Heart-Led Leadership: A Better Path to Stronger Teams

Claude: When you take up all the space and the oxygen in the room, it leaves no other opportunity or very little psychological safety for someone else to interject an idea, a thought, a question.

Drew: Do you make the people around you better, stronger players?

Claude: You call it empathetic leadership. You can call it heart-centered. You can call it anything you want, except for top-down. What I think people don't understand is this role revolves around both empathy and candor, both empathy and accountability.

Drew: Hello, Renegade Marketers. If this is your first time listening, welcome. If you're a regular listener, welcome back. You're about to listen to an expert huddle where our flocking awesome community, CMO Huddles, gets exclusive access to experts, including the authors of some of the world's best-selling business books. In this episode, Claude Silver, author of Be Yourself at Work and the Chief Heart Officer at VaynerMedia, brings us back to the people side of leadership. She talks about making space for others, giving feedback that connects before it corrects, and pairing autonomy with accountability. And in a world obsessed with AI and efficiency, Claude has a timely reminder that people still do their best work when they feel trusted, heard, and safe enough to be themselves. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to the podcast and leave a review. You'll be supporting our quest to be the number one B2B marketing podcast. All right, let's dive in.

Narrator: Welcome to Renegade Marketers Unite, possibly the best weekly podcast for CMOs and everyone else looking for innovative ways to transform their brand, drive demand, and just plain cut through, proving that B2B does not mean boring to business. Here's your host and chief marketing renegade, Drew Neisser.

Drew: Our guest today is Claude Silver, not the AI Claude, but a real human who is the Chief Heart Officer at VaynerMedia. We will be talking about that title, and is the author of this book that I really, really enjoyed called Be Yourself at Work. We've been so focused on AI and efficiency and organizational design and this, all this uncertainty. I felt like it would be a great moment to just bring us back to people, and, and someone who spends all their time thinking about building and strengthening employee relationships and why that matters so much. So we're talking about trust, belonging, feedback, encourage to lead, even when you don't have all the answers. So hello, Claude. How are you? And where are you this fine day?

Claude: Great to see you. I am in Morristown, New Jersey, right now.

Drew: Well, let's get right into it. Just in case our audience needs to leave early, or we need to convince them to stay, could you list three things that you've seen leaders do that actually make employee performance worse? And if you could just list them, we'll go through them one at a time.

Claude: Sure, sure, sure. Okay. Pretending or thinking that they're the smartest person in the room, and that everything they say is gold, and everything that other people say is not gold. Not being vulnerable at all, not showing that they, too, are human, that they, too, might have dyslexia, that they, too, were once a junior first-career employee and know what it's like to start out. That's number two. And I would definitely, definitely say that any leader that is not in the family of "we, but I" is out. So I believe that leaders are here to really work for their people and with, rather than the other way around.

Drew: Ah, no. So we're not in the military, command and control. You report to me, okay? So let's go through those. Smartest person in the room. It's possible. I mean, some of the CMOs in our community have come up. You know, one was, you know, a rocket science major in college. You know, there, there, that can happen. But talk about how that manifests itself, being in, and why it's so problematic consistently with people in the executive suite.

Claude: Yep, absolutely. And probably that rocket scientist is the smartest person in the room. However, there's a different kind of smart, and I think we need to acknowledge that intelligence comes in all different shapes and sizes. There's those of us that are more right brain. There are those of us that are left brain, so forth and so on. Also, when you take up all the space and the oxygen in the room, it leaves no other opportunity or very little psychological safety for someone else to interject an idea, a thought, a question, something that they would normally say. "This is probably stupid," right? Which we don't want people to say. So that's what I really would say. We, all of us on this screen, have watched people shrink in corporate America. I know I have, and that's why I really wrote that book. No more. I want to see people feeling like they are safe enough to take up space, even if they are the introvert in the corner of the screen or in the corner of the room. And that is why I believe that we need to share and remember that the room is the smartest. It's the sum of the parts. It's not just that one person.

Drew: Well, it's funny because it's so built into the notion of a, of a community. But it's easy to get caught up as the leader. You, you, you're used to making decisions, and you're just, in some cases, you've seen this problem before, and you've actually thought it through before, and so it may be quick. And so sometimes you just have to let folks process, right? And, and, and not, you know, just, so, well, that's it. We're doing this. Here we go.

Claude: Yeah, one of the things I loved when I worked with P and G quite a bit is every single P and G person in the room got to speak, and then the most senior person in the room spoke, and I thought that was incredible. I saw that in Europe. I've seen that in America with P and G. I just thought, yeah, okay, thank you, that's great.

Drew: No, it's right. It's so funny. I remember that very vividly because we were actually competing at one point with a P and G product, and the Warner-Lambert people who had listed completely copied the methodology. That was it. Yep. And yeah, so you get a chance to think, and you know you're going to be called on, and you actually have to have an opinion. You have to pay attention. Good thought. Okay. So talk about the non-vulnerability, which I think is particularly interesting.

