Point Thumbs Before You Point Fingers (Claude Silver of VaynerX)
Also available on: Apple Podcasts · Spotify
Claude Silver, Chief Heart Officer at VaynerX and author of Be Yourself at Work, discusses how creators and industry leaders can balance empathy with accountability, build healthier teams, and create environments where people feel supported enough to contribute and grow.
We also talk about her background in psychology and brand strategy, changing workplace expectations, responsible AI adoption, and mental health.
Key Takeaways
Accountability and empathy are not opposites. Caring about people can motivate them to take greater ownership of their work and decisions.
Mistakes become valuable when you acknowledge your role, learn from what happened, and avoid repeating the same behavior.
Strong creative strategy begins with understanding people. Features may explain what something does, but the emotional benefit explains why anyone should care.
Leaders create better teams when people feel safe, contributing different perspectives, and asking for the support they need.
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Transcript:
Mike Zimmerlich: Hey, Claude, how are you?
Claude Silver: Hi. Great to see you down there in Phoenix, Arizona.
Mike Zimmerlich: Thank you. Yes, it’s quite rainy here for a change. I know you’re based in New York, and I’m originally from New York. Usually, it’s the reverse. It’s normally very rainy and cloudy over there, but this short window of time in Arizona is when we get that kind of weather.
Claude Silver: Yeah, I don’t miss that humidity.
Mike Zimmerlich: No, I don’t miss the humidity either. I like to say that the dry heat here everyone talks about really is a dry heat. It’s like opening the oven door and feeling that heat come out.
I kind of like it. It feels nice and toasty, and you can at least go inside without being wet and sweaty.
Claude Silver: I like it too. I don’t know if you know this, but I grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico, right next door to you. Although Santa Fe is 7,000 feet up because we’re at the tail end of the Rockies, it has that dry heat that I grew up with and love.
I also really like that feeling of the oven, followed by hiding out in the air conditioning.
Mike Zimmerlich: Exactly. I will say that I still miss the seasons. That’s the one thing I miss. We do have gradual seasons here, but I especially miss the seasons throughout the year on the East Coast.
Claude Silver: Yeah, totally. Beautiful.
Mike Zimmerlich: I want to start our conversation with a particular word: empathy. What does empathy mean to you?
Claude Silver: Great. It’s one of my favorite words and, I would say, one of the most-used words in corporate America now. That’s so funny because empathy is an emotion. It has traditionally been an emotional word that we use a lot in psychology.
To me, the output of empathy is kindness and compassion.
For me, empathy is not putting myself in your shoes because I can’t. You and I have completely different lived experiences. I cannot know what it’s like inside your head or body when you’re going through something. However, as a human being, I can relate.
I often say empathy is like riding shotgun with you. I’m a passenger with you on the road. You are driving, I am your passenger, and my hand is on your shoulder saying, “I’ve got you, and you’ve got this.”
That’s what it’s about for me. That way, I don’t take on your stuff. I have a boundary because if I take on your stuff, I’m no use to you when you need me. If you’re having a bad moment or facing a challenge, I am a passenger with you, and I will be with you for the entire ride.
That, to me, is empathy. You will get my kindness and compassion. I will not judge you, and I’m here for you.
Mike Zimmerlich: I appreciate you mentioning that boundary because it’s something I’ve always found challenging. I want to help other people so much, and it took me a long time to learn that I can’t live their lives for them.
They have to take care of things themselves, but I can be there in a supportive manner. Having that boundary between those things is extremely important. Otherwise, it not only becomes detrimental to you, but it can also become detrimental to them.
You may be enabling them and preventing them from progressing themselves. They may also become frustrated because what you’re offering isn’t the help they need at that point in time.
It may end up hurting them as well as yourself because, as you said, you’re taking on their emotional load. That takes a toll too.
Claude Silver: Exactly. All of a sudden, part of my day is spent thinking about how I want you to handle the situation. I want to be in control because I’m now part of it.
It’s much easier, better, and healthier to have that boundary and give you the belief and trust that I know you can do this. I know you’ve got this, and I’ve got you. I’m not going to let you crumble in front of me. I’m not going to let that happen.
Mike Zimmerlich: It’s especially interesting when you’re in a leadership role. When you lead others, you want to make sure they know you have their backs. If they fail or something goes wrong, you are there to help them through it.
