Unfairness

In this Ted Talk, Marco Alvera discusses the importance of an unexpected "ingredient" to growing a successful team. This is the idea of fairness. What is fairness? To most of us, this is just the idea of everyone having an equal opportunity. In a sense, this is correct, but Alvera discusses this idea in terms of his own company.

In most businesses, we can expect to obtain positions based on our schooling and past experience in that area. Alvera was requested to internally hire someone for a supervisor position. This worker did not have a high school degree, but the company saw how well he was at his job and promoted him. Another worker proposed they build a cheese factory in Ecuador. The company said yes, because the saw the benefits of taking the risk. In Alvera's talk, fairness is more than everyone getting equal pay for the same job, but it is investing in your workers and their ideas, no matter their job title.

With this idea of fairness, everyone feels equally engaged in the company. No one feels unwanted or unappreciated. They have the motivation to strive to make the company better. There is no culture of competition, but instead working as a team to build their company. There is no worry of dishonesty, unappreciation, or other motivation-killers. There is the idea that if we contribute strong ideas that we can backup and defend, we will be given an equal opportunity to explore these ideas as a senior level executive would. The workers feel that they are just as necessary as the CEO.

Unfairness is a common feeling that we experience as humans. It is not a good feeling, and we tend to shut down when we feel we are being treated unfairly. How would not expecting a worker to be able to contribute to the growth of the company based solely on their job title contribute to the culture and dynamic? It wouldn't. Not listening to all of our workers can be detrimental to our companies.