Younger, fresh-faced graduates moving into places of work for the primary time most likely don’t count on the highest boss to pay them a lot thoughts whereas they’re on the backside of the totem pole. However the reverse was true for billionaire Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings—when he was only a newcomer to the workforce, his boss would even secretly wash his big pile of soiled espresso cups for him.
“This was my first job out of graduate school,” Hastings not too long ago mentioned in an interview with Graham Bensinger. “I was a programmer in a 30 person startup, and working hard and doing all nighters and drinking lots of coffee. And then my coffee cups would pile up. And every week or so the janitor would clean them all, and I’d have 20 new cups, and [the] cycle would go on.”
On the time, Hastings was 28 years outdated, working at Coherent Thought beneath its CEO Barry Plotkin. He was writing code daily, programming into the evening and stacking up soiled espresso cups on his desk, which have been all the time cleaned ultimately. Nonetheless, a few yr into his behavior, he came upon his hoard of cups weren’t being scrubbed by the janitor.
“One morning I came in very early to the office [at] like 4:30 [a.m.], and I went into the bathroom, and there was my CEO. And he’s washing coffee cups,” Hastings defined. “And I was like, ‘Barry, are you washing my coffee cups?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’ And I said, ‘Have you been doing that all year?’”
“He said ‘Yes.’ And I’m like, ‘Why?’” he continued. “And he said, ‘Well, you do so much for us and this is the one thing I can do for you.’”
That routine, unstated gesture from Hasting’s former boss has caught with the self-made billionaire all through the remainder of his close to four-decade profession, founding billion-dollar corporations like Pure Software program and Netflix. In that early programming job, he mentioned that Plotkin’s management model satisfied workers to “follow him anywhere,” even when it meant the corporate was heading in direction of chapter. However the Netflix founder has nonetheless taken a web page from his e-book, bringing espresso “for everybody” he works with.
“I realized, wow, you not only have to be like this servant leader, you also have to be this strategy person,” Hastings mentioned, including that the espresso cup expertise “Formed such an impression upon me that I’ve tried to emulate that aspect.”
The CEOs who keep humble by consuming lunch with staffers and writing appreciation notes
The CEO of First Watch, Chris Tomasso, additionally stays related to his staffers by way of good old style notes of appreciation.
Just like Hastings, the chief of the breakfast chain reeling in $1 billion in income yearly was impressed by a handwritten thank-you observe from his CEO at Arduous Rock Café when he was simply 26. Now, he carves out time each month to handwrite letters to employees, like cooks and dishwashers, who’re celebrating main profession milestones. Tomasso has penned tons of of notes up to now. Plus, he nonetheless grubs alongside First Watch staffers as a substitute of consuming in his workplace.
“I tried to minimize the [CEO] title as best I can when I’m interacting with people,” Tomasso advised Fortune final yr. “I eat lunch in the break room with everybody, which always, for whatever reason, blows new employees away—that I just sit down next to them and bring my lunch and have lunch with them. I think it’s a shame that there’s that feeling.”
Mary Barra, the CEO of iconic automobile firm Normal Motors, additionally stays related to her staffers and clients by responding to “every single letter” that comes her method. Whether or not it’s a detrimental observe from a child apprehensive about their household’s future after the closure of a Normal Motors plant, or a loyal Chevrolet driver sharing their automobile’s nickname, Barra places pen to paper to indicate that she cares in regards to the folks supporting the enterprise.
And the chairman and CEO of $428 billion vitality large Chevron, Mike Wirth, additionally believes within the energy of significant gestures. Identical to Tomasso and Barra, he sends out dozens of “old-school, on paper” notes every time he visits Chevron workers all over the world. By the point he’s completed rounds on a visit, he’s already written 60 to 80 letters, Wirth estimated.
“I think back to when I was early in my career, and if a CEO had sent me a letter and actually knew what I was doing, it would have been a really big deal for me,” Wirth mentioned on the How Leaders Lead podcast in 2024. “And so I try to remember what it was like to be in the jobs that I’m visiting and that I had those jobs myself one time. And I want to make sure that people know that I appreciate them.”