We’re all human, and we’re all going to make mistakes. Sometimes leadership can focus on the bottom line and the results. They want to make sure people are doing what they’re supposed to do, and they become concerned when mistakes are made.
But we all make mistakes, including leaders. It really comes down to how those mistakes are handled.
Claude Silver: That’s right. That’s why there is a relationship between empathy and accountability. It is a real relationship.
I’m often asked whether they can coexist. Of course they can. You are accountable for your job. You are accountable for whatever you signed up for, including your deliverables, helping the bottom or top line, or being there for another person.
I’ve also asked you to care about what you do and the team you’re on. Those things have to go hand in hand. You need both of those drivers in the workplace. In fact, I think empathy motivates accountability and vice versa.
Thank God we all make mistakes. The world would be super dull if we were all perfect.
Mike Zimmerlich: Mistakes are usually what we learn from. I like to say that I learn the hard way because when I make mistakes, those lessons are what stick.
If I wasn’t making mistakes, I wouldn’t have the motivation to change, do something differently, or try something else. If it’s working, then...
Claude Silver: Why mess with it? Innovation and creativity come out of mistakes.
The entire first part of my life has, in so many ways, involved falling and failing forward. I really mean that. I’m proud of it because it has made me a much stronger human, a better parent, and hopefully a very strong, confident, and empathetic leader.
Mike Zimmerlich: I appreciate you mentioning that. From your personal experience, when you make mistakes, where is the difference between, “I made a mistake and need to change,” “I made a mistake, and it’s okay,” and “I made a mistake, and it’s not okay”?
Claude Silver: There have been times in my career, certainly within the 12 years I’ve been at Vayner, when I made mistakes that were not okay. They had serious consequences.
Did we survive? One thousand percent. Did I learn from them? One thousand percent. Have I made the same mistake again? Never. That’s the seriousness of it.
There are other mistakes that we can be accountable for, apologize for, take responsibility for, and move on from. They are not detrimental. They aren’t going to hurt anyone or mess up an entire company’s organization.
We all make mistakes. One of the most important things that I need in my relationships is accountability. I really do.
Similar to you, I struggled with boundaries until my 30s. It took up a lot of time and energy, and it created drama for me. During that time, I made mistakes because I was trying to control situations that I had no control even being involved in.
If you look at the decision tree of a human being, we’re on our path learning about ourselves and developing self-awareness. We make mistakes, fall in love, make more mistakes, and get involved in this person’s drama or that person’s drama. Suddenly, you’ve taken a left turn away from your path, and you have to find your way back.
It’s time-consuming, but more than anything, it’s energy-consuming when someone cannot see their part or role in a situation.
I have played the role of not being accountable before. I look back on those times, and I’m not proud of them, except that I learned. That is what I’m proud of.
Mike Zimmerlich: That’s the most important part, learning from those things. You also mentioned self-awareness, which I feel goes hand in hand with accountability.
If you aren’t aware of your actions, what you’re doing, and how you believe you’re being perceived by the people around you, how can you take accountability for your actions?
Claude Silver: Exactly. At Vayner, we say, “Point thumbs first before you point fingers.”
What did I do? I took part in that somehow. I ignited that flame somehow. It’s not your problem. It’s my problem.
Once you take accountability and ownership, things go faster. You don’t need all the drama: “Well, she did it. He did it. Let’s gossip about it. Let’s have a meeting about that meeting.”
No. That was on me. I’ve got it. That was on me.
Mike Zimmerlich: I like to joke when I make a small mistake. I’ll proudly say, “Yep, my bad. Sorry about that.” I’ll own it almost like a badge of honor.
Especially when it’s a small thing, most mistakes are solvable and fixable. Even if they aren’t, they usually aren’t detrimental.
Claude Silver: Yes. You and I are not doing open-heart surgery.
Mike Zimmerlich: Correct. If we were open-heart surgeons, this would be a different story. We’re not, so most of the things we do can be resolved in some fashion. Otherwise, we can face the consequences and move forward.
I’d rather openly admit to my mistakes and own them than try to hide them. For me, that has created a sense of security about who I am. Because I can own my mistakes and take accountability, I feel more confident in myself.
Claude Silver: That’s right. It’s ownership. Of course you become more confident because it’s yours. Your fingerprints are on it.
It’s very powerful when we can step into our ownership, self-awareness, accountability, and ability to regulate our emotions. These are things that you, I, and everyone else will be learning until we take our last breath.
