Rube.
When I think about empathy, which is such an overused word today, to me, it's not putting on your shoes. It's not stepping into your shoes. I could never do that. I think about empathy as being a passenger with you on your journey, if you let me, putting my hand on your shoulder and being like I got you, I got you, Like, let's do this. There's no friction we cannot solve. But it takes the right culture. It takes a willingness to be transparent and to have communication. I firmly believe.
That that's Claude Silver offering up a new way to think about empathy, not as stepping into someone else's shoes, but as writing shotgun on their journey. And as you'll hear, that's not just a personal philosophy, it's her job. Claude is the Chief Heart Officer at Vaynermedia. Yeah, Heart officer. It's a real c suite role at one of the most talked about media companies in the world, and Claude's
mission is to scale emotional intelligence inside the workplace. In this conversation, she breaks down what that actually means and how empathy, when done right isn't soft, it's strategic. Claude and I go way back, but this was the first time I had the chance to really dig into her leadership style, how it was shaped by her childhood, her nana who literally called her heart, her experience in therapy, and her early years navigating corporate culture as a sensitive,
intuitive person. We also get into hybrid work, difficult conversations, parenting, burnout, and why kindness at work is having a long overdue moment. I'm furnished to RAVI and this is leading by example, executives making an impact. Claude Silver, Welcome. It's so nice to see you, and we're in person. Let's just announce that because that's a special treat.
It's awesome. It's great to see you. Thanks for having me. I've known you for many years.
I don't know if I've ever had this opportunity to really understand your leadership style. Where sourced and so let's go to childhood. As we're both moms, we know our kids. When we look back on their childhoods, it won't be a coincidence. Maybe who they become or their talents. But as a child, you were repeatedly told Claude that you think too much with the heart, and now you're the
chief heart officer at Vayner Media. Was there a moment in your life or your career where you realize that leading with heart was actually your greatest strength?
Yeah, there absolutely was, And it took me a long time to get there because I actually felt like something was wrong with me.
Really.
Oh yeah, I thought when my parents would love in their hearts, would say to me, Claude, you think too much with your heart. You have to learn how to think with your head. And sometimes they would compare me to my brother Caleb, who is much more analytical than I am. But I thought, oh gosh, I must have a missing chip, like what's going on? What's happening? And so it took a lot of years, a lot of therapy, a lot of different things to finally understand, Oh, being
an EmPATH actually is my superpower? Why don't I lean in to it? And it really was my Nana, who we called each other heart. That's like the crazy thing. Oh she called me heart and I called her heart. She basically was the kindest, most generous person I had ever known in my life, and I really credit her for emotionally raising me in many ways for kind of shining the light on Hey, it's okay, it's good, like, this is who you are. Don't hide it, don't try
to change it, because you can't. I really can't.
You studied it too before this became kind of your professional identity. You have a background in human psychology. How did that inform your brand so to speak? Today?
Yeah, so I do have a background in human behavior, human psychology, spirituality, and what that showed me, What that gave me was that, Wow, we're all so similar and we have different lived experiences, but we all go through very similar emotions. It just happens to be we're triggered by different things because of our background. So what that gave me was pattern recognition. Being dyslexic, I had to learn really early on how to find my way in the world and how to navigate my way, and I
think patterns was how I got there. When people are in pain, when people are expressing joy, when people are expressing surprise or astonishment, this is how people usually behave. And so for me, patterns became a shortcut in a way that I could figure things out quicker. And that was important to me because I really did feel slow slower than the average bear, which was never a great feeling.
I think leaning into emotional intelligence, which I didn't even know the name for it, I think I really put myself through an incredible education called life. I didn't graduate college until I was twenty eight, so I did a lot of this extracurricular studying on my own because I was passionate about it, not because someone told me I had to in order to get a degree, which is a big difference.
Were you concerned about finding your way through corporate as an empact?
I was concerned that I wouldn't find my way period anywhere for a long time until it seemed like the skill sets I have seemed to match what this job needs, and what those first early jobs were were client relations. So okay, you know, I like people, and I'm curious about people, and I'm a good question asker, and I think that opened the door to furthering my career, and I've always done agency work. I landed in advertising agencies. It was right after the dot com boom, the first one.
