Brian Chesky, the CEO and co-founder of Airbnb says he does not consider that leaders shouldn’t have favourites, as an alternative feeling leaders ought to have favourites and use them for instance for others, so long as its primarily based on honest metrics.
Brian Chesky, co-founder and chief govt officer (CEO) of Airbnb Inc.(Bloomberg)
“At most companies, there’d be a protest if the CEO picked [favorites],” Chesky who has been running Airbnb for 17 years said in a recent interview with Fortune. “It would be considered unfair and not systematic.”
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But the same thing when done properly allows top performers to see the spotlight and also demonstrates to other employees whom they should emulate, he said.
However, this must be based on fair criteria and concrete success metrics rather than sheer cronyism, he added.
“You can have people making sure there’s no unconscious bias, people keeping you honest, looking for disparate impact inside the organization,” the report quoted Chesky as saying. “You are able to do quite a lot of surveys, and you need to use that to bolster your assumptions.”
That is regardless of most analysis on worker favoritism exhibiting its pitfalls. For instance, a research from The Ohio State College says favoritism can undermine office tradition and breed division.
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Nevertheless, one other research printed within the Journal of Organizational Conduct discovered {that a} boss exhibiting favoritism to 1 worker units a better bar for others which motivated them to be taught and enhance.
“If you can’t have favorites, if you can’t say this is a high performer, and this is what excellence is, then you are going to be in big, big trouble. That’s just not good leadership,” the report quoted Chesky as saying to emphasise his stance. “The president of the United States would pick. We should too.”
Chesky nevertheless, declined to call his favourite worker, responding that he has “so many,” however his favorites had been those with whom he texts frequently.
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