming out in late October. Yay! Yes, I'll obviously send you a copy. It's called Be Yourself at Work. I don't have a— I don't have the copy with me. It's in production right now. So I'm really excited about that. And you can go to my website, claude-silver.com, and sign up for the newsletter, and we'll see you there. Fantastic.

And can we buy your amazing t-shirts, which I didn't get to ask you about, but I love your t-shirts. Emotional Optimism and Optimistic Rebel. Yes. Are you a global distributor?

I am a global distributor. You go to the website and, uh, and half of the proceeds always go to charity. So of course. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.

Thank you so much for your time, Claud. Thank you.

Thank you.

Great to see you. Thank you so much.

And that's a wrap on this episode of Curiosity Unleashed. Huge thanks to our amazing guests and of course to you for tuning in.

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