Free pizza and freedges: the essential leadership lessons I got off-campus

My phone lit up while in class: “Leftover pizza in the MBA lounge!” This class did not end for 15 more minutes, and I wondered whether I could make it to the lounge in time to grab a slice for lunch. All students in the GSB WhatsApp group “Free Food in Real Time,” and many others, would chase that pizza. “Update: there is a LOT of pizza in the lounge!” Phew. I calmed down.

Backtrack one year and I was working on food insecurity in the Bay Area for the Design for Extreme Affordability course. Our team was interviewing people who ran “freedges”: fridges placed on the streets of underprivileged neighborhoods, full of free food, accessible to anyone at any time. Just as with the pizzas, our main concern was how to deal with community members taking more than their fair share from the freedge?

The freedge had a different reality: there was under-consumption of free food. Through conversations with the users, all of them food insecure people, we learned they worried so much about others’ access to the food that they left as much as possible for their neighbors who — in their eyes — really needed that free food.

This realization burst my bubble. At the GSB, I learned from stellar professors and world-class experts on great leadership, yet the leader I was becoming was out of touch with the reality around her. I have lived with refugee communities in India and worked with small business owners in Kenya, but on the secluded GSB campus I clearly had no idea of how people lived even a few miles away.

I became involved with Life Moves, distributing breakfasts at a homeless encampment in San Jose, and with Heart and Home, serving dinners at a shelter for women in Palo Alto. These are three lessons I learnt in a way no class discussion or career workshop ever did.

We all need to learn these off-campus lessons in order to address some of society’s biggest problems post GSB. But even if you are not pursuing this ambition, I encourage you to read on, because no leader in today’s society can isolate themselves from these problems.

Number 1: Express dignity — to build relationships

For my first shift at the homeless shelter, the coordinator Liz walked me through the residents’ dietary preferences for dinner. I was expecting allergies but I soon learnt that one resident, Charlotte, had a curious diet: she was vegan, but would eat chicken. This seemed demanding, for someone receiving free dinners cooked and served by volunteers.

Dignity is implicit when we build businesses with and for people like ourselves. We ask ourselves and others like us, ‘How would you like to be treated?’ — and we listen. But when serving disadvantaged communities, it is much harder to ask this question and answer it.

That is because we are used to treating these people without dignity: We ignore them when we pass them in the streets sleeping rough, we build highways near their communities that worsen their air quality, we avoid investing in parks where they congregate, and so forth.

I served Charlotte vegan food and chicken to give her a sense of dignity. I observed other volunteers serving plates with a folded napkin and a cup of tea, and I followed suit. During my shifts, I chose dignity over efficiency. It allowed the residents and me to build a trusted relationship.

With this relationship, the people I want to help changed from subjects I study in GSB courses on solving social problems and on philanthropy to partners in building change in the society of which we are all part.

Number 2: Be humble — to learn more

I rarely hear “business school” and “humility” in one sentence. At the GSB, we brand ourselves as future global leaders in problem solving and innovation. We learn to take charge and create change, without being subject matter experts. (If you were a consultant pre-GSB, just like me, you know the drill!)

But when I listened to Marc, a resident of the homeless encampment in San Jose, sharing about his life, I was humbled. The web of problems he faced — physical and mental health, inaccessible healthcare, lack of mortgage access, crushing debt, homelessness, loss of family members and relationships, and others — was far more than I could try to ‘‘solve.’’ It was also systemic.

I have since started to emphasize problem discovery instead of problem solving, in my choice of coursework and internship. As an independent research project, I focus on understanding the barriers in career progression for historically marginalized groups. I interviewed dozens of people, asking them to share their lived experiences with these issues.

With the GSB’s Corporations and Society Initiative, I organized a workshop on How to ask questions. It helped me resist the business school push to be loud about solutions, and showed the power of a question to get to the systemic issues underneath an individual’s struggle.

Number 3: Assume responsibility

In my first shifts at the Palo Alto women’s shelter, the beginning of the evening was hardest. I would see up close what poverty and lack of healthcare could do to fellow humans.

But after a few shifts, the hardest moments came when I closed the shelter door and rode back to campus.

Thanks to these conversations, I could go beyond appearances and assumptions about their lives. I interacted with women who were disadvantaged in our society. I spoke with them about my upbringing in Europe, and got beaten in Sudoku.

What was between me and these women, between the Stanford campus and the shelter a mile away, felt more like circumstances than merit. I rode back to a campus where we create business leaders who decide and wield influence over the lives of hundreds of thousands, without critically assessing the consequences our decisions will have on others.

In our courses, we rarely ask ourselves: “Who are we solving for?” (ourselves!) and “Who is affected by our decisions?” (many, those not like us!). Even if your intention is not to solve the needs of homeless people or working class Americans, you will still have an impact on their lives.

In the classroom environment, we tend to make choices that uphold the system as it (and that we benefited from), and by doing so we create problems for others.

We, as future business leaders, are also in the position to make better decisions: how our companies treat benefits, parental leave, mental health, unions. How we hire and work with the communities surrounding our businesses. This responsibility to look beyond our own privilege and opportunities, to create change in the system from which we benefit, is the most valuable lesson I have learned by going off-campus.

Bottom Line

Compared with those of coordinators, organizers, and volunteers who spend years on the challenges these communities face, my own contributions were insignificant. But my lessons from breaking our bubble of privilege were significant, and relevant for all of us as we are becoming powerful leaders: to lead with dignity, humility and responsibility. It will help you make a true impact.

We cannot break the spell of a two-year MBA without knowing the men and women who live across the street.