What was that like? I wanted to ask you about that your early days in advertising being in like the right place at the right time, that, of course in part shaped your digital career.
One thousand percent. Living in San Francisco. I moved there in nineteen ninety five, so I was there for some of the greatest moments, saddest moments, AIDS crisis also, but also technology. All of a sudden, it was like, Oh, what is modem? Oh what does that sound?
Oh?
What is Yahoo? You know this is all before Google or Facebook, but really, what is Yahoo?
Still?
We're asking that question? Does Yahooh?
And it was the wild, wild wild West. And I didn't feel like I had to be a certain way, as I think probably the younger generations, generations that came after me, probably felt like they had to fit more of a mold. I didn't feel like I needed to wear pumps. I didn't feel like I needed to wear some kind of business suit. These were great days of curiosity and wonder and let's try this and overspend here and overspend here. So it was a big joy ride and an adventure. But we knew we were trying to
do things. And all of the companies that I worked with, even before I got into advertising, were all community based, and that's where we are today. Every platform is community based. I believe somewhere we're trying to bring people together and to bring people closer, even though you know, we could have another conversation on does that work or does it not work.
You also spend time abroad, yes I did. What did international life teach you about patterns or human psychology? What did you take from those experiences?
The first thing I took is that as an American, we think the world revolves around US and America, and it just doesn't. One of the first things I recognized was watching the news over there and seeing things about places that I had never heard about, and in America, our news is very centered in what's happening here. So it showed me a that the world is much bigger. Being in London is very different than when I would
travel other places. I mean London, they're very polite and they don't like confrontation, so everything comes with a sorry first, and you're like, but what are you really trying to say to me? Where are we going here? And again it showed me that we are all so similar. It just depends on how we came up in the world and what we were taught or what we wanted to run away from, or you know, just that everyone went through adolescence. And I'm speaking more for the Western world.
We all went through a very similar adolescence. I don't know what some of the other people in third world countries and people that are more impoverished and less privileged than I am have gone through in those stages, but what I can say is there's such a similarity, and so when we start to fight with one another, it hurts because it's like, hey, wait a second, we have
no idea how that person just started their day. We have no idea what happened to that person from the hours of six to nine before they opened their laptop and got online. We have no idea that their dog was sick, their child was in the hospital, they got engaged last night, all kinds of things. But that happens all over the world. And so that's one of the things that taught me is that you know, not to quote depeche Mode, but I will oh any time. Okay, I mean, well, are people? People?
Are people? Are people?
Oh? What kiss it?
But I'm also learning about Uclaude is that in addition to your knack for identifying patterns, you're also quite the translator. You have a code that's like built in you, like you know the code. You meet people from all walks of life, and you're able to understand them in a way that maybe they are not even aware that that's how they're presenting themselves, but you're seeing them at the end of the day. I think really important, especially in the context of work.
I don't know if it's a code, but I take that as an incredible compliment, so thank you. But I do see them. I do know that there's something going on behind someone's eyes, and that could be a surprise to them or surprise to me. But I like going with them on the journey. So for me, when I think about empathy, which is such an overused word today, to me, it's not putting on your shoes. It's not
stepping into your shoes. I could never do that. I think about empathy as being a passenger with you on your journey, if you let me just writing shotgun with you, putting my hand on your shoulder and being like I got you, I got you, Like let's do this. There's nothing, especially the workplace, that we cannot solve unless it's something to do with a person's health. There's no friction we cannot solve I firmly believe that. But it takes the
right culture. It takes a willingness to be transparent and to have communication and to learn. Like people for the most part have good intentions, right, It's not one hundred percent all the time, But I don't think we go into work to go and try to collaborate people. Yes it's political, and yes there's games and all that junk that we've lived through. I think they get triggered. I get triggered just like the next person. So my code is really figuring out what's going on, what's preventing you
from shining? Why do you have that imposter syndrome? What's holding you back? Were you told that you needed to be perfect? Is that why you go and you look at that person's PowerPoint presentation and you find errors first before you read the entire story. Just tell me why. Let's walk through that and then let's reframe that and think of something different. Like, I wonder what would happen if you look at that PowerPoint presentation from start to finish and read it before criticizing it fair?
Would that be?
Like?
I think we can all take that advance. It's human nature. We look for what's working what's not working? First?
