Claude Silver

There is a job that we have at VaynerX called Chief Heart Officer. Claude Silver is VaynerX's Chief Heart Officer for about 2,500 employees globally. She sits on top of HR. Claude's job is literally to be the emotional framework for the organization. Her job is to seek out people who are struggling or people who are phenomenal. By having a Chief Heart Officer—one that sits outside of the day-to-day operations of HR, that sits over it, on top of it—if you choose the right candidate who's actually got empathy and kindness and the ability to have candor when things aren't working, your employee base will dramatically trust your organization more. Let me tell you what happens when your employees trust the organization more. They stay longer. Let me tell you what happens when employees stay longer. You have continuity. Let me tell you what happens when you have continuity in a business. .... You do better. You make more money, too.

She's been Gary Vaynerchuk's executive for 12 years. Her career advice for everyone in their 20's: don't. force. vulnerability. it was a bit of a surprise... Especially since Claude is a Chief Heart Officer, leading the People function at VaynerX. But she's worked with over 2500+ humans across 6 countries and saw what makes hundreds of young people stand out from everyone else. The common advice to just "be vulnerable" is directionally correct... but for folks later in our careers (43 here!) She said her being vulnerable is a strength. But for a younger person this can feel forced and not show them in the best light. So how do you stand out as a 20-something year old? Tell a story about being on a team, winning. (Not you being a golden child.) Tell about real wins, where you can point at your contributions and their impact. Because if you're looking to advance your career, you want to accumulate proof you're competent at the thing you do. And nothing beats having others vouch for the impact you've made on your team or company. so if you want to see how to show the impact you've made in your past projects, don't take it from me. Look at how Claude narrates her own career on her Trove profile: https://lnkd.in/giN6xP_W PS. What's some other common career advice that doesn't apply to young people?

For a long time, I thought leadership was something you became, and that becoming it meant becoming a little less like myself. Early in my consulting career, I was told I didn't have enough "gravitas." Lucky for me, I had examples all around me. Kira Wampler, Dustin Johnson, Sean O'Driscoll, Todd Shimizu, Tyler Welch. All the Ants. #IYKYK They could walk into a messy client situation, absorb a dozen pieces of information and shape a story around what mattered. If it went sideways, they could reframe it and bring everyone back with them. I wanted to know how to do that, so I studied them. Looking back, I think of them as part of my professional lineage. So much of an early career is imitation, although we don't usually call it that. What I didn't understand was that they weren't teaching me how to become a leader. They were helping me build the craft around things I already did naturally. The problem was that I got very good at studying people. Eventually, I started studying myself just as closely. After a meeting, I could spend hours replaying it. Why did I say that? Did I sound senior enough? The quality that helps you learn can become rumination. The ability to adapt can become masking. The desire for feedback can become dependence on external evaluation. The mistake wasn't learning from people I admired. It was looking outside myself for what good looked like. I was listening to Claude Silver Chief Heart Officer at VaynerX with Chad Horn and Michael Beck on the ChatGTM Podcast this week. Mike asked what she would tell someone sitting in their car outside the office, about to walk in and become the person everyone expects them to be. "You yourself are worthy to take up space just as you are." I wish 25-year-old me had been able to internalize that. Hearing it was never the problem. It took the experience of my career for it to land. I'm an obsessive ruminator. My brain will keep pulling at something, making connections and trying to understand how the pieces fit together long after most people have moved on. Earlier in my career, I spent a lot of time managing that. Over time, I ended up in rooms where connecting the dots between disparate parts of a business was the whole reason I was there. Getting better didn't require getting rid of those parts of myself. I needed to get better at using them. Twenty years ago, all I could do was replay a meeting in my own head. Now I can ask AI to tell me everything I could have done better. ;) But knowing when you've had enough feedback, and when to trust yourself, is part of the work. Some of the best people I've worked with taught me how to communicate, shape a story, and hold a room. For a long time, I thought those were things I needed to learn to become a leader. What took longer was realizing they were helping me become better at being the leader I already was. Congrats to Claude on the launch of "Be Yourself at Work." And thank you to ChatGTM Podcast for the reminder.

We are hiring at VaynerMedia APAC and VaynerMedia EMEA. I need junior-mid strategists in London and Berlin and junior - senior talent in Singapore, Malaysia and Australia. If you have advertising/marketing strategy and social media experience then please drop me a line.

The secret to building an unstoppable team culture isn’t in a traditional business textbook… As VaynerX's first and only Chief Heart Officer, Claude Silver has spent her career creating and perfecting a framework that doesn’t just build unshakable team culture, but which motivates and connects our people.  To do that, her inspiration didn’t come from business textbooks. It came from these:  🌟A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink The perfect read for anyone who’s ever felt like they’re too “right brained” to make it in the corporate world. A celebration of how “soft skills” like empathy, creativity, and storytelling can be the most important traits in business & leadership.  🌟Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara A reminder that a job well done isn’t always about ticking boxes & getting your work done. It’s about how you make the people around you feel, the experiences you create, and the memories you leave them with.  🌟The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt Technically, a children’s book but one that has life lessons applicable to any and all ages. A beautiful reminder that people flourish when they’re given the grace to explore new opportunities & color outside the lines.  Swipe through to hear Claude’s full wrap up & let us know what books inspire your dream team. 👇

The secret to building an unstoppable team culture isn’t in a traditional business textbook… As VaynerX's first and only Chief Heart Officer, Claude Silver has spent her career creating and perfecting a framework that doesn’t just build unshakable team culture, but which motivates and connects our people.  To do that, her inspiration didn’t come from business textbooks. It came from these:  🌟A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink The perfect read for anyone who’s ever felt like they’re too “right brained” to make it in the corporate world. A celebration of how “soft skills” like empathy, creativity, and storytelling can be the most important traits in business & leadership.  🌟Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara A reminder that a job well done isn’t always about ticking boxes & getting your work done. It’s about how you make the people around you feel, the experiences you create, and the memories you leave them with.  🌟The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt Technically, a children’s book but one that has life lessons applicable to any and all ages. A beautiful reminder that people flourish when they’re given the grace to explore new opportunities & color outside the lines.  Swipe through to hear Claude’s full wrap up & let us know what books inspire your dream team. 👇

If your definition of culture is just “getting along” with people you work with, that can hold you back. Claude Silver and I discuss this and how to be yourself at work on my show Making it with Jess Ekstrom. Watch or listen here: https://lnkd.in/dVCqsQxu What do you think about culture? 👇

Most companies have a Chief People Officer. VaynerX has a Chief Heart Officer. Claude Silver became the world’s first, working alongside Gary Vaynerchuk to make empathy, trust and human connection part of how the organisation leads and grows. Since then, she has helped Vayner scale from 400 people to nearly 2,000 globally, while taking her ideas on leadership and culture far beyond the company through her bestselling book Be Yourself at Work and work with organisations including Google, Meta and the US Armed Forces. Her belief is simple: people should not have to choose between being fully human and performing at a high level. On 24 September, Claude comes to Happiness Camp with a perspective built around authenticity, emotional fluency and the kind of trust that allows people to contribute more of who they are. Because the strongest cultures are not the ones where people perform a version of themselves. They are the ones where people feel safe enough to do their best work as themselves. 🎟️ Free tickets available now: https://lnkd.in/eP5pBGsi