Airbnb CEO: Your "participation trophy best" isn't good enough

Fortune

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky told the 'A Bit of Optimism' podcast that a little tough love from his father helped him create a successful #Fortune500 company.

Transcript

00:00My dad raised me like that, and I never realized at the time, but my dad never told me I was

00:04talented or smart. And he probably did me a service. He only rewarded effort. And I think

00:09there's a lot of studies about the growth mindset that if you reward a child for being intrinsically

00:14good, they're going to be afraid to try because they don't want to disprove you. But if you reward

00:18effort, it's easy not to, the only way to fail is to not give it your all. And I think there's

00:23something about this. There's a basketball coach from UCLA named John Wooden. He was the winningest

00:28basketball coach in NCAA history. And somebody once asked him, like, what is your secret to

00:31success? And he said, the secret to success is all I asked my players to do was do their very best.

00:36And somebody asked him, like, do your very best. That sounds kind of like what parents say about

00:40kids who lose. And he goes, well, here's the secret. I saw potential in people that they didn't see in

00:45themselves. And so I was always trying to get people to reach beyond their potential. I think the role

00:51of a leader is to just get everyone to do their best, but not participation trophy best. I'm

00:57talking about, like, better than you ever think you could. If I tell somebody you could do better,

01:04I'm not saying you're not good enough. I'm saying I see potential in you that you may not see in

01:08yourself. And I know that we can do more. And I think so much of leadership is believing. I think the

01:13biggest gift a leader can give to a person is to believe in them.

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