Exactly? You almost said, we look for what's working first and let's get there one day. Please.
Yeah, I want to transition to vayner Media. You joined in twenty fourteen and then you resigned three months later, you returned as the chief heart officer. I want to know what happened during those three months, What were you doing, what were you reflecting on? Why did you leave?
So I was hired by Gary Vaynerchuk, my boss, who's just a phenomenal guy, phenomenal entrepreneur. I was the first SVP that he hired, and I was probably the third oldest person in vayner and I ran Unilever, which was our largest book of business every time. And about a year into it, I started to get that feeling that I had earlier when I was living in London, which was it's not that important to me if it's red or brown or blue, or if the copy is incursive
or the grammar is right. That doesn't light me up at all. And these conversations don't excite me. But what excites me is the people that are bringing it to fruition, bringing creative ideas to life. That's what excites me. So I went to Gary and I said, hey, I love it here. You're the best. This is the greatest place ever. But I no longer want to work in advertising. And then he said, what do you want to do? And I said, I only care about the people here. I
care about the heart beat. Really heartbeat, is what I said. And he said, one day we're going to write a book on heart but I need you to stay for eighteen more months, and I remember saying, I'll give you six. He doesn't remember that part of the story. But I found my backfill and I resign. And during those three months, I worked out, I walked the dog, I went snowboarding, I visited my friends. I just freed myself from, quite frankly, the bondage of a phone and my emails and text messages.
And I just kind of like, I dreamed, what do I want to do? I know, I don't want to go back to doing what is going to be very shiny for me. Any job offer that comes my way would be very shiny at that point, What do I want to do? And I thought, okay, well, I'll start a coaching practice. That seems like something I really enjoy doing. I want to work with people, and so he called me back. We had breakfast, we sat down, he said, that's it, you're coming back. You're going to be chief
Heeart officer. And I knew exactly what that meant, maybe because he and I speak a very similar code, but it just made sense to me. We didn't have HR. I have never been in HR. Now I can tell you that I am and I've done that.
I have a.
New appreciation for people in HR. I don't call it that, I call it people and experience. But when I was there for those first sixteen months, being one of the oldest and the OG, I was doing a lot of hiring, I was doing a lot of terminations. I was that person that people would come to. I was tenured in all of those things that you really need in a fast paced, growing company when you have a lot of youth there. And so I immediately said to him what are
we doing? And he said, we're building the single greatest human organization in the history of time. And I said, sign me up. That's aspirational. And I said, cool, how
do we know if I'm successful? And he said, you will touch every single human being and deploy empathy throughout the halls, okay, And then I said I don't want to do HR and he said, great, You'll hire a team around you and ret one of Gary's strength, which is something that he's really taught me, which is you put people in position to succeed, You set them up
for success, and you dive in on your strengths. And if I go back to Nana seeing emotional intelligence as a superpower, and I go, that's what Gary recognized, and he was like, I need this person to be me in those rooms that I can't be in. I need this person to go and figure out all that michig go as over there, or what the chaos is or the cynicism over there, and scale that out. And so I've been with Gary. It'll be eleven years in May, and I've been chief our officer for nine years almost
to the day. And so that's what I do every single day. Figure that out on a bigger playing field now that we've grown so much.
Walk me through a typical day. I would love to understand how your work and your insights manifest in somebody else's success.
I love that because at the end of the day, it is really about ROI, right or it's roe return on energy. Someone told me that the other day.
I like that.
I like that. I'll take that. It's actually one of the architects of Google's project, Aristotle, who said ROE, and I was like, yes, I will steal anything you give me. Thank you.
Put that in my pocket.
A typical day will be having one on one so people have set up time with me because they heard I might be a good person to help them connect with other people, or they want to know about my journey, or they had a funny meeting with a manager, or not quite sure if they're up for a raise or so whatever. People will just come and talk, so we'll
travel through those conversations. It's fifteen minute conversation. I got pretty quick at figuring out how to get to where I need to get to and to leave them feeling better than they did. They felt great, then I'm going to make them feel even greater. If I can or at least acknowledge that they are awesome, then I'm going to have strategy meetings with either people that are across the globe and our other offices figuring out One of the things I'm helping people do is where is their smoke?
