Solving For Fairness
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. And then drink it yourself, give it for free to people in need and let the rest pay, because you need to buy more lemons at one point.
Life gave lemons most likely to all of us the last couple of months — in one way or another. After an initial shock and some time to process, the big question I hear more and more in my environment now is: what are we doing with these lemons? They do not seem to go away completely. How do we not just see this as the humanitarian crisis it is, but how will life change afterwards and how can we design businesses and the future — post-covid?
This is a question my classmates at Stanford Graduate School of Business and me were able to ask an impressive guest speaker in Allison Kluger’s class “Reputation Management”: Joel Peterson.
Joel Peterson, who led a couple of companies through tough times (IPOs, Valentine’s Day Massacre, and many more difficult situations) is not just an impressive leader, but also an impressive lecturer at Stanford. I have been looking forward to hearing him speak since I got accepted to Stanford — and lucky me, he would come to our class in times of COVID-19 — in times, where Warren Buffet sells airline stocks, where Airbnb lays off thousands of people and where stocks like booking.com drop substantially.
What does a long-time leader of a former successful airline “startup” have to say about the COVID-19 crisis and the effects on the travel industry? And what message did he give a class with future entrepreneurs and leaders?
“Solving for fairness”
His message was so clear, and still so mysterious and intangible. He told us to solve for fairness and kindness. While we hear about how to become great leaders and entrepreneurs every day, while we learn about how to communicate, how to do accounting and how to evaluate business models, Joel’s perspective was a new one: he focused purely on strengthening your own values and character in order to become a respected and therefore successful leader. However, Joel taught us that respect is different from “being liked”.
“You solve for respect — not for being liked. Pleasers are not being trusted and end up not being liked, even though this is their intention.”
Solving for respect means being true to your believes and values — even though they might not match everyone else’s believes and values. Joel even mentioned that he thinks he is not comfortable to work with, but this does not make him a lesser leader. Leadership is about being true to yourself and earning respect by being exactly that. If you focus on pleasing everyone, you will lose a lot of time and you will lose respect in the end: because you cannot be everyone’s best friend and aligned with everyone’s interests, but you can be fair and transparent to everyone and earn respect step by step. And respect is the base for a long-lasting, positive reputation.
“Be your own customer”
Finally, we talked about customer relations and that being a good leader does not just mean earning respect of your coworkers and employees, but also of your customers. Especially in difficult times like this pandemic, being true and close (and transparent!) to your customers is more valuable than ever before. People all around the world try to help their favorite restaurants, their hairdresser and accept airline vouchers instead of claiming their money back. This shows a huge empathy from the customers to these businesses — customers feel connected and partly responsible for their favorite businesses/brands. Employee branding becomes customer branding — because we are all in this together. To build a relationship with your customers like that, it takes years of trust and transparency and to reach that it takes a leadership, that does not just claim these things for marketing reasons, but that lives by these values every day.
Back to the lemons.
I cannot count the times since January, that people talked about how many lemons the whole world was given — and everyone acknowledges that. However, Joel’s perspective on this situation was eye-opening.
He told us — metaphorically — to still buy lemons, because there will be times where people will buy lemonade, and it is ok to think about how the lemonade might have to change to make this happen, but while working on the recipe, use your resources and give lemonade to the people in need. Stay true to yourself and solve for fairness and respect. And finally: drink your lemonade yourself, because without being (and listening) to the customer, you will never understand your customers.
Thank you, Joel, for an inspiring session, for inspiration and encouragement to stay true to ourselves and optimize for respect — in times like these we need leaders like you telling us, that there is always a way.
PS: highly recommend Joel’s new book!
