Dara Khosrowshahi was the CEO of global online travel giant Expedia for more than 10 years before recently taking over the hugely challenging role heading up Uber. Most people outside of the travel industry would never have heard of Dara, but within days of taking over at Uber he was making headline news. The main story was the controversial decision not to renew Uber's licence in London, where it has 3.5 million users.
However the more interesting story is perhaps how Dara responded. Not with with aggression, not with a tweet, not via a court, but via a very powerful and much underrated medium - humility. He proactively put up his hand and said we've got things wrong and we need to and will change. What a powerful message to his customers but also his staff.
What a contrast to the response from Ryanair, which has clearly got things very wrong. Have we seen a letter from Michael O'Leary to his customers offering his apologies? Any promise of the need to change? It's never too late to show some humility.
Uber's new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi recent email to employees is proof positive that he's the right man for the job. While the impulse may be to say that this is unfair, one of the lessons I've learned over time is that change comes from self-reflection. So it's worth examining how we got here. The truth is that there is a high cost to a bad reputation. Irrespective of whether we did everything that is being said about us in London today (and to be clear, I don't think we did), it really matters what people think of us, especially in a global business like ours, where actions in one part of the world can have serious consequences in another. In just a few short sentences, Uber's new leader teaches some major lessons in emotional intelligence.
https://flipboard.com/@flipboard/-ubers-new-ceo-just-sent-an-amazing-emai/f-dd2afb55c6%2Finc.com
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