Where are people unhappy? Where are people happy? Where are their roses? Where are their thorns? What are we going to do about that? How are we going to continue recognizing our people? And where there is cynicism or yuckiness, what are we going to do it? Like, we have to get to the root of that, because if we
want to retain rockstar people, then that's our job. And I work with senior leadership, and I work with all of our pod leads so SVPs EVPs to figure out how their people are doing and how are they leading. So I spend also a lot of time doing leadership training, like senior leadership high performance training. How do you know how people feel when you enter a room? How do you know that if you enter a room with your head and your phone, you have no clue And actually
that's the energy you just brought into the room. So the energy is you don't really care, you don't have time, or you're distracted. So let's reverse that. Let's walk into a room saying, hey, everyone, how are you doing? How's your weekend? Those types of things. I talk about new offices we're opening. I talk about how we can expand our culture what we call honey empire into those other offices and places where I don't speak the language. Are we making sure that in Mexico City we're doing the
trainings in their native language. I do a lot of financial meetings also, which is crazy because I'm not a financier at all, but trying to figure out how we can become more profitable. Where do we have bulk, what are we doing there? Talent planning, where are high performers? Where we plotting people? And this is all happening throughout the day. There's not a wasted meeting, That's what I'll say.
Well, on that, I wanted to go back to those one on ones that you have. How do you hold in balance being there for them, having that empathy, but also being efficient because I think, especially for someone who may not be familiar with how the meetings get run, it's a sort of a dump, so to speak, of all their emotions. Or they are looking for you just supposide it as a therapist, So how do you sort of walk the line and be both empathetic and efficient.
I would say they're probably looking for me more to be a coach, because I put that into the water that we're not therapists and I'm not a therapist, so I can't help you there. So I would say we're coaches and guides for sure, and that is something that we feed the system constantly. I had a resident that came and spoke to me yesterday and she asked me the exact same question. She said, I'm an EmPATH. I don't know how to be an EmPATH and not take on people's feelings. And I don't know how to be
an EmPATH and be very successful at my job. And so one of the things I shared with her and you brought up the word, which is called efficient, is You're not going to change your stripes. It's who you are. Be proud of that. What you need to do is learn how to create space for another person to have their stuff, but constantly be pushing self awareness and self regulation to them, Like, Okay, if this person is sitting there with Bob or Sally, Oh, Sally, it's really amazing.
You're so self aware. That's really awesome. How do you handle it when you have a bad day? Oh, I go into the bathroom and have a cry. Okay, how else do you handle it when you have a bad day? I go for a walk? How would you handle it. If your coworker came to you and had a bad day, I would say, let's go for a walk. Or if they say, I don't know, I don't know what I would do. If I saw someone having a bad day, That's when I say, actually, you're just as responsible for
this culture as I am. And so what you would do is say, hey, I notice that you're having a bad day. You want to go talk? Is there someone I can connect you with? Those are like just the little bits that I'm trying to infuse in the system, which I call emotional efficiency. Quite frankly, this is something I talk quite a bit about and I have a book coming out and I really talk about it, emotional optimism, emotional bravery, and emotional efficiency. And this is a flywheel
that's happening constantly. Emotional optimism is the fact that we all have bad days, we all go through emotions, We go through highs, we go through lows. You know, our dog got sick this morning and then I had to get on a screen and deal with something that was crying. Whatever it is, right, So okay, what can I do with that? I can have faith and hope that it's
going to turn around. Tomorrow. I can have faith and hope that I can call my best friend, I can call my brother, I can call someone at work and they can talk me out of this slump. But I have to believe in that. That's the optimism. The next step is emotional bravery. What do I do? What actions do I take? Knowing that I'm supported, knowing that I'm good? How can I be braver in this situation? Oh gosh, I have to have a hard conversation with my boss.
All right.
That's up to me to bring my self awareness and my ability to regulate my own emotions and bring that conversation to my boss and be brave and it's okay if my emotions come out, I'm not spilling anywhere. The more I do that, and the more you do that within teams, you create efficiency. Efficiency is a shorthand. So back to this ROI, which is the question, it's how can we help one another within the workplace of understanding
that emotions are allowed. We are not in a time and place where we are going to go armor up anymore. That's not going to work, certainly not going to work for this generation or Generation Alpha that's going to come up soon that's the first thing. So how can we be in a workplace and be feelers and have our own feelings and still keep our eye on the prize.