Claude: Okay. So let's imagine that you have something to share. Someone is in the hospital. The kids got sick. You got engaged last night. You have a life, and then you come to work. It is very important, I think, for those of us in the working world and human beings to share all parts of ourselves that we feel comfortable sharing. As a leader, I think that is a responsibility of yours. Also, what happens if I would say to you, and I'm a director of something, and I say to you, "Hey, I, I went to the Rocky Mountains and we got engaged, and he or she asked me on a mountaintop and whatnot," and you go, "Great. Well, wouldn't you want to maybe share about, maybe, I don't know, your engagement story or something like that?" And, you know, "Oh, I just got a puppy." "Oh, great, we have a puppy. What is it? A Goldendoodle?" Like, to be robotic is to just have armor up, and I think that, A, that absolutely is an intimidation factor. B, it doesn't let anyone know you. And C, you're human, just like all of us. I have not worked with a robot yet. I've only worked with human beings that have feelings and emotions in life, and I do think that is necessary now to start to bridge this generation, Gen Z that we have, Gen Alpha that's coming right up. That is more emotive. They are allowed to have emotions and bring emotions into the workplace. You and I weren't, Gen Xers. No, thank you. No one cared. We didn't talk about it. We, if I, if I could get a dentist appointment on a Saturday, that was wonderful because God knows I wasn't leaving at 3 o'clock, or I wasn't telling anyone I was leaving. So that's what I mean. It's like we don't have to be so stoic and so robotic anymore. This is life. We are all facing the same types of uncertainty that everyone else is facing right now. We're all reading the same news. We all know that AI is here. Why not talk about it? Why not say, "You know what? I've had that same feeling before. I remember what it was like to be in my second career and, and, and be filled with imposter syndrome. Let me tell you how I got through it."

Drew: I wonder, and encourage the folks that are listening right now to think about the questions that you want to ask related to this. Speaking of sharing, but I suspect there's also a line here where there's oversharing. There's, you know, TMI comes up, and sometimes I've also seen it where leaders are sharing so much that there's no room for anybody else, because there's, again, it's sort of not only am I the smartest person in the room, but I'm the most interesting.

Claude: Well, that, you know, that's just called narcissism, and, and, and there, I guess, is a place for that, of course, right? That's a whole nother. That's a whole nother ball of wax. I'm not, by any means, and my book by any means says, you know, go to the, just cannonball into the deep end and just spill it all over the place. No one wants that. No one wants to clean up your spill, right? So we are talking about having awareness and the ability to emotionally regulate, and not, you know, do that cannonball. Dip the toe in. One of the things I say, and I think maybe, Drew, I said this to you when we first met, is, you know, we have residents right now. I just onboarded, I don't know, 110 residents on Monday, and one of the first things I said during that session, I don't have to, but I did, is, "And if anyone else is dyslexic like me, come talk to me afterwards. We have tools for that." That was it. Did it cost me anything? No. Did three people come to me on Slack, say, "Hey, I'd like to"? Yeah, that's great.

Drew: Yeah, it's so interesting. And, and again, this is where, if you have EQ, this is a lot easier. If you're short in that area and you're a CMO, I think you probably want to work on that. But I also think this is what's so interesting about this moment, is we're so becoming so dependent on AI to create content and so forth that the real moments are going to be the human-to-human moments. And if you can't be empathetic and if you can't communicate and can't share in sort of the right way and respond to sharing in the right way, you're going to lose. That's a, not a winning formula.

Claude: Yeah, and guess what? Right now, AI isn't coming to us with brand new innovative thoughts. We still are the, we still are coming, "Hey, what do you think about this, Claude? What do you think about this? What can I do with this?" "Oh, great, great, great." But, like, we need that, that humanity, and we certainly need that, that analogness of it all still.

Drew: Right. Okay, so, and the third one was the "I, we" team thing. Let's just talk about what that looks like when it's not quite right.

Claude: Yeah, well, I think that it's very obvious when someone is in it for me rather than we, and you can hear that in their language: "I, I, I, I, I." It's one of the things I love asking in a senior-level interview, when we're interviewing candidates, which is, you know, "Tell me a time in which you, you know, which you, you, you had great success." I actually want to hear about the team. I don't want to hear about you.

Drew: Right.

