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Airbnb CEO: Your "participation trophy best" isn't good enough
Fortune
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6/9/2025
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.
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Tech
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00:00
My dad raised me like that, and I never realized at the time, but my dad never told me I was
00:04
talented or smart. And he probably did me a service. He only rewarded effort. And I think
00:09
there's a lot of studies about the growth mindset that if you reward a child for being intrinsically
00:14
good, they're going to be afraid to try because they don't want to disprove you. But if you reward
00:18
effort, it's easy not to, the only way to fail is to not give it your all. And I think there's
00:23
something about this. There's a basketball coach from UCLA named John Wooden. He was the winningest
00:28
basketball coach in NCAA history. And somebody once asked him, like, what is your secret to
00:31
success? And he said, the secret to success is all I asked my players to do was do their very best.
00:36
And somebody asked him, like, do your very best. That sounds kind of like what parents say about
00:40
kids who lose. And he goes, well, here's the secret. I saw potential in people that they didn't see in
00:45
themselves. And so I was always trying to get people to reach beyond their potential. I think the role
00:51
of a leader is to just get everyone to do their best, but not participation trophy best. I'm
00:57
talking about, like, better than you ever think you could. If I tell somebody you could do better,
01:04
I'm not saying you're not good enough. I'm saying I see potential in you that you may not see in
01:08
yourself. And I know that we can do more. And I think so much of leadership is believing. I think the
01:13
biggest gift a leader can give to a person is to believe in them.
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