We need the entire organization to be rowing in the same direction, and that means we need to spend a lot of time with one another having these conversations of like, hey, your emotions are totally fine. I need you to keep that in check, though, because when you have an outburst like that, you've just destroyed the productivity for the rest of the day for that team. Like, if you're going to have an outburst, that's cool, go out to the bathroom. I'll meet you there in five minutes, or I'll have
your you know what I mean? Like, yes, So much of what I talk about is common sense, and I recognize it's not common for everyone, But I don't think it's difficult to be kind and to be effective. I do think there's a marriage there and those things can happen if you have the right support around you and your culture says it's okay, And I don't mean it's okay because they have banners on the walls. Are like
sore fly, Hi, you can do it. Aspire for greatness you need to have your values in the water stream. People need to act on them, and then they become habits. And this is something that Gary talks about and he uses the word osmosis, which is something that is very difficult to teach. You have to experience over and over over and over. And so what did we start talking about in the beginning patterns. It's the same exact thing, consistency.
And so when someone consistently behaves a certain way, I can trust that they're always going to behave that way. When a person is inconsistent or wobbles, or one day they're like this, everyone's going to have a little bit of distrust around that person. What our job is as leaders is to be able to point that out in a kind, compassionate but very candorous way to that person and helping and facilitating other people to do their best on dealing with it. I didn't say exterminate it, deal
with it. So I shouldn't or the people an experienced team shouldn't be the people dealing with all of this. Your managers need to be dealing with some of the angst or some of the turmoil, or some of the whatever on your teams.
When we come back. Claude gets into what it really looks like to lead with heart in the hard moments like layoffs, hybrid work tensions, and the emotional weight that caregivers bring to the office every day. She also shares why she finally wrote her new book, Be Yourself at Work, and what she sees on the horizon for the future of leadership.
The eye has to be on the prize, and the prize is yes, having a healthy culture and having people that want to work and that make friends that I'm devoted to in a place that's kind in this camaraderie, but I'm also devoted to being successful. I want everyone to be able to get the raise that they're looking for and to get the promotion. But that only happens when the organism is working together. It takes a village.
Stay with us. So when you experience resistance or skepticism from culture about your ideologies around empathy in the workplace, what are the most common things that you hear.
So we're a workplace, and we're a business, and we have to make money, and so sometimes we are going to be more empire than honey. So our culture is called honey empire. I'd like to say we're fifty one percent honey, forty nine percent empire. Some days we're going to be fifty one percent empire. And so what I hear about our culture at times is we're just so focused on the bottom line. We're so focused on sales.
We're so focused on being the best or being the first, Like, where's the softness, where's the empathy in that clot And that's a tough one, because yes, I can spend time with you and show you how we got to that
place or why it's so necessary. Because of the financial environment that we're all in right now, or certainly the financial environment that advertising agencies are in today, we have to be serious about our work, and we have to be serious about being exceptional with our clients and delivering on what we said we would deliver on time. Yeah, and if that goes against your idea of empathy, well
then we can have that talk once you're finished. The eye has to be on the prize, and the prize is, yes, having a healthy culture and having people that want to work and that make friends that I'm devoted to in a place that's kind and there's camaraderie, but I'm also devoted to being successful. I want everyone to be able to get the raise that they're looking for and to get the promotion. But that only happens when the organism
is working together. It takes a village. And so we have orientation every other week and I meet every single new joiner and that can be a C suite employee sitting with an art director, it doesn't matter. It's all on zoom. But I love that because it flattens the organization right then and there. But the first thing I'll say to them is culture is everyone's responsibility, and wonderful this screen. You are all now just as responsible for the culture as I am. And that's a great thing
because you were chosen for a reason. We chose you. You have the right skill sets and you are going to bring such wonderful additions to this culture.
I want to talk a little bit about difficult conversations that you have with your employees around issues of like coming into a meeting and not looking like you're fully there, but also harder ones like your positions being eliminated. How do you do it?
