LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner met 330 employees to learn the company's culture. Here's the 'superpower' that makes him so popular.
- LinkedIn's CEO Jeff Weiner is one of the world's most popular CEOs.
- Speaking on the podcast, "Masters of Scale with Reid Hoffman" hosted by LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, Weiner said that the key to this is compassionate management.
- "Companies reward people who achieve results and those companies don't necessarily pay attention to the how [they did it] and, did they do it consistent with our culture and values," Weiner said.
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LinkedIn's CEO, Jeff Weiner, is one of the most popular CEO's in the world based on employee satisfaction. According to Glassdoor, he holds the eighth highest ranking in 2019, with 97% approval.
His strategy? Compassionate management. For Weiner, this strategy helped to build the company from 33 million users to over half a billion in a decade.
Speaking on the podcast, "Masters of Scale with Reid Hoffman," LinkedIn's founder, Hoffman picked Weiner to succeed him. Weiner's focus on understanding and getting to know employees when he started, and creating a vision, helped LinkedIn grow to about 15,000 employees.
Hoffman said: "I wanted to speak to Jeff Weiner about this because he knows how to instill the drumbeat of
culture, mission, and values throughout an organization. It's one of his superpowers. And one of
the many reasons I chose him as CEO of LinkedIn, when I stepped aside."
It's this approach which led Weiner to sit down and talk to everyone one of the 330 employees at LinkedIn when he started.
"Before I decided on any plans going forward, I wanted to learn what was happening, and I wanted to learn as much as I could from the people who had developed the company up until that point," Weiner said to Hoffman.
"It's really important when you come into a situation like that you take time to recognize the work that had come before you to not only acknowledge the good work but also double down on it."
Weiner warned that approaching the company without learning what had come before can be a pitfall many new leaders fall into.
The LinkedIn CEO worked at Yahoo for seven years prior to joining LinkedIn, and developed his management style after attending a management seminar run by Fred Kofman, a former LinkedIn employee who is now a leadership development advisor at Google.
"I couldn't think of anything more important to teach than compassion. In a sense, compassion should be the platform on which everything else is taught, especially in the modern era, especially with this increasing narrative about us versus them."
For Weiner, compassion meant "putting yourself in somebody else's shoes, seeing the world through their lens so you're in a position where you can help them," adding that if something goes wrong, avoid the knee-jerk angry reaction as you won't know what that person has been through.
He collaborated to found The Compassion Project, a digital curriculum for elementary school students.
Hoffman said that this approach of being able to take a step back helped develop LinkedIn's culture - the compassionate values he employs are fostered in hiring and employee evaluations.
"All too often, companies reward people who achieve results and those companies don't necessarily pay attention to the how [they did it] and, did they do it consistent with our culture and values."
According to Hoffman, this approach is what's curried favor with the employees and its what gave them solace when the stock tanked 40% in one day after a weak forecast. Hoffman said Weiner remained focused on building the company with compassionate values and knew that the company would recover.
What also probably helped his popularity: He also reportedly donated his $14 million stock bonus to LinkedIn employees to make up for the share decline.
To listen to the full podcast, including an introduction from Vampire Weekend drummer Chris Tomson, click here.