That’s pretty exciting, even though it’s not easy. It’s not easy.
Mike Zimmerlich: It isn’t.
Claude Silver: No.
Mike Zimmerlich: In our conversation so far, and from the background research I’ve done, I know you have an extensive education in psychology. Was that something you were always drawn to?
Claude Silver: Yes. From a very early age, I’ve always been drawn to people and behavior. I didn’t know what that was. I had no idea. My mom is a psychotherapist, so maybe that’s part of it.
In the early days of learning about psychology, I probably entered it through Carl Jung, dream interpretation, symbolism, and the way he speaks about the shadow self. Then I probably moved into Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
Everything I learned added to something else until I finally discovered positive psychology. That’s when I said, “Oh, this all makes sense. It makes sense for who I am as a human being.”
I’m an optimist. I have hope and hopefulness, whereas some people have learned helplessness. Quite frankly, it’s the storytelling within psychology that I love.
My first psychology class was during my freshman year of college. That was Psychology 101. The next class was called Abnormal Psychology, and I bailed. I thought, “Abnormal is not a word I’m going to use to describe someone.”
I’ve had an issue with the word “abnormal” for a very long time. Labels can really mess someone up. We all put labels on ourselves. Through the conversation you and I just had, we’re doing our best to believe in ourselves and place kind, courageous, and truthful labels on ourselves.
But the world is placing labels on us all day. It is very difficult to operate in a world where you don’t own the label.
That is a back-end way of talking about psychology. It’s all about behavior, pattern recognition, why we do the things we do, our motivations, our childhoods, trauma, pain, and shame. We all go through those things.
Then one day, we wake up as adults and say, “Wow, all of that is holding me back from having an intimate relationship or making friends.” We may say, “I’d better go talk to someone,” or, “I’m interested in why I think this way. I’m going to talk to someone and find out.”
I don’t think there’s anything dangerous about the world of psychology. Everything you read about it can be helpful, as long as it isn’t positioning you as an abnormal, sick person.
Mike Zimmerlich: That’s really interesting. Psychology is ultimately about human behavior. Labels can help identify aspects of things, but at the same time, I agree that they can become detrimental to people.
We can begin to develop expectations for ourselves based on a label, even though we’re much more complicated creatures than that. It ultimately comes down to why humans behave the way they do.
Claude Silver: We all have very different lived experiences, as I mentioned earlier. I can’t be in your shoes. But we all have similar emotions. That’s the deal. There aren’t new emotions that we’re pulling out of the sky every day.
We all experience similar frustration, sadness, joy, surprise, and happiness. You can find commonalities in those boxes, even if we have different ways of arriving at happiness or our past brought us to fear.
Going back to our first conversation, things are solvable. When you start putting together the puzzle pieces of how you’re made, why you think the way you do, and why you get triggered when something happens, you start understanding yourself in a way you didn’t before.
To your earlier point, that gives you confidence. It gives you the sense that, “I am the CEO of me. I own me. I make decisions for Claude. If I make the right decision, amazing. If I don’t make the right decision, I’m going to have to work my way out of that.”
Again, it’s ownership. I love all psychologies that promote human beings thriving, not merely surviving.
Mike Zimmerlich: I can tell how much passion you have for this. Usually, someone who goes through that many levels of education in psychology goes into clinical psychology, academia, therapy, or something similar.
You went into the corporate world, which I find interesting.
Claude Silver: The funny thing is, I didn’t have a path for myself. I fell into it.
I was in San Francisco during the initial dot-com boom in 1997 and 1998. The jobs available to me that seemed exciting were all in the digital space. They happened to be centered around what we now call content and creative work, as well as moving from point A to B to C on a computer.
When I decided I wasn’t going to become a psychologist or pursue a master’s degree, I told myself there were many other ways I could be of service. I found those ways through working with teams, individuals, companies, and in my day-to-day life.
I’ve satisfied that itch.
Mike Zimmerlich: That makes a lot of sense because psychology applies to everybody, no matter what profession they’re in. It comes down to human behavior.
I also find it interesting because you mentioned the storytelling aspect of psychology. I can see how that ties into the work you did after your education. You held several different roles, including working as a creative brand strategist. Again, that comes down to storytelling.
I’m curious about your perspective on the balance. You’ve mentioned your compassion and empathy for others. When you’re developing a brand, you’re trying to convince people, “This is why this will benefit you.”