So I'm going to put a heading on top of this topic, which is called accountability. And I believe that for a culture to be healthy and thriving, there needs to be accountability and people need to know what they are accountable and responsible for. That is our job as the leaders of this company to make sure people know that and to make sure leadership knows that. That's the first thing I want to say when it comes time
for that person to be exited. My hope and my prayer, and I'm like a hawk with this, is that we have documented and had those conversations along the way. That is a must. And I'm not talking about waiting for quarterly reviews. I'm talking about frequent feedback. As a manager, as a leader, that is your job to make sure John knows where he is anytime he asks you, right, what does he need to do? What is he not doing?
Where is he excelling all of those things. By the time that conversation of an exit comes my way or comes to the team's way, what I'm expecting is that it is not going to come as a big surprise. And that is something we need to get a lot better at, which is called clarity and communication and making sure we are holding ourselves accountable as we're holding him accountable. It has to be a two Way Street. So in those conversations, I will often sit down and say, I'm sorry,
this is going to be a really challenging conversation. And based on the conversations, or based on the last reviews, or based on your behavior last week, or based on what we've talked about several times now, it's been documented on how you gossip constantly about a person's appearance or whatever it is fill in the blank. Today is going to be your last day. I'm really sorry that we weren't able to work this out together. Something like that.
What I will say, and this is not to make it like, oh yeah, I got this down.
I don't.
These are hard conversations someone's livelihood. We have an exceptional alumni program that we created three years ago. So let me just explain that really quickly. A lot of people come to Gary, a lot of companies, a lot of cmos, Hey do you have a social media marketer for my ex company or my Y company? And we put all of those jobs into our own database, and we reach out to people that have either left Vanner Media or
we know we will be exiting. We promise that within three days, this gentleman, Justin Novello will reach out to you. He's going to help you with your resume and your LinkedIn profile, and we will connect you. We can't guarantee a conversation or a job. Are many times that Gary will say, I will talk to whomever I know at that company and I will at least get you a conversation. So we promise that to every single person, and we've
been really successful. We also have a lot of boomerangs that come back three years later, five years later, seven years later. So that's all to say. These conversations are painful for everyone, and my hope is that we continue to get better at our communication and get clearer and more specific so that it is not a surprise when that person comes in, because that's the worst thing.
Yeah, that's quite generous, I think, and I think speaks for itself when people come back. I think that speaks volumes. One more question about the workplace, and then I want to get into your advice for those who want to maybe take on some of your leadership or like you have changed your career multiple times, they want to do that,
But I have to ask you about hybrid work. You have said no one will stand for five days a week in office Why is it so important to have flexible work as it speaks to your values as chief heard officer.
My values as a chief Heart officer are based around being human. Yeah, they're really based around common sense things as we've talked about. It's just it's the basics, and I really believe our workplaces need to meet us there. We need time for our own personal health, for our family, for our friends, for just doing a day to day appointments. That we just need time to live as free people as freely as we possibly can, with the commitment that we will be accountable to our job. I don't think
we need to big brother people. I believe that big brothering people is the antithesis of what I'm about. It feels like there's a scarcity in the world, a fear. You know, why can't we trust people to do the work that we hire them to do. I understand that there are times in which we need people in the office one thousand percent and we want people to look over someone's shoulder and say, oh, yeah, no, I would put a little more rust color in there or whatever
it is. But I want people to feel like they can live their lives and not have to balance this work life balance that we put in place a century ago during the factory age when it was eight hours, eight hours, eight hours.
Has your leadership adjusted in a hybrid model world at all in terms of, let's say, after someone who's working remotely from home, what is that person's future in terms of leading a team? Actually, at right there is the million dollar question. As a leader, you have an enormous responsibility to grow and nurture people. So three day in office,
I think is great. If we can do that, I think we would accomplish a ton, a ton of closeness and camaraderie and collaboration and curiosity together and then also being able to go to the dentist at ten o'clock in the morning. So I really do think hybrid is the way to go. I believe in flexibility, I believe and freedom. I believe in giving people the opportunity to show us what they can do, and if they can't, well, then we have to have those harder conversations.
We need you in the office this amount of time. I will say that what has changed for me the most is being a mom, you know, and really understanding what that takes to be a parent or a caregiver. The emotional package that you wear that I wear as a parent every day is it's invisible, but it's there. Oh yeah, And that's one of the things that I'm really big on right now. We just kicked off a brand new parents Caregivers group rate a banner to really
have these hard conversations. Not about benefits, That's not what I'm talking about, but just having the courageous conversations of like, yeah, my kid has special needs, or my kid has to have an operation, or I need to be there to have dinner with my children.