Claude: Right. "Tell me a time in which you failed." I don't want to hear about the team. I want to hear that you have accountability for the fact that you took part in, I don't know, a direction here, or that, you know, we all have skin in the game here. And so the idea is, you know, I think about Phil Jackson. I think about some of the best leaders, coaches that we've seen out there. You know, there's this great quote by the wonderful Kobe Bryant that I use in a lot of keynotes, which is literally like, "I'll do whatever it is to win a game. I will hand out towels. I will hand out drinks, or I will sink a three, you know, a three-shot." Okay, cool. That's a we, not an I. He'll hand out towels. Like, these are legends we're talking about, and so if they could do it, I think we could do it, too. And it, everything tastes better when you have a we to celebrate with, right? It's not just you by yourself holding the trophy. "I did it." There's no way you did it. And even if you're Serena Williams,

Drew: Right? You have a team

Claude: behind you.

Drew: Yeah, it was so interesting. I was watching both Sinner and Zverev, who were, you know, in the finals of Wimbledon, and the first thing both of them said was not only did they congratulate the winner, but they congratulated the team behind the winner, and then thanked their team because, and these guys have a big team, and, you know, we can talk about the Knicks lately. And, and the interesting part of this is, do you make the people around you better, stronger players?

Claude: Better, better,

Drew: and, and that's really, you know, you are that when the team is sort of outperforming.

Claude: Yes, I was in an offsite with my boss Gary, Gary Vaynerchuk, who I work with every day. We were in an offsite last week, and he said, "I want you all now to start training your bench to be two times better than you are. They need to train their bench to be four times better, and that's the, you know, that's the deal, because A, we need to scale; B, we're not going to be here forever; and we, you know, we need some more curiosity and some smart thinkers."

Drew: Yeah, I, you know, your book begins with a moment at the age of 18 when your life changed, and I, I'm so curious, looking back, how much of the leader you became was shaped by that, right, 18-year-old person in Outward Bound?

Claude: Yeah, yeah, I would say 80 to 90%. I mean, I learned the tenets of what was then called servant leadership. I learned what it was like. In fact, Outward Bound, it says, "To serve, to strive, and to never yield." And so, I really had to understand that it was a 93-day course. You know, the first 15 days was hell, and I really was really, really praying that I would break my leg and have to go home, especially the first three days. But, you know, you work as a team, and that's where I learned team-building exercises. The course was a wilderness leadership program. So not only did I learn how to lead, I learned how to work as a team, not a group. In a team, everyone has a role. You are there for a reason. I find that in a group, groups are great, too, but sometimes groups where we just gather,

Drew: right?

Claude: you know. And so Outward Bound taught me everything I needed to know about resilience, and, and obviously I was 19 at the time, so I'm, you know, in my 50s now. I've had a lot of lessons on resilience and, and, and everything like that. But when you are there, you don't get a shower. For 18 days, I mean, there was no, there was no email, there was no cell phones. This is 1991, so, you know, you're waiting for snail mail when you're all eating the same food and, and, you know, hoping you find some snow because there's no toilet paper out there. That is, that builds a muscle that I didn't have and a muscle that I keep with me today, which is, like, A, everything will pass. That is the first thing I know. Everything will pass. No feeling is final. And B, it takes a village. Takes a village to get up a mountain, right? It takes, got to have those cheerleaders behind you. But more importantly, I had to learn how to cheer for myself. And as a 19-year-old that was going nowhere, that was an enormous, life-changing opportunity for me.

Drew: I love it. Could you, so I, I got serve, strive, and what was the third tenet?

Claude: Never yield. To serve, to strive, and to never, never to yield.

Drew: Never yield.

Claude: Yeah. Joshua, you did an Outward Bound in the Everglades, right? Yeah, in the Everglades, it's not like, "Oh, let's just take a canoe down the Everglades." No, you've got some alligators that are looking after you right there.

Drew: Maybe some snakes, too.

Claude: Yeah, I mean, pretty humid, pretty filled with bugs.

Drew: It's a challenge. So we got there, and then I did want to make sure that we tackled the title that probably gets the biggest reaction, which is Chief Heart Officer. It sounds wonderful, and then I, I wonder, you know, revenue is down, budgets are cut, people are losing jobs. What, what do leaders misunderstand about heart-centered leadership?

Claude: Yeah, you call it empathetic leadership. You can call it heart-centered. You can call it anything you want, except for top-down. That's the first thing I would say. What I think people don't understand is this role revolves around both empathy and candor, both empathy and accountability. So we have to do layoffs. Revenue is down. I'm an expense. My job is to not only help people understand and live into this culture and the values that we have, and be, the Gary would say, the emotional framework for the company. My job is to also find out where there is smoke, and where there is smoke, let's get to that smoke before there's fire. Where there is that hidden gem, who's going to be a CMO one day? Let's find out who those people are. Let's bring them up. Let's elevate them. Let's make them visible, and let's have some candor. You know, this isn't about, this isn't a time in which we can coddle and create entitlement anymore. Those days are over. So candor means being able to have very clear, very kind, but specific conversations with people most of the time. And I'm not going to get into their hard skills, right? That's not my job. But most of the time, it's going to be like, "Listen, I now have heard from 8,000 people that you micromanage," right? I mean, I'm not 8,000. "I have now, your manager has now come to me three times, letting me know that you have said inappropriate things in a meeting." Now, I'm not HR. I had, my job originally was to set up the HR department, which I never had done. I call it the People and Experience team, and, and train them really in, and very much in, in hospitality and psychological safety and all of those things. But, like, if there's a compliance issue or an EEOC issue, I don't deal with that. I hand that off. But I'm here. I mean, the job, and it still is. I mean, I just had breakfast with them last week. The job is still to touch every single human being and infuse empathy throughout the agencies. So we're 2,200 people. I'm one person. I have to rely on a lot of people out there. I call them culture champions, or maybe they're part of the PET team, the People and Experience team, or our leadership team. Yesterday, I just ran a three-hour session for all of our leaders on what it is to be a coach and role play. So there's a lot of work to be done because, you know, we're humans, and the workplace has changed.