There is an interesting balance between what you’re trying to sell and what you believe in, while also considering the person you’re selling it to.
Claude Silver: There is a balance. When you’re in advertising and developing campaign ideas or ideating with creative minds, you’re trying to solve a problem for someone. You’re trying to give that consumer peace of mind, entertainment, or education.
For the most part, although this is changing a little with Gen Z and Gen Alpha, women primarily do a lot of the household shopping. That’s what we know. You have to solve a problem for that person.
What is that problem? Stains on a shirt? Not being able to get enough done and still be home to make dinner for the kids? Being time-poor?
You use psychology to create the campaign.
Here’s an example. I used to work on Crest Oral-B toothpaste. In their brand pyramid, similar to Maslow’s, you have what is necessary at the bottom and the highest-order benefit at the top.
The highest-order benefit for Crest at that time was confidence.
At the bottom, toothpaste cleans your teeth, helps give you healthy gums and fresh breath, and prevents cavities. At the top is confidence.
You can see how those things go hand in hand. If I’m confident, I’ll say more and do more. I might feel like I can approach someone in a bar. Crest associates that confidence with its toothpaste.
It makes sense to me. If you have fresh breath and clean teeth, of course you’ll feel like you can sing to the world. It goes hand in hand.
Mike Zimmerlich: It makes a lot of sense because those aspects are essentially the features. There is a lot of discussion in branding and sales about how you can talk about features all day, but what is the ultimate impact on that person?
What is the result going to be? It can do this, this, and this, but what is that really going to do for me at the end of the day?
As you said, these things will help build confidence.
Claude Silver: What is the benefit? Features are great. The benefit is that I feel more confident talking today or being on camera today.
That’s why I love strategy. I loved being a strategist.
I was at an advertising company around 2006. I started as a project manager, then moved to the account side and became a client partner.
One day, the chief strategy officer came over and said, “I think you’re a strategist.”
I said, “What? What do you mean?”
He said, “You know how to put personas together. You know how to build a person.”
He plucked me out of that world and put me into strategy. I never looked back. I thank him every time I see him on LinkedIn.
Strategy is my home. I use that thinking every day of my life, no matter what I’m doing. Strategy is storytelling.
Mike Zimmerlich: I completely agree. Strategy is about how you’re going to move from point A to point B and then to point C. What is the narrative you’re going to tell along that particular path?
You mentioned personas. To me, that’s a character. If you’re going to provide a narrative, who is the character in that narrative?
If you have no idea who the character is, how are you going to provide a narrative that resonates with them? What drives them? What is their motivation? What do they care about?
Every person is going to care about different things.
Claude Silver: Sorry, I sneezed.
Mike Zimmerlich: That’s okay.
Claude Silver: It comes down to motivation. You try to find cohorts with similar motivations, and you target your advertising toward them.
A shampoo product is going to target me differently than it targets you because of gender, age, and the differences in our hair. They’re going to target a smell for you and a different fragrance for me.
That’s just the way it is. It’s fun. It’s very fun.
Mike Zimmerlich: You now have this experience behind you and are developing specifically as a strategist. Then VaynerX comes along.
Tell me how you ended up joining VaynerX and eventually taking on the role of Chief Heart Officer, which hadn’t really existed before that point.
Claude Silver: I was living in London and running digital strategy. At the same time, my best friend was the head of media at Unilever. This was 2013.
Gary went in and spoke to Unilever one day. She wrote to me and said, “I don’t know what it is about this guy, but I think you’re like kissing cousins. You’re two sides of the same coin.”
I had been following Gary on Twitter since 2009 and thought, “This guy is amazing. I’ve never heard someone speak the truth like this.” But I didn’t think I was the other side of the same coin as Gary. I didn’t know who Gary was or what his heart was all about.
She introduced us. Gary and I had a couple of conversations while I was living in London. Then I came to New York and met him in September 2013.
It was funny. I brought my iPad with some thoughts about what I wanted to say regarding his business. He looked at the iPad, shut it down, and said, “Let’s just talk.”
We started talking about people, our beliefs, and our families. It turned out that we viewed people in a very similar way. We were both massive optimists about the possibilities available to us as humans.
One thing led to another, and he offered me a job. I moved to New York and started at what was then VaynerMedia in May 2014. We didn’t have VaynerX at the time.
I ran the Unilever account, where my best friend worked on the client side. I had an incredible time with the team.