All right, let's pick your brain and get some advice for our listeners on reinvention. Career reinvention, you're not shy to this. What advice would you give to mid career professionals, especially who feel stagnant in their careers. They want to do a pivot, but they're afraid.
So what I would say is work with a coach. Don't do this alone. I would really say, find someone that you can talk to about what it is your passionate about, what your values are, what are you great at? What do you just great at? And you hate doing because you don't want to get into that box and dream big, Like, if you feel like you really want to open up your own flower boutique, then you have to put that out there and understand it's not going
to happen tomorrow. There are steps that you need to take. I used to think that you could get from point A to Z overnight, but I realized you have to do some planning. So my best advice is to a go for it and talk to someone about it. Find someone that is a career coach or a life coach that you trust that can really help you step by step, figure out what your dreams are and figure out what those sprints are to get to the marathon.
Yeah, the finish line. The zone of genius work is fun.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
What are some of the trends you think are going to shape the workplace in the next five years?
AI, AI, AI, and AI all over the place. You know, I work in a creative agency, that's all there. We work in HRIS systems, it's already there. Anything that gives us more efficiency, I think, and smart to some extent. We know that there's all these different chat you know, chatchipt or Claude, which is very just strange to say, and they're getting more intelligent. The more we use them and the more you prompt them, and I, for one, love playing with them. It's like a hobby for me now,
just to see how far I can go. And quite frankly, they make me smarter. They make me sound smarter.
Do you think it can threaten workforce at Vynermedia? Even I don't think it.
Can threaten workforce at Vaynermedia. I think we are going to use it to provide more efficiency and to be better at our craft. That's what I think, being a company that is rooted in people, and we're very proud of that. I don't think that there's going to be a time where we're going to eliminate twenty jobs because Claude Chatchpt can do it better. But I think we are going to use it much more frequently.
You mentioned your book that's coming out soon, Be Yourself at Work. Tell us a little about the genesis of this As an author, it's not a small feat when you take this on, especially you have a big job, you have a big personal life, and then you add this to it.
Yeah, it was a challenge that I set for myself about ten years ago. I don't know why. It's literally like some people said, I'm on a round a Maska calling calling. I went through so much imposter syndrome, so many days, so many weeks and months, that I put it on hold. What do I have to say? That's so new. Everyone's talking about vulnerability in the workplace, Everyone's saying that stuff. What do I have to say? And I realized I live it. It's very different. I'm not
a philosopher talking about it. I'm not an academic talking about it. I'm actually doing it every day and watching people be themselves at work and certainly promoting that. So that's what it was about for me, which was literally like, this is who I am, this is what I have to offer. I'm not looking to win any Nobil Peace Prize. I just wanted to see if I could do it. And it took me five years to do it. It was a labor of love, That's all I can say.
And thank god I had a supportive partner who could help and take on the way to the kids and all of those things.
I wish more people knew about what it takes to actually write a book. You know, I sacrifices the trade offs, the imposter syndrome, the loneliness.
It's like leadership in many ways. It can be very lonely and just doing something that you know is a calling to your point and you just have to do it.
Yeah, yeah, you just get her done, get or done. The title of this podcast is leading by Example, So we want to ask you, as we do all of our wonderful guests, with your title as Chief Heart Officer. This is a significant innovation in executive leadership. We think, how does cho embody the idea of leading by example?
Walking the walk every single day, being accountable for how I say I'm going to show up and show up that way when I say earlier in this podcast, how are you walking into a room? How are you showing up every single day? If I show up looking at my phone walking into that room, then I should not be here.
Listen. If I've learned anything is I'm never walking into a room with my phone in my face, especially if you are garrier and thank you. Thank you for that reminder. We all need it sometimes. Clode Silver, thank you so much.
Thank you partnersh All right, so here we are post Claude Silver interview, and I have my producer here, Ryan, who had been listening in the whole time helped us actually produce this segment.
Wonderful questions you had given me for Claude. Thanks so much, Ryan. What'd you think?
