Airbnb CEO on why having favourite employees can be a good leadership trait

Brian Chesky, the CEO and co-founder of Airbnb says he doesn’t believe that leaders should not have favourites, instead feeling leaders should have favourites and use them as an example for others, as long as its based on fair metrics.
“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 can do a lot of surveys, and you can use that to reinforce your assumptions.”
This is despite most research on employee favoritism showing its pitfalls. For example, a study from The Ohio State University says favoritism can undermine workplace culture and breed division.
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However, another study published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior found that a boss showing favoritism to one employee sets a higher bar for others which motivated them to learn and improve.
“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 emphasize his stance. “The president of the United States would pick. We should too.”
Chesky however, declined to name his favorite employee, responding that he has “so many,” but his favorites were the ones with whom he texts regularly.
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