I had about 60 people, and I ran it like a liberal arts college. During our Wednesday night meetups, we’d have sparkling wine, sparkling water, and cupcakes. We didn’t do show-and-tell about the latest campaign.
I said, “Let’s talk about poetry. Let’s talk about songs. Let’s have a good time. Let’s be human here.”
A year into doing that work, it dawned on me that my joy was the team. My joy wasn’t talking to a client about whether something should be blue or black. That wasn’t fun for me.
I went to Gary and said, “Thank you so much for this opportunity. I love it here, but I don’t want to do advertising.”
Gary, in his wonderful way, asked, “What do you want to do?”
I said, “I only care about the people here. I care about the heartbeat.”
Nine months later, we created a role that had never existed before: Chief Heart Officer.
During the 16 months I had been there, I was also one of the oldest people. I was the only one with agency experience at that point. The average age was 23, and I was almost double that.
I was already an unofficial mentor to many people. I did a lot of training. We didn’t have an HR department, so I participated in interviewing and terminations. I helped people learn how to interview and handled many other responsibilities.
That’s why Gary trusted me with his company. I had already shown him over those 16 months that he could trust me. I was an adult, and I was loyal.
Twelve years later, I’m doing the same work. In his words, my job has always been to touch every single human being and infuse the agency with empathy.
That is what I aim to do in every conversation. I have to scale it because I’m one person. Over 12 years, I’ve had to empower other people and find others with a heart to help.
I’ve had to find people who would take 15 minutes out of their day to check on someone around the globe and hold space for them without creating entitlement or coddling them.
All these things go into learning how to be with another human. That’s me.
Mike Zimmerlich: It’s truly amazing because you didn’t come from an HR background. It sounds like you were preparing for this role your entire life.
Claude Silver: For me, it’s psychology-based. It is a psychological and spiritual role.
It is an incredible honor to be invited into someone’s story and journey, to help them figure out which road to take, and to give them ownership of their decisions and careers. It’s fabulous.
I never wanted to be in HR because the HR I knew was bureaucratic. It was like a police officer, and that isn’t who I am.
I was able to create a department based on what I felt was necessary and what seemed like common sense.
First, it isn’t called HR. It’s called People and Experience. It’s the People and Experience Team, or PET.
I immediately removed the need for a college education because I didn’t want that to be a barrier preventing anyone from entering the advertising world. Sometimes it can be.
I changed the way we hired from “culture fit” to “skill set fit and culture addition.” Culture fit gets you the same apples over and over. Culture addition gets you the entire fruit bowl, which is what we need.
Along the way, I’ve taught people what psychological safety is, how to create it, why it’s important, and why belonging matters. We also discuss how to create and sustain belonging.
It has been phenomenal. Is it technically an HR department? Sure. But are they HR business partners? No. They’re PET business partners. They’re coaches.
Mike Zimmerlich: I love and respect that because I feel it reflects where our society is today and what is important to us. A lot of it is about mental health.
Especially during the past six years, beginning around the pandemic, I’ve noticed there has been much more conversation about mental health in general, let alone mental health in the workplace.
I can see that you were essentially a pioneer in this because you were doing it back in 2014 and 2015. Now, more companies are embracing the idea that we need to be aware of people’s mental health, especially when they are part of our team, and make sure they’re being taken care of.
Claude Silver: That is right. Here’s the deal. For the last 100 years, people have gone to work, put their heads down, punched in, punched out, and gone home.
They have hidden themselves. They have been workers, not humans. They have been robotic and shielded their emotions.
“Don’t get too close to me, and I won’t get too close to you. I’m here to do a job.”
I’m a Gen Xer, and that was still the MO when I was young and starting out.
I don’t need to tell you that Gen Alpha and Gen Z are very different animals. They are very vocal. They do not want to sit in shame and live in pain.
They want people to know, “I need help. Can you help me?”
As a society and as workers, we have handed them a bunch of ways to overwork and said, “Bye.”
“You got promoted into management. Bye.” You’ve never been trained.
“I’m going to give you feedback, and it’s going to hurt.” Ouch, that hurts. There is another way to give feedback.
We have handed them these cockamamie ways of doing things that, thank God, are not written in blood because we’re changing them.
At the end of 2019 going into 2020, I said to our benefits team, “I think it’s extremely important that we find benefits for people going through gender reassignment because that is happening in our world today.”