I mean, it's impressive having a company as big as Vyner and having a role like Claude's. I've never heard of anything like it, and yet hearing her explain it, it just feels so obvious that you need something, especially in sort of a post pandemic world where folks are experiencing new things and new ways of working every day and things are changing constantly, and to have someone looking out for you in a company like that is really impressive.
It's not an easy job at all, you know. I mean, she said she didn't want to do hr. She wanted I think a harder job, like she said not to be disrespectful to people in human resources. It's an incredibly important job. And she would even call it something like people and experiences, but that she is taking on so much heaviness every day. She may not characterize it as that, but I think for the average person, she has a
skill at empathy and having empathy. It's her superpower, is a reason she's in that role, and she's spearheaded that role, but man I can help, but think these are big, heavy days sometimes for her.
And I appreciate that a company like that has someone in that role who can carry that burden. I think that you have to have an extraordinary amount of like she's a super power level of emotional intelligence, and to be able to share that with the employees in not only just share it and carry that burden, but model that behavior, I think is going to rub off on all the leaders and leaders to be at a place like Vayner.
She had a really cool definition of empathy, which I felt was like breaking news a little bit right, because she believes it's not just simply stepping into someone else's shoes, as though anyone could really.
It's being a passenger on their journey, which I thought was an extraordinary way to put it. I think that a lot of times folks confuse empathy for literally feeling someone else's feelings, and in this case, it's about awareness, and it's about being cognizant of what people are going through around you and being able to make changes or
at least help guide them through those feelings. In a complex place like a corporate environment, I mean to be able to have these kind of a emotional conversations and speak on emotional intelligence, and I really appreciated the way she connected it to the idea of Honey versus Empire in terms of how they think about Vayner and the fact that they can balance these lofty, emotional intelligent conversations with still having to make money.
Yeah, you can hold those two things together as you are running a company. I think this theme around kindness and empathy as someone who is observing what's coming out from the publishing world and the thought leadership world, there's a growing momentum. This is not a new territory foreclaud but I'm hopeful that her philosophies are going to sort
of catch a tailwind in this moment. There's definitely a lot of interest, and she coming at it from the perspective of someone, as she described, who walks the walk, who's living it. In addition, there are academics, there are psychologists and scientists who can add to this and give credibility to this. But I'm hopeful that it's just going to be I'm a.
Bigger trend, and I think walking the Walk is so important because she talked a lot about culture and the fact that culture is created through consistency, and so it's not like other companies can just hire a chief Heart officer tomorrow and implement these kinds of things. It's a culture that was created through consistency and was allowed to grow and flourish with someone in leadership a position like Claude.
And I think that it's about the earnest cultivation of this conversation about how we treat our employees and how we treat our team members and how we think about the people around us, and can grow that in a company so it becomes part of their core.
I also think it's important her background. It wasn't like she always knew right that this was going to be her role. And she was very candid and said I didn't know what was going to happen chief Heart officer aside, like I didn't even know what was going to be there for me or what I was aspiring to. And I kind of love that she was open about that.
It's a lesson for the those of us who feel a little like we're still trying to figure things out, we're getting afraid, we're getting nervous, we're getting impatient with ourselves that things take time to unfold. You need that time for reflection. But she didn't waste time either, right, She really invested in her learning. She invested in her experiences, travel education. I think that was really important that I
don't think was just of her time. You know, we didn't just do that twenty years ago to figure things out. I think that it's still very much applicable today, that there is value in slowing your role a little bit and investing in yourself and in your community to get to where you want to be. Absolutely, it's not a race. It's not a rat race, and if you do think that way, it's just a race to the bottom, often.
Completely and I think that shows in the success of her work as the chief Heart Officer over there.
Yeah, audience in fact check us. Are there any other Chief Heart officers in companies, at least in the US. I don't know. Maybe they're called something different.
Send them in we'll find out.
Let us know. Thanks Ryan, that's fun.
This is a great time.
Well listeners, I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as we did. If you like what you're hearing, please follow and subscribes you don't miss out on any new episodes and As always, we want to hear your thoughts to make this the best show possible, so please leave us a review. In the meantime, you can find me at Farnoosh Charabi on Instagram and I'm always on the So Money podcast. I'll see you next time. This podcast
is a production of iHeartRadio's Ruby Studio. Our executive producer is Matt Stillo and our supervising producer is Nikiah Swinton. This podcast was edited by Sierra Spreen.