Drew: I wanted to just touch base. You know, I think the Japanese have an expression that, you know, feedback is a gift, and, you know, and, and it's almost an honor if your boss. And, but the Japanese take it to a different level. It's like if your boss yells at you, he's doing you a favor, right? Which wouldn't fly very well here, but it's a, it's a cultural norm, or was over there.

Claude: Yes,

Drew: but I, I just, I think, you know, and this is a very specific question related to this, but, you know, the days of the annual evaluation feel so diminished by the weekly, monthly, "Hey, either that was great," or "Hey, can we talk about this? I think there's a way for you to improve that."

Claude: Yes,

Drew: in the moment.

Claude: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Frequent. I mean, it's frequent feedback. It's, can't. It shouldn't be that difficult, Drew. Before I got on here, I had a, a sandwich with spinach in it, and I almost was one minute late because I said, "You know what, Claude, you should go check and see if you have spinach in your teeth." Now let me ask you this: Had I come on the screen and you could see my teeth, and you were like, "Huh," would you have told me if I have spinach in my teeth?

Drew: I am that kind of person that would have.

Claude: I hope you would. I hope you. I, I do.

Drew: That, you know, and I hope that people do it for me too. I had some food in my teeth, but I always have toothpicks at the ready. Yes.

Claude: So the point of the story here is, I would have accepted that feedback. That, in itself, would be a gift before I go on camera. The way you deliver it would be everything. The way, now, your delivery would make me feel one way or the other. But you are giving me the information. "Hey, Claude, you got spinach in your teeth. You might want to go do something about it before you get on screen." "Thank you, thank you so much." That is how fast it should be, and how clear and how kind. It's about connection. Feedback is about, I believe, is about connection first, not correction, not criticism. Right? "Hey, Claude, good to see you. Thanks for being on my show. You got spinach in your teeth." Cool. I don't want spinach in my teeth. Thank you.

Drew: Fortunately, teeth look fabulous. So we're all good here.

Claude: As I ran out from the bathroom and I checked.

Drew: Yeah, we can. We're gonna move on from that. But yeah, I think it's really, it is, and I think all of us listening to you talk can think of the moment where a little feedback quickly would have been so helpful. Because if you don't give it, it start, as a leader, it starts to eat at you, and you, and you keep, all you're doing is staring at the spinach at that person's teeth, and you can't think about anything else, and it gets into the way. So

Claude: Yeah, gets in the way of everyone else.

Drew: You, in your, in your book, you, you call these things Claudisms, and I love that because I, I actually have Drewisms that happen in, in my writing, so I appreciate that notion. Yeah, one of them is that leadership is about showing up raw, real, and unapologetically yourself. And it's funny, the CMO in our community who actually gives the team their Myers-Briggs profile and says, "This is who I am." By the way, this has been written about so much that if you really want to know how to work with me, just read this. And this is what I like. This is what. And so she puts it all out there. I'm curious for you, what's that look like, again, when you're the leader right now? And again, there's this expectation in this world where there aren't answers for the CMO to have answers.

Claude: Yeah, I mean, I think the rawness is the authenticity. I'm talking about it's the realness. It's the, if anyone has dyslexia, come and talk to me, right? It's the, I'm gonna, I'm gonna sing 20 different songs today. Some of them are gonna, they're gonna sneak out loud because I just sing a lot. That's who I am. I don't, I'm not gonna bottle that up. That's a part of my being, and it's a part of my character. It's who I, it's who I am. It's also who is, I value that. I value authenticity. I think that's the, that's really the first thing, and that's the unapology, unapologetically me. Yeah, sometimes I'm a little bit late because, or sometimes I'm a little bit tired, whatever. Because, yeah, my kids woke me up at two, three, and four in the morning, and I should feel comfortable sharing that with someone or some, or some people. Not only because it's relatable, but they should also know that I'm human, and I didn't get a lot of sleep last night, right? I might not be as sharp as I usually am at 9 o'clock because, whatever. But, you know, give me three cups of coffee, and maybe I will be the raw, the real, the unapology. I think I really do feel like the paradigm is shifting, and we are coming to a place where I think that we can be more understanding that A, ideas come from everywhere. It's not just that whole smartest-person-in-the-room thing. We need each other. We need each other, absolutely. And I think together we're all co-cultivating a culture. Sure, Gary dictated the culture a long time ago. You know, we planted that seed 17 years ago. I've been very fortunate to take the reins and be able to do what it is he's asked me to do, and bring other people along with me. It would be ridiculous for me to say I own the culture, you know, or when sometimes people say to me, and it's, it's very flattering and whatnot, "Like, wow, what you've done is," no, I didn't do that. We did it. We did it, and that's me being real. That's not me being Mother Teresa, by the way.

