Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky has an unusual take on one of the most annoying leadership traits at work: micromanagement. If done right, he says, it can actually accelerate career advancement. And, according to Chesky, Apple’s late co-founder Steve Jobs proved his point perfectly.
“Steve Jobs was notorious for his attention to detail, and you could say he was a micromanager,” Chesky explained. CNBC. But after talking to former Apple chief design officer Jony Ive, he said the negative label misses what’s really going on.
“I said, ‘Do you ever feel like Steve Jobs micromanaged you? Because he paid attention to every detail.’ He said, ‘No. He didn’t micromanage me. He partnered with me. We worked through problems together, and I feel like his details made me a better person.”
Jobs’s “obsession with detail” didn’t diminish Ive’s autonomy, nor did it make him feel like his boss was hovering over or undermining him.
Instead, it made him feel invested in his manager, raised the bar, and pushed him to use his talent more broadly—a talent that would go on to shape some of the most iconic products of the modern era, from the Apple Watch to the iPad. Today, he remains one of the most influential creative leaders in technology.
As Chesky points out, that’s why the issue isn’t really whether leaders are deeply engaged. The question is whether their involvement expands employees’ thinking and thereby moves their careers forward, or quietly limits their careers.
“So the question is: If I pay attention to someone’s details, am I making them better or am I disempowering them? I hope that when people feel like I’m involved in the project, they feel like I’m helping them drive bigger thinking.”
How Chesky micromanages 7,300 Airbnb employees
Airbnb has 4,500,000 listings in more than 65,000 cities in 191 countries and has more than 7,300 employees. Chesky also believes that deep knowledge is necessary to get the job done quickly.
“There’s a paradox, being detail-oriented sounds like micromanaging, it sounds like slowing down the team,” said the 44-year-old entrepreneur. “But when you understand the details, you can actually help make decisions faster.”
Essentially, having someone in the room doing the actual sign-off saves you layers of approvals, endless meetings, and wasted employee time.
“How many people in an organization have to go through managers and managers and managers to approve something, but then all these leaders have to agree to something, there are a lot of meetings — colleagues can’t make quick decisions,” Chesky added. “Only a leader can make quick decisions in the room. I bring everyone in the room, everyone makes suggestions, and we can make decisions very, very quickly.”
“I think making decisions is key as a leader.”
But it’s a double whammy for Gen Z’s careers
While being deeply invested in star talent’s work can make them feel mentored and accelerate their careers, it has a double whammy for young people’s careers: If you look beyond the horizon, Gen Z will see that increased engagement from leaders has essentially eliminated the work of middle managers in the past, making them want to even climb the greasy pole.
In fact, 72% of the youngest generation of employees say they would rather advance in an individual contributor role than become a middle manager, That’s according to recruiting firm Robert Walters.
More than half of Gen Z clearly stated that they did not want to be in middle management, but sadly, more than a third of younger respondents said they did expect to enter a management role at some point in their careers, but admitted that they did not actually want to do so.
This is not surprising. As Chesky points out, today’s middle managers have little autonomy. They are not paid as well as leaders, but they are also not viewed as “team players” by their subordinates. They are statistically The most stressfulOn top of that, they are increasingly told that they are the most vulnerable to abandonment.
In recent years, many technology companies have flattened their structures by slashing middle management staff. Record rate.
It allows leaders to get closer to individual contributors — letting them, as Chesky describes it, micromanage and make decisions faster — but the message to younger employees is clear: The risks outweigh the rewards in moving up the corporate ladder.