8 lessons from my 8 years with Airbnb

As I write this post, the sun is setting over Amsterdam. I landed here after years of traveling and living abroad and I recently decided to settle here for real. After 8 years at the best job I’ve ever had, I decided to focus on other things in life. My six-year-old just came into the room to ask if you can catch a sound, hold it in your hands and store it in a cup (making sure to keep your hand on top as a lid of course). I love her thinking but I am not sure you can. And this is a good metaphor for my next step and one of our Airbnb values: embrace the adventure. From tomorrow on, I’ll spend my time as an activist, investor, student and board member. Before I go, I wanted to share some lessons I learned during my tenure at Airbnb.

Wadi Rum, Jordan, one of my favorite places.

And what an amazing run it has been! This truly was the job of a lifetime for me. I am forever indebted to Brian, Nate and Joe and to Belinda and Aoife for hiring me back in 2013. Airbnb is a fantastic place for lawyers who love to travel and want to change the world but are not into business suits. I am incredibly proud of the great things we’ve done together. To me, Airbnb always felt like home. And that was thanks to my whip-smart and kind colleagues and a unique company culture. Here is a small sample of lessons I learned and that I found valuable. There is so much more to share that I could write a book, but here's a start.

1. Be a good host. Be nice to yourself and to others because you never know what someone else is going through. Ask for help and assume good intent (unless the other person is your legal opponent). Your destiny is in your own hands and others cannot read your mind (unless they’re psychics and then it’s a bit creepy). Pick your battles and keep a sense of humor. Don’t sweat the small stuff, just let it go. Take responsibility for what you do but don’t take yourself too seriously. Don’t take things too personally.

2. We are all leaders, no matter what level you’re at. Own completely and take your responsibility. Each of us can have a real impact. We are not helpless cogs in a system, we make the world and each of us can lead by example and make a real difference. Go beyond your job description. Lead by example.

3. When you’re at a start-up or a scale-up, think about scale and the future early on. Think about the big picture, unintended consequences and slippery slopes early on to make sure the solutions or processes you put in place will still be fit for a larger-scale context. This will obviously save you lots of time down the road. Block time to think about and prepare for the future (what will the world around us look like, what will our company and community look like, are we ready for the next challenges, do we have the right resources, the right business model and product features)? Invest time in creating playbooks, templates, protocols, strategic overviews. And be strategic about how you use your resources. Use the 80/20 rule. To make sure that you focus and use your time for things that have an impact, write down your key priorities and only do things that fit within these priorities.

4. Intellectual rigor is crucial. Don’t be lazy (or said more nicely: It’s gratifying when you unleash your formidable intelligence and creativity!). Don’t make assumptions, ask lots of questions if something is unclear and always think things through but focus on the things that matter. Be your own Socrates. And for the lawyers among you: providing high-quality legal advice is like playing a game of chess, you always have to think about the next moves your opponent may make. When the stakes are high, being thorough allows you to sleep at night because you know you did everything humanly possible to get the best possible outcome for the company. The rest is not in your own hands.

5. Clear communication is key to success. Communicate to be understood and not to show off. Your message and call-to-action should be clear and easy to understand. Only sleuths love reading through long email threads to find the relevant information. Be concise and to the point. Kill your darlings. Proactively answer questions the reader may have so you don’t need to start an email ping-pong. The same goes for oral communication. Speak to be understood, actively listen to truly understand the other person. Don’t interrupt others (or at least as little as possible). Practice presentations in front of a mirror, or even better (and scarier) record your dry run. It will give you an oh-wow-is-that-what-I-look-like moment but you’re doing it for a reason: it truly helps you to improve your public speaking.

6. Empower. Ask empowering questions (don’t say “Why is this such a mess?” but “What do you think is best to resolve this situation? What is your back-up plan? What are the different scenarios we can think of here? What would you do differently next time”) and delegate. Don’t be that dreaded micro-manager everyone runs away from.

7. Learn to receive and give feedback. Praise in public, give feedback in private. Use the sandwich method when giving feedback: praise and be very specific about what the employee did well or improved on; explain very concretely what can be improved; praise and describe the growth or improvements you noticed. Be as specific as you can and use lots of examples.

8. Use your imagination. Maybe you cán catch a song with your hands.

I would love to stay in touch with everyone I met across the globe throughout my 8 years with Airbnb. Please don’t hesitate to reach out or to come visit me in Amsterdam.


With immense gratitude,


Tanja



Book recommendations

• The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin
• First Love, Ivan Turgenev
• We and I, Saskia de Coster
• Huis Clos, Jean-Paul Sartre
• Le Consentement, Vanessa Springora
• The Cost of Living, Deborah Levy
• Freedom, An Unruly History, Annelien de Dijn
• The Tree and The Vine, Dola de Jong
• On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong
• 1967, Israel, the War and the Year that Transformed the Middle East, Tom Segev
• Grief is the Thing with Feathers, Max Porter

“Oh, so your husband has two wives” - Happy Pride Month!

Changing minds in a heteronormative world

A transformational conversation with a cab driver in Salt Lake City led me to start my own unofficial grassroots campaign to advance LGBTQI+ rights. We can all be change agents, each of us can have real impact at every level of an organization or a community. It’s like the notorious butterfly in Brazil that flaps its wings and creates a tornado in Texas (which, apparently, you should not read literally). Same-sex relationships are currently illegal in more than 70 countries and punishable by death in seven. Our work is not over. Let’s celebrate this month but let’s always remember who we are and where we come from.  