Drew: Although, feel free. She was a lovely person. Did a lot of good for the world. Okay. So Peter Finter asked in chat, and I will just read his quote: "Be yourself can be read. I don't. I'm not. I can't use Peter's British accent, but differently depending on power, seniority, and/or identity in the room. How should someone weigh authenticity against the real risks of being fully themselves in a workplace that isn't there yet?"

Claude: I love the question, Peter, and it's something I alluded to in terms of figuring out what, being what part of yourself you want to bring to the workplace and dipping your toe in the water as you feel comfortable, not because I say "be yourself." What I usually say, you know, I don't say "bring your full self to work." I don't say "bring your authentic self to work." Bring, bring the self, the consistent self, the self that we met, the self that we said hi. "Thank you, Peter. You're hired. We had interviewed you for three months. This is. This is who we want. We don't want that other, the person that sounds like they have a PhD and is all proper on day one. We want you." And so I think that A, you only, you know, when you feel comfortable. You also know what it's like to get on screen. You, universal you, to get on screen and to put yourself away in a backpack and carry around, you know, carry around the smile when actually I'm not. I don't want to smile there. Carry on this false extroversion when I'm not an extrovert, or all of that stuff. Now, I'm also coming from a really entitled place. I don't have to code-switch every day, right? I don't. I am very comfortable in my skin. I'm comfortable talking about pretty much anything that comes my way. I've worked hard on that. I have white skin, and that does make it a little bit easier for me, I'm sure, on a day-to-day basis. And some of our people of color that come in and feel as though they can't speak in their normal dialect, or whatever it is, and that's, I think, not their problem. I think that's the issue of the culture, and we need to learn how to be more accepting, be more aware that this is going, this goes on for people. This is real for people. You and I might be able to walk into a workplace and just be fine.

Drew: Just accept it for

Claude: accept it because I pretty much look like everyone else, you know. So that was one of the reasons that when I started as Chief Heart Officer, two things I did immediately. One, I removed the need for a college education for every single role, unless, obviously, you're a lawyer, because I did not want that to be a showstopper. And I thought, generations that are within, you know, here, that was millennials then, they're not going to college necessarily right after school, whatnot. The other thing is, and I wanted us to be able to find everyone, people that didn't just grow up on Madison Avenue, you know, or in Knightsbridge and Chelsea. Or, and the other thing was to change the way we hire, just the, the nomenclature, the phrase, from "culture fit" to "skill set fit and culture addition." Because I don't know, what that person, you know, "Ah, that person just doesn't fit in." What do you mean by "the person just doesn't fit in"? So culture fit got us everyone that looked like you, me, Andrew, when I started 14 years ago. Average age was 23. They were all Jets fans. They were all brothers and brothers and sisters. And I was like, "Whoa!" I had just moved from London. Massive melting pot. I was like, we're in New York City. We're in advertising. We need to welcome everyone, and so now neurodivergency is a very big thing that we welcome at work. We have accommodations for people that have, so forth and so on. So it's very important that I say these things and that these things are known, whether or not it's in our handbook or our intranet. That you be you, you be you. It is our responsibility to adopt and adapt to you.

Drew: Yes. Sidebar on the agency business and that expression. I was at Chiat\Day when they ran that campaign for Reebok, and it was a disaster, which is so ironic because the language lives on, and the concept lived on, but they didn't sell a lot of shoes, which was fascinating. And Chiat lost that business anyway. I want to make a switch gears here for a second because I don't remember a time, except perhaps maybe the 2008 recession, where employees were more fearful for their jobs than they are right now because of AI. I think, and, you know, in our universe of, of CMOs, many of them are being mandated by the PE firms that back them that they've got to cut over, you know, their staff by 30% with just these fantastical expectations that the economies, the efficiencies that AI bring will make that possible, even though there's no proof yet. And, in fact, many people have walked back some of the big firings that they did because they realize it's not there yet. But there's no doubt jobs are going to change. The things that people do are going to change. Some people are going to want to go with that, and others aren't. So I am curious how you think you can build trust when there really aren't any promises that the job that they have today will look or be anything like the job that they have next year.

