❤️ People Leader Spotlight: Claude Silver
❤️ People Leader Spotlight: Claude Silver
Chief Heart Officer at VaynerMedia
🗺️ You're Invited to Find Your Remote Work Home on April 4th: Join for a Workshop to explore where to live and work next with Q Hamirani, Global Head of Live and Work Anywhere, Airbnb. In This Edition
🏄♀️ Lessons learned from launching an outdoor adventure surfing company
🧡 Inspiration to become the first Chief Heart Officer
✏️ The importance of establishing core competencies
About Claude
Claude Silver is VaynerMedia’s (and the world's) first-ever Global Chief Heart Officer, tasked with fusing empathy with agency to unlock employee potential and foster a culture of belonging across the 2000+ person organization. Between her deep education in psychology and spirituality and the two decades she has spent as an advertising strategist, Claude has been studying and influencing human behavior for over three decades.
Outside of her role at VaynerMedia, Claude speaks globally about the need for heart-led leadership in today’s workplace and the importance of treating “employees” like people, not numbers. Her success in guiding client relationships, global brand strategies, operations, management, and culture is driven by her abiding passion for creating spaces in which people can show up as their true selves and thrive as a result.
What inspired your career path?
If I had not started my career in advertising, I’m not sure that I would have made my way to VaynerMedia 25 years later and created the role of Chief Heart Officer. I actually thought I wanted to be a psychotherapist.
Looking back, I've always been a player-coach, whether I was Captain of the tennis team or Senior Class President, it was never about me wearing a badge, it was about what could I do with my role — how could I accelerate growth, identify roadblocks or lift people up when they were down?
When I started working, I was living in San Francisco and joined a startup — that's where my road diverged into business. However, I found a way to continue my commitment to helping coach people by managing teams. After September 11th, my friend and I started an outdoor adventure surfing company that brought me closer to people and the work I loved by helping them learn to surf, climb rocks and conquer fears. It was an incredible 24/7 labor of love to own my company.
Ultimately, I sold the business and went into advertising. I found myself team-building again! I just enjoy figuring out communication styles, the messiness that we have when we communicate with each other and helping build a bridge to make it stronger.
While I was working in London, a friend introduced me to Gary Vaynerchuk in 2013. We spoke on the phone and hit it off (it’s hard not to hit it off with Gary’s energy!). Six months later, I joined VaynerMedia. I was the first woman SVP. I ran a large team, overseeing our biggest account. But, I realized that I wasn’t interested in advertising anymore, I just cared about the heartbeat of the company. Eight months later, we created the role of Chief Heart Officer and that’s what I’ve been doing ever since!
What a great title! Can you tell us what your work entails? Are there other Chief Heart Officers?
Anyone can be a Chief Heart Officer! If you have the heart to help and really know how to put your judgment aside, show up for someone and hold space for them, then I encourage you to make it happen.
I created this role based on what Gary deemed to be a success and my personality. My only job description is to touch every single human being and infuse the agency with empathy. When I took this role, we were 400 people and now we're 2,100!
My purpose is to create psychological safety and spaces of belonging and bravery where people really feel like they can bring their authentic selves to work. When I say really — that's where the shovel hits the soil — that's what we're doing all day long is making it a place for people to thrive, helping them identify roadblocks and ensuring VaynerMedia is the greatest career decision they've ever made.
Early on, I changed the name of my team from HR to People and Experience. Three years ago, I brought in a talented SVP of HR who knows the science, and that has allowed me to scale even more by focusing on DEI, strategic planning and listening to people, a lot. Similar to how Gary put me in a position of strength, I’m helping put people in positions of strength because that only furthers the success of everyone!
What guidance do you give to leaders to communicate with heart?
In order to be a phenomenal leader, I truly believe you must have a high level of self-awareness. Otherwise, I don't think your leadership is coming from the heart, it's coming from the head. To be a leader is to put your team first — you work for them.
To help that leader know thyself, I'm coaching them through a set of questions and working together — it’s a lot like a therapy session. I help them define what they value and who they are when they show up in a room. By finding out their beliefs, they can get rid of any negative voices.
Our job as leaders are to turn other people into heroes and leaders. It's about helping them find themselves so that they can help others do the same and be the best versions of themselves. Ultimately, as a leader, your job is to show up in a way that makes other people feel better and feel seen.
How did “emotional optimism” and “optimistic rebel” become phrases to describe your mission?
I've always known that I was an emotional optimist — I'm an optimist who cares deeply about emotions. I’ve spent a lot of time figuring out my own emotions and now I try to help people figure out their own emotions.
It’s understanding that we all have emotions, but we are not our emotions — how can you take your emotions, understand them like data and find the hope and promise ahead? Every day, we have another opportunity to do something differently — but can we motivate for that opportunity? That’s what I’m working towards with emotional optimism.
Optimistic Rebel comes from a book that I’m writing. These days, it's not always the norm to be optimistic or hopeful about the future, especially in a pandemic and challenging economy. Being a champion for optimism felt very rebellious and that’s how I got to the name!
As you look back, what projects are you proud of accomplishing over the years?
When I started in this role seven years ago, I made three major changes. First, I changed the title of the department from HR to People and Experiences. Second, I removed the need for a college education for most of our roles because that was a real barrier to entry. Third, I changed the way we hired from culture fit to culture addition.
All of this led to establishing our core competencies. What we do is more than a job description. Our work is based on the pillars that we believe in — our values are central to this! Each department has its own core competencies for every level so employees can see what is required of them, where some of the deltas might be and so we can coach them on where they need to invest to grow. This program was a year in the making and we just started to roll this out!
What is your approach to internal communications?
The pandemic was a real turning point for how we all communicated. We were already transparent, but it called for additional authenticity. I'm very vocal in sharing information and making sure that it’s heard by as many people as possible. In a world of being inclusive, we need to communicate in a way that our employees are looking for information. I do my best to communicate to everyone. I also listen — listening to learn is magic!
What career advice would you like to share with our community?
To get to wherever you are, it doesn't have to be a straight line. There are many curves and hills and nothing needs to be cookie-cutter, especially today when we are building new best practices. Raise your hand, show up and add something to the conversation, even if you just started today.
Thank you for reading The Switchboard. ☎️ Every interview edition is based on a live interview and personally written by me — Julia Levy. Learn more about why I write. Review the Index of past posts.
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