We got those benefits. Have they been used? Yes.
It’s Gary’s model. Where is attention? Where is the attention going? Where are human beings going? What is happening?
You just need to open your eyes and ears to take care of people and be of service.
Mike Zimmerlich: One of the things I saw was something you posted on LinkedIn not too long ago. You shared an email that a team member sent to you.
During their onboarding, you talked about neurodivergence. They said they had never heard that discussed in the workplace before and explained how much it meant to them.
Again, I feel that shows how much this matters to people.
Claude Silver: What matters to people is not being treated differently. What matters to people is not being othered. What matters to every human being is feeling like we belong.
There are many things out there that I either have or don’t have that are important to embrace in the workplace. Neurodivergence is one of them.
Different ways of thinking, different kinds of curiosity, and seeing the world with different eyes and ears. Whether someone is able-bodied or not, we need all of you.
I remember the exact moment when I said that on a screen during an orientation. I said, “If you’re neurodivergent, we have accommodations for you. We have you. We want you.”
I elaborated a little more: “You have ADHD? Great. Come talk to us about that. You have dyslexia like me? Great. Come talk to us about that,” and so forth.
I cried when I received that email. First and foremost, he didn’t need to send it. Second, people understand that these are not merely words of the day I’m using. I’m saying them because it matters. It matters.
We have a prayer room for people who pray multiple times a day, just as we have a lactation room. These are things that are happening in our world today, so we’re part of the world. We’re part of the macrocosm.
I’m honored that person wrote to me, but more than anything, I’m proud of our company for making sure we can accommodate everyone.
Mike Zimmerlich: To me, it comes down to emotional intelligence. This goes back to what we were discussing about empathy. You don’t know what another person is feeling or ultimately thinking, but you can pay attention to their needs and give them tools to help.
As you mentioned, you have benefits for gender affirmation and spaces such as lactation and prayer rooms. You’re thinking about these things so you can give people literal tools and resources.
Even though you can’t feel what they’re feeling, you can at least ride shotgun with them. You can put your hand on their shoulder and say, “I’ve got you. This is your path, but we can at least help you get there.”
Claude Silver: That’s right. It’s being a passenger. I can’t solve anyone’s problems. I do my best to solve my own.
But I can be a passenger and let them know that we will do everything we possibly can. The only things we cannot fix are health and people dying in this world, unfortunately.
Until I take my last breath, I will do everything I can to eradicate shame in this world. That is what I will do.
If I can do that with one person in the workplace, I will have lived a very, very happy life.
Mike Zimmerlich: You talked about approaching Gary because you no longer wanted to work in advertising. You loved having the team and being part of it.
I also liked hearing about your Wednesday meetups with cupcakes, poetry, music, and different things like that.
I can see how that ties back to your roots because you previously started a company called Girls Adventure Out. I found that interesting.
If I understand correctly, it was created around outdoor activities and surfing for women.
Claude Silver: Yes. We ended up opening it to men and kids because it was so successful.
Mike Zimmerlich: Wow.
Claude Silver: We wanted to create an outdoor adventure company where women would feel comfortable coming alone or with their friends.
This was back in the 2000s, right after 9/11. We started it after we had both been laid off.
We had taken a trip together and were in Mexico. We wanted to go kayaking, but we had to go with a guide even though we owned a kayak at home. We thought, “Oh God, this is uncomfortable. I don’t want to go with someone I don’t know.”
That was the impetus, and it was such a wonderful experience. It was a labor of love.
When you work for yourself, it’s 24/7. You are always working. You are always hunting or farming in many ways.
I had a phenomenal tan from the neck up and wrists down because I was wearing a very thick wetsuit in the cold Pacific Ocean.
I did a lot of rock climbing. I taught mountaineering and tennis. We did a lot of camping and all kinds of other things.
First and foremost, you learn so much from being outdoors. The outdoors is such a great teacher for us, and there is fresh air to breathe.
When you do it in a community, it’s even better. You’re finding friends.
It was amazing. We sold it in 2005, and we each went back into the corporate world.
I would still teach surfing every day if I had that opportunity right now. Maybe I will one day.
Mike Zimmerlich: Maybe. You never know where life is going to bring you.
Claude Silver: Mm-hmm.
Mike Zimmerlich: I want to talk about the book you published last year. Congratulations, by the way. It’s called Be Yourself at Work, which is very appropriate.
