The Platinum Rule: Lead by Understanding Others

Several years ago, I ran environmental health for a food and beverage company with a team of three people, plus me. We were responsible for safety and compliance for more than 150,000 square feet of stores in five different cities, and despite being a successful department, our work styles couldn’t have been more different. Person A preferred detailed, novel-length emails and excel sheets. Person B rarely came into the office, working mostly from the store (and the espresso bar), with no use for emails or texts — just phone calls. And Person C, refused to work before 10 a.m. or after 6 p.m. and had a unique approach to tasks (and life), like insisting three cupcakes (instead of two) were definitely dinner.

If I had treated them all the way I prefer to be treated — by sending a flurry of texts and emails between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. or holding a series of back-to-back in-person meetings from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. (I love an in-person consensus-building sessions) — our team dynamic…