Claude: I think transparency is at play here, so communication is always at play for every single leader, and it depends on how willing you are, or how, how, how far you can go with the transparency. Now, it's hard to tell. There's some cohorts that it's very difficult to tell the actual honest truth because that might literally spark an anxiety attack, and then we lose them for three weeks because they're out, right? But I think it's very important to let the company know AI is here. We are, we are uncertain, but we know that we are going to. You know, for us, we have mandatory trainings on Gemini because that's what we use here, and they're mandatory. And if you don't show up and you don't continue to use these tools, and we see you creating Gems and all those things, then that's going to be a real issue for you because, as we all know, the train already left the station. Very difficult to get on the train right now because we are in a place where, you know, Claude and whatnot are putting out new agents and advance and advancing day by day by day. So, A, the uncertainty is here. No one knows what's going to happen. However, it is incredibly important right now to make sure that not only are you playing, you are working with AI, and you are seeing what you can do to create your own efficiencies, to create your own Gems, to create your own LLM notebooks, and that's incredibly important. Now, we said at the beginning of the year that we were going to make some organizational changes. We now have started to make them based on AI. However, we have been talking about it and talking about it and talking about it. So that's what I can say. Is, honestly, if you're not talking about it, then I think that's really kind of like a crime. It's like withholding feedback from a person.

Drew: I just have to say, I find this moment perhaps one of the most exciting moments professionally in the service that's ever happened because of what anybody can do.

Claude: Ooh, it's what can do.

Drew: Yeah, because you used to be so, the dependencies that one had on software developers, on IT, on architects, on strategists. I mean, if you want them to be, they're all gone. One of your, I guess it's provocative, is that people don't dread feedback; that they dread being judged. And I, I want to make sure we explain what the difference is so that leaders feel they can make feedback like growth instead of criticism. So help explain that subtle difference.

Claude: Listen, we all have labels, and we all label ourselves constantly. We all have a nice voice that we use for ourselves, and we all have a very mean voice that we use for ourselves. That, in itself, is part of the human condition. I have no idea where that comes from, and that's for someone else to talk about. However, the last thing I think we need in order to grow is someone else telling us that we suck, is, is telling us how bad we are. I already got an inner voice. I already have a critic. Thank you very, very much, and so does everyone else. That's why I say feedback is about a connection, not the criticism, not the correction. What I mean by that is, you now have a sense of my personality. I'm a really kind person. I'm a little bit funny. I'm a little self-deprecating. I've been in the working world a very long time. My MO is to make anyone in front of me feel safe and feel like they can say whatever they want to say. It's not going to affect me because, guess what? It's not about me, unless they say, "Claude, you really are da na na na na," which, you know, that's a whole different story. But we are already judging. There's so much judgment. There's so much fear. There's so much insecurity in this world already. I'm not saying be Pollyanna and be full of toxic positivity, and I don't mean praise either, because praise is me saying, "Hey, Drew, that was great." Well, that's not feedback. That's not giving you anything to work towards or work on. And I want to grow. I mean, that's a, that's a motivation. Progress is an elixir for each and every one of us, even those of us that have gray hair right now. And I do have some, not quite like you, Drew, but I do have my.

Drew: Thank you for noticing,

Claude: Jessa. And so what I'm saying here is, I think that there's a way to deliver feedback based on relationships that you have created. Hopefully, you have created them, and there is some trust being built in the blood system there. So I can say to you, Christine, Ciara, Tamara, or Sarah, "We have spent so much time together," or, you know, "You know me, you know, I come in peace, and I only want the best for you. I want you to thrive. I don't just want you to survive. And so, I want to tell you some of the observations I have about that presentation that you just gave." Boom. I am coming to you, and I am delivering it not with a gut punch, and not with a "you're wrong and I'm right." It's subjective, unless you're looking at numbers. It's, so what? I like denim. No one on the screen has denim. Okay, well, my title's bigger than yours. I guess I win, right? No, that's not how it goes.

Drew: This has sparked some great questions. We have another one that I want to make sure we address, which is coming from Boston, I believe. "What's your advice on how to handle colleagues that are giving feedback to you or your team that isn't kind, is judgmental, and isn't helpful?"

Claude: Well, my first piece of whatever I can offer is, like: Does your company do feedback training? Has anyone read books on how to deliver feedback? Now, you can read Kim Scott, Radical Candor. We call it kind candor at work. We're not radical. We're kind. That's our culture, but it's still clear, specific. What does she say? It's kind, clear, specific, current, and actionable. So, what I would definitely suggest is your HR department or someone, learning and development, start to train people on how to not only write feedback, how to prepare to give feedback, and then how to receive feedback. Because that's the hardest part, right? "Don't tell me, you don't come close to me. You don't know me. I don't want you here." No, no, no. Because we all go into fight, flight, flee. Every single one of us. So my advice is: A, that person or people need some training, and how can you get them some training? Slip the book onto their desk, if that's something else you can do. Find some great interviews, whatnot. Even look at Amy Edmondson in terms of psychological safety. People respond to certain types of behavior and language. People do not respond to other types of language. So my advice is: A, that person needs to either be sat down and gone through, kind of like, the rules of the road when it comes to giving feedback and receive, that person needs feedback.