Can you tell me why you decided to write the book and what it’s about?
Claude Silver: I wrote the book for a couple of reasons.
First, I have been in the working world for a very long time, through multiple generations and decades. Not only have I witnessed people shrinking in the workplace, but I have also shrunk.
We hire these people, and you come in as a giant. We feel great. We’ve interviewed you for three months, and we want you to do this great job.
Then something happens in the workplace where a person starts to lose their mojo.
Maybe I’m interrupted five times in a meeting. Maybe I’m not the loudest person, so I start to shrink back. Maybe my ideas aren’t accepted or heard.
Whatever it is, we start to shrink. Suddenly, we’re going to lose that person. They’re a flight risk, or their performance tanks, and then we have to let them go.
That is one of the main reasons I wrote it. I don’t want to watch people shrink anymore, especially when each of us has the agency to take up space.
The second reason is that I truly believe leadership must change. It must change.
The book takes you on a journey of self. The first part is about being the CEO of you, looking at your imposter syndrome, and examining how you deal with conflict resolution. It covers the whole kit and caboodle.
The next part of the book is about bringing all of that to a team and empowering them.
The third part is about co-cultivating a culture as a leader. What kind of leader do you want to be? How do you want to show up? What do you want people to say about you when you’re not in the room? What do they say about you when you’re not in the room? How do you enter a room?
We have a long way to go, but we know the world of leadership is experiencing a massive paradigm change right now. We’re in it.
In 10 years, you and I will talk, and things will be much different. I truly believe that. There is a massive call for it.
Top-down leadership, ivory towers, and “do what I say” are going to go away. Maybe that structure will remain in the military and other places where you need that type of hierarchy. I accept that.
But in a business where you and I are not heart surgeons, you don’t need someone to be all, “Rah, rah, rah.”
No. The world is full of possibility. Work should be full of possibility.
Every one of us wants to learn and grow. We are all motivated by that. It is our job as leaders to make sure that is happening inside our walls.
Mike Zimmerlich: I completely agree. I also see how leadership has been changing because work is now much more fluid than it has ever been before.
Claude Silver: Mm-hmm.
Mike Zimmerlich: That applies not only to the importance of mental health but to our behaviors in general. How many of us are working remotely now?
How many of us work different hours? You can see the concept of the nine-to-five dissipating because people are working at different times.
Some people don’t even have set hours. When the work needs to get done, it needs to get done, whether that is at 2:00 on a Friday or 3:00 in the morning on a Sunday.
If that is when I’m going to be productive, I’m going to take it upon myself to get those things accomplished.
We’re finding that this is increasingly the case. We need leadership that reflects what people’s lifestyles are at this point in time.
As you said, who knows what it will be like five or 10 years from now?
Claude Silver: Exactly. This comes back to the theme we started with, which is ownership.
I don’t think everyone in the world needs such stringent guardrails. You have to work from here to here. You work in this box. If you are a project manager, you never think outside this box. If you are a content writer, you never think outside this box.
That isn’t how the world is. We are not a black-and-white world.
Those were rules and constructs created during the Industrial Age, and we are definitely not in the Industrial Age now.
We have information at our fingertips faster than we have ever had it. You put something into Claude or ChatGPT, and within seconds, you have information that would have taken you four hours to find.
Let’s be mindful that even the products have changed to meet the needs of this hybrid world. Let’s accept it rather than push against it.
Mike Zimmerlich: Change is always hard. Change is always difficult.
To keep repeating the same thing, the ownership aspect is so important. I feel change is also part of ownership. It means accepting that things are changing, whether you’re comfortable with it or not. Most of the time, people are uncomfortable with change.
I’m naturally an entrepreneur, so change is usually good for me. I’ll say, “Cool, let’s try something new. This doesn’t work anymore. All right, let’s try something else.”
There are other people, and I empathize with them, who are uncomfortable with change. They are accustomed to how they do things and believe, “This is the way it has always been done.” There is stability in that for them.
As soon as something comes along that changes that flow, they feel threatened. They begin questioning, “Is this going to completely replace what I do? Will this continue giving me the lifestyle I want? Will I even have a job anymore? Can I afford to pay my bills because of all these things coming my way that I don’t understand?”
Claude Silver: The uncertainty is real. All of us in the working world are facing uncertainty right now.
We need to stick together, be transparent about that, and be open about the fact that I don’t know what will happen with AI in a year. I don’t know which roles it will have caused to evaporate.