Salt Lake City

“Are you married?” asked the driver as we sped through the straw-colored hills. I was on my way to a meeting in the Mormon capital of the world, Salt Lake City. 
“Yes, I am,” I answered.
“So where’s your husband? Is he at home?”
I was flustered but settled on “Ehm, actually, I am married to a woman.”
“Oh.” The driver looked confused. And then the usual questions came. He wanted to know what it’s like to be with a woman if you’re a woman. How we live our lives. What our families think of us. He was polite and it was clear that he was genuinely curious and just didn’t know very many openly gay people. The conversation unexpectedly felt like a warm hug. Though it could have gone in many different directions, it was a beautiful and transformative moment between two fellow human beings who truly connected. 

It was there and then that I realized that small things do make a difference and that we all need to contribute to change. We do not need to justify who we are because we’re here but we do need to come out because that is who we are. And if we want to show that we are ordinary -- and fabulous! -- human beings just like everyone else, trying to live our lives and make the best of it, we need to come out and be the author of our own narrative. 

The husband question seems to be a pretty universal taxi driver question because I have heard it all over the world, almost every time I take a cab somewhere, from dusty streets in Athens to crowded Mumbai to calm and peaceful Copenhagen. Sometimes it gets a bit old, the ‘50s are over after all. But I am using it now as a springboard to advance my own agenda, the famous gay agenda of course. Whenever someone asks me questions about my life, I try to be open-minded about where the question is coming from and I assume good intent. And I follow the advice from an old mentor: Be kind to yourself and to others and always give people the benefit of the doubt because you never know where someone comes from or what they’re going through. 

That doesn’t mean that we as LGBTQI+ community have to do all the work. We need our allies. And I want to celebrate and thank our allies this Pride Month as well!

Ever since my encounter in Utah, I have followed my own grassroots protocol whenever a taxi driver asks me whether I am married or where my husband is and I have had the most wonderful conversations. In the West Bank, a driver also cheekily asked me what we do in bed. Of course I steered the conversation in another direction. And when I did so, we still had a wonderful conversation. There have been times unfortunately that it wasn’t safe to be honest. In Dubai, I just answered “My partner is in Amsterdam” and in Egypt, I got a bit freaked out by an illegitimate checkpoint and decided that it wasn’t the time and place for a transformative chat. 

The most awkward story took place in an unexpected place however. A few years ago, I was sitting in a cab very early in the morning, an ideal moment for a heart-to-heart. The driver asked the question and everything went according to script (“Are you married?”, “Yes, I am”, “Where is your husband”, “Oh, I am married to a woman”) and then asked me if I had children. 
“Yes, a little girl,” I said. 
“Oh, so where is she now? Is she with your husband?” he wanted to know. 
“No, she is with my wife. Our daughter has two moms.” 
He looked really puzzled: “Huh, what do you mean?” 
“Kids can have two moms these days.” 
“Huh, I really don’t get that.” 
A few minutes later, he suddenly said with a big smile “Ah, your husband has two wives.” I didn’t manage to change hearts that day. But guess where this conversation took place… Yes, in Amsterdam! This goes to show that we need to continue to speak up and try to change hearts and minds. Mostly with love and kindness but sometimes with love and rage. Same-sex relationships are currently illegal in around 70 countries and punishable by death in seven. Our work is not over. Let’s celebrate this month but let’s always remember who we are and where we come from and let’s change hearts and minds. 

Romain and Tanja in Morocco (Part I: How I accidentally climbed a mountain)

Place Jemaa El Fna, Marrakech

Dear blog readers,

At the end of May, I accidentally climbed a mountain in Africa. That might sound unlikely but it's actually true. I decided to join my friend Romain on a trip to Morocco. Romain had been to Morocco many times, so he offered to organize the trip. I was busy with work and every time I got an email with links to sustainable travel sites and ecotourism information, I quickly replied to Romain that it was great or perfect. I have to admit here that I didn't really read all of the email attachments. I like to live by the motto "Trust each other." I didn't really think of the next line in the book "Trust but verify."

A few days before our trip, Romain and I both read the email from Terres Nomades, our ecological travel agency in Morocco. A certain Marie was telling us that we needed to be ready for -15 degree temperatures and tons of snow. Who knew there was snow in Morocco? Why had I been paying so little attention to the world around me? And I also noticed that we would be climbing Mt Toubkal on the second-to-last day. I finally realized that the whole trip revolved around getting to the top of Mt Toubkal. For a second, I thought about calling off the whole thing. But luckily, I didn't. Of course, I didn't.

To get used to the climate, we spent a day in Marrakech before taking off to the High Atlas Mountains. Marrakech appeals to the senses. To all six of them. We had dinner on Place Jemaa el Fna, which is said to have been an old slave market.

Though there obviously are a lot of tourists, Place Jemaa el Fna feels oddly authentic. Maybe it's because the food stall owners make sure they stay very genuine. Romain told me that dining here is the best way to blend in. He's right. It took me about an hour to make the switch and to let go of things and just enjoy the colors and the light. And honestly, a couple of germs don't kill you if you're in good health. But of course, you have to be smart about it. So: never order salads or fish on Place Jemaa el Fna. And don't worry if you're surrounded by cats when eating dinner in the middle of the square. They'll clean the table after you go. And you don't even need to tip them. After dinner, go meet the numerous snake charmers, fortune tellers and gnawa musicians playing trance-inducing music on the square.  

Halal butcher.

I took this picture in the neighborhood close to the Lezama synagogue. Mellah is the Jewish neighborhood of Marrakech. Morocco has historically been one of the most tolerant environments for Jews in the Arab world. 

King Mohammed VI welcomed us. Although not personally.

Romain hesitated about getting a haircut before leaving for the mountains.

We looked at the latest swimwear...

And visited some riads...

 

Until the sun went down and we decided to get a good night's sleep before our big trip into the mountains.

I'll tell you more about the big hike in my next post. I can already tell you this: I still can't believe that a country can be as amazing as Morocco.