Drew: We need some feedback for the feedbackers. We did have both Kim Scott and Amy Edmondson in a similar interview scenario. Amy Edmondson, we just posted some highlights of that interview on CMOHuddles.com, and she was, like you, an amazing guest, and the whole notion of, of psychological safety is, is, is brilliant. Now, you managed to slip in two Claudisms. One is toxic positivity, and so I got to just, like, make sure that we've explained what that is and what that looks like. I, I have a guess, but

Claude: Yeah. So toxic positivity is basically the, I mean, right now in New Jersey, it's very foggy, it's very smoky, it's very whatever. But I'm, but the sky is blue, Drew. Like, it's a great day. Or, you know, like, it's COVID, and, and, you know, you've been out of work, but, you know what? At least you don't have COVID,

Drew: right?

Claude: Right. That doesn't help anyone. That is, like, lame and lame and lame. And that is literally, like, I think being much more of a Pollyanna and, and literally just disguising what's real, which is, no, you don't have a job, and you, like, the, the realness of it all. And so I'm an optimist, and I, I am, I, I am a positive person, but I also live in reality.

Drew: Right,

Claude: that's what I'm talking about. Let's not try to, you know, blow sunshine where it doesn't belong in the darkness.

Drew: Okay, then, the other one that you snuck in there was "progress is an elixir."

Claude: So, an elixir, we all know what that is. I mean, you know, the Greeks are who gave us the elixir, and we all want whatever elixir we can get to stay young, whatever it is, to not have wrinkles on your face, to be motivated to grow at any age. I think is something that we are all very interested in. I use the word "elixir" because it's, it's almost like the divine, right? I don't know where the word comes from, but it's Greek. I do know that. I can't imagine that the people that are on the screen want to stay exactly where they are today until their last breath at 99. I just don't. I don't. I won't accept. I don't accept it. Even if you told me, I probably won't accept it because I'll follow you for the next 10 years and see that you did grow, and you have new ideas, and you have shared your thoughts on some social platform, or, and I have read about where you've gone, right? Growth, growth, adventure, spontaneity, things that make us human. And so I believe that we are motivated by going someplace, not going backwards, going someplace.

Drew: Well, I think there's also, there's a funny, as I, I paraphrased it, you will grow whether you like it or not if you're working with Claude. But I think there's also a sort of sense of, if you don't want to grow and you really just want to do this job, this is probably not the right place for you.

Claude: In fact, you know, I'm 12 years into this job, and I'm very well aware that one of my MOs is to put myself out of a job, right? And that's literally the conversation I had the other day with my boss, which is, like, that is the deal. That is a wonderful thing because I, too, have expanded my thoughts. I, too, would like to go study this. I, too, would like to start talking about something else. I just think all of us. I have a five- and a seven-year-old. I am watching them grow daily. I am envious of that type of growth sometimes, and that type of newness.

Drew: Yes, and that kind of just openness and the curiosity of why, why, why, why, and the ability for, finally, where, when they say, "Why is the sky blue?" you could actually answer the question, which is just a wonderful thing. You write also that autonomy isn't a perk; it's oxygen. And it's interesting in the AI era, leaders. One part of AI that's not talked about enough is the risk involved in sort of, okay, we're going to use it, and then we create content, and somewhere buried in there is a hallucination that we didn't catch that goes live, and credibility is lost. So how do you balance autonomy, I guess, with mistakes and risk? Risk probably being more so. I'm not concerned about mistakes per se, but there are mistakes, and then there are, like, disasters.

Claude: That is very, very true. I think that with autonomy comes a great deal of accountability. I truly think that they are not kissing cousins. I think they are siblings of one another. I really do because to have great account of autonomy means you are free to do X, Y, and Z, and you also need to know how to be responsible and point thumbs rather than fingers when and if something does go haywire, which it will because it's life. So you can expect that. What you're talking about also is in the creative field, which is a real, which is where the risk really is right now in, in, in plagiarism and all of those things. So my, my belief is that when you hand out autonomy, which I would like to think is a birthright, I think you also have to hand out what it's like to be self-aware and to encompass the wonderful gift of responsibility, and that's something we learn.

Drew: It's so interesting because it's not something that many companies have figured out how to scale, right? There's tremendous autonomy in a 10-person company because there has to be, you know. At 1,000 or 10,000 or 100,000, it shrinks. The lanes shrink.