I don’t know.
But I do know that you need to be playing with AI. You need to be in there, testing those agents and figuring out what they can do for you and your teams. I can confidently tell you that.
Mike Zimmerlich: I feel the same way. We’ve both been around long enough to see massive technological shifts. Each one is different, but we saw similar conversations when the internet became popular.
Claude Silver: Oh, yeah.
Mike Zimmerlich: When the internet became popular, many people felt threatened by it and said, “This is going to replace what I do.”
In some cases, that was true. In other cases, it became an addition to what they were already doing.
Then all these other jobs became available because of it. Think about how much changed because of the need for computer programming.
For decades, computer programming and computer engineering were considered among the safest careers you could pursue. Now, they almost feel like some of the least secure positions.
That changed very quickly. I think the difference here is how much is changing and how quickly it’s happening in comparison to before.
If you look at history, any time there is a massive shift, you will see people who feel threatened by the change and people who embrace it.
Then you have people in the middle who accept it and go along with it. We see that time and time again.
I see the same behavioral patterns in how people are reacting to AI. Even on a creative level, people will say, “This is AI slop.”
Remember when people would say, “Oh, this was Photoshopped”? To me, it’s the same thing.
There were many graphic designers and photographers who felt threatened by Photoshop. Now, every graphic designer and photographer uses Photoshop.
Claude Silver: Yeah.
Mike Zimmerlich: Again, we don’t have a crystal ball. We don’t know where AI will take us.
But if we look back at behavioral patterns, there will be people who refuse to change, people who are reluctant to change, and people who embrace the change for good.
Then you have the abusers on the other end. That will always be the case.
I like to be in the middle where we embrace that change in a respectful, positive, and responsible way.
Claude Silver: I love that you included “responsible” because these tools can be used for good, and they can be used for things that aren’t good.
We want to have some ethics around how we use and train them.
Mike Zimmerlich: Absolutely. I use AI for the podcast, but I use it in specific ways that help save me time when I don’t have the resources to do something otherwise. It helps make the process faster and more efficient.
It allows me to do many things I otherwise wouldn’t have the capacity to do.
I still have a team member. I have a post-production manager who works on the podcast and helps me with the editing and mixing process. Shoutout to Moira, who does a fantastic job.
She is indispensable to me because she is such an integral part of making this show work. I would never replace that person.
I will also use tools to make her job easier or accomplish things that I don’t want to add to her plate when she already has so much to do.
I’m trying to use these tools responsibly, without necessarily replacing someone.
Eventually, I would love to hand all of that to another team member and say, “Here are all the tools. Go for it.”
Then I wouldn’t have to think about that anymore and could focus on other aspects of the work.
It’s about helping people become more efficient and making their jobs easier. That’s what I care about at the end of the day.
I care that it gets me the results I’m looking for, but I also want to make sure my team members are being taken care of. I don’t want them to feel overwhelmed or underserved. I want them to know that the work they’re doing is appreciated.
Claude Silver: Yep. I love it. That’s being a responsible boss and leader.
Mike Zimmerlich: We can start wrapping things up. I have a couple of fun questions for you.
Claude Silver: Okay.
Mike Zimmerlich: You mentioned songs earlier. This is a question I usually ask my music industry guests, but I’m going to ask you too. What was the last concert you attended?
Claude Silver: I went to Brandi Carlile, and The Head and the Heart opened. It was pretty awesome.
Mike Zimmerlich: That’s a good one. I like that one.
Claude Silver: Yeah.
Mike Zimmerlich: Do you have a guilty pleasure? That can mean a lot of things. It could be a guilty pleasure food, film, song, or artist.
Claude Silver: Froyo is my guilty pleasure. That was my dinner last night.
Mike Zimmerlich: Okay. All right, last question. If you could only give one piece of advice, what would it be?
Claude Silver: Love yourself so that you can love others.
Mike Zimmerlich: We need to be reminded of that.
Claude Silver: Yeah, definitely.
Mike Zimmerlich: Claude, thank you so much for being on the show. I really appreciate it. It’s an absolute honor to have you.
Again, congratulations on your book. We’ll make sure all of that is included in our show notes.
Please keep doing the good work you’re doing because we need more people like you in these positions who are truly driving change in how we communicate and work together.
Thank you so much.
Claude Silver: Thanks. I appreciate it.