Claude: It's really different, and I think that also is very dependent on who you are as a human being, what choice you want to make in terms of how you want to spend your day. Do you want to spend your day doing this with guardrails? Cool. Do you want to spend your day being able to expand your thinking and be entrepreneurial? Cool. There's no judgment. You get to decide based on you, not based on us. Based on you. So there's another question here. I haven't. I haven't had the. Oh, here we go.

Drew: It does seem as if there are many environments or leaders that aren't there, and if you are, then it can feel like salmon swimming upstream, and then you can't be yourself. For example, many early- to mid-stage companies aren't training on feedback nor care about it or this type of relationship. Do you think it means those environments aren't a good fit for this type of leadership? And I'm going to add on to that because in our community there are a lot of, again, VC-backed, PE-backed companies, the outside investors. It is like growth at almost all costs. Certainly, culture is one of those things. And there's an irony, is, you know, we'd probably row the boat faster if we were all in sync and had a strategy and knew where we're going, but no, no, no, it's go, ask questions later. So I'm curious about your, your thoughts on this.

Claude: Yeah, it's like that 996. Isn't that the kind of the thing in Silicon Valley right now?

Drew: Yes, yes.

Claude: Which is a whole other thing, wouldn't be good for me, good for other people.

Drew: Right.

Claude: I think empathetic leadership is good for any single environment that you're possibly in. I think it deserves to be there. I'm not going to cut. I don't want to cut off anyone's arms and legs. And I think within that, if you're in that type of environment, you also need to know that you've joined this type of culture, and that maybe you're not going to make waves right now. But what I can say, and I have been in some of these cultures at, you know, very large holding company advertising agencies where they were, and they were misogynistic and all kinds of stuff. But I found my people. I found my place. I found my 12 people, and within those 12 people, we had a book club. Within those 12 people, we went out for drinks. Within those 12 people, we had a little community, and I do think that, right, that we had friends. You make friends. I think that is possible any which way you go. And if you are at this type of company where you don't have those trainings and whatnot, okay, well, you do what you and I have been told since the dawn of time, which is you put your head down and you work, but you make friends, and you find a place where you can be you with two people, with one other person. God forbid, right? That's what I think. Because some of us don't have the luxury of people. Always say to me, "Well, I don't work for Gary Vaynerchuk." Great. There's other leaders out there that are cool. You strong company, cool. Or you find your people.

Drew: Yeah. Well, okay. So as we wrap up, I'm wondering if you could give two key takeaways that you want every CMO listening today to remember.

Claude: Yes, the first one is, the first one is the takeaway. It's an action item. I would say is, I would pick up your phone, go on Slack or go on your messages, and find three people that you have not reached out to that work into you, work for you, work at your company, and text them. "Hey, checking in, thinking about you. Hope your summer's going well." That took me two seconds. "Hey, would love to get some time with you." "Hey, heard you aced it on whatever." Just something, just something human, right? That's all. That's my first thing. That's an action item that I think we can all do better at. Another one is listening. I truly think, and I will always say this until the dawn of time, and I myself can be a better listener as well. There's a way to listen. There's a way to actively listen. There's a way to listen, or you're not thinking of what to say next. That I, I think we can all do a little bit better at.

Drew: Yeah, it's you. You made me think of episode 100, which I actually recorded with my late father. And the one thing he said from all his experience in life, if he could give one gift, it would be to listen better to folks. It was, it was really sweet to do that, so thank you for, for that. So for Huddles who want to continue learning from you and your work, besides Be Yourself at Work, are there other ways for them to engage with you?

Claude: Yeah, I'm pretty vocal on LinkedIn, and I've started Substack in the past six months, where I really like it. I extend some of my thoughts and, and all of that jazz. You can always write me. It's literally claude@claudesilver.com. I, I like to be engaged. I want to know what's going on. I have a lot to learn. I stand on other people's shoulders, and I recognize that. So, so thank you very, very much for having me. I am now going to speak to 20 high school students who are interested in getting into the dark arts of advertising and marketing.

Drew: I love it. Well, Claude Silver, Chief Heart Officer, thank you so much for joining us today.

Claude: Thank you, everyone, for being here. I appreciate you very much.

Drew: If you're a B2B CMO and you want to hear more conversations like this one, find out if you qualify to join our community of sharing, caring, and daring CMOs at cmohuddles.com.

Show Credits

Renegade Marketers Unite is written and directed by Drew Neisser. Hey, that's me! This show is produced by Melissa Caffrey, Laura Parkyn, and Ishar Cuevas. The music is by the amazing Burns Twins and the intro Voice Over is Linda Cornelius. To find the transcripts of all episodes, suggest future guests, or learn more about B2B branding, CMO Huddles, or my CMO coaching service, check out renegade.com. I'm your host, Drew Neisser. And until next time, keep those Renegade thinking caps on and strong!