Uber drivers are an interesting breed. They’ve become the source of some of my favorite stories.
Over the past few months, I’ve met drivers who were refugees escaping worn-torn countries, extras who appeared in blockbuster movies, Harvard students working their way through graduate school, and tech entrepreneurs building capital to finance their creations.
During my recent excursion to Los Angeles, I happened upon the most interesting of all Uber drivers—a driver with a perfect five-star rating.
I like to browse my Uber drivers’ credentials while I’m waiting for them to arrive. I noticed that my approaching driver, Luis, held a five-star rating. I immediately assumed he was a new driver. A click on his profile photo revealed, to my surprise, that Luis had completed over 32,000 trips.
To have maintained a perfect rating through that many trips is no small feat. In fact, it’s practically unheard of.
Frivolous reports are common in ride sharing apps. Sometimes a passenger doesn’t like how the car smells or feels the seats are uncomfortable or doesn’t like the driver’s music. It’s hard to please everybody all the time. The laws of probability—and pettiness—are not in an Uber driver’s favor.
I could hardly wait for Luis to arrive to ask him about his perfect rating. The moment I opened the car door, I launched into him: “Luis, is it true that you’ve done 32,000 trips and still have a perfect rating?”
He smiled and said, “No.”
I knew it! There was a mistake in the system. Nobody can maintain a five-star rating through that many trips. But before I could bring the error to Luis’s attention, he said, “I have over 50,000 trips—32,000 with Uber and another 20,000 with Lyft. I do both apps, and I have a perfect rating on both.”
That clarification made me even more intrigued. I asked him how he achieved such a miraculous distinction, to which he replied: “Respect. I treat everybody with respect.”
His reply lacked the depth I was hoping for, so I probed further. To Luis, respect was tied to happiness. Before he became a full-time Uber driver, he managed several businesses, including an auto parts store and several restaurants.
In his previous line of work, he found it difficult to keep everyone happy. He had to keep his customers happy. He had to keep his staff happy. He had to keep his vendors happy. And he had to keep his bosses happy. That was too many people to keep happy.
As an Uber driver, he only had to keep one entity happy—his passengers. This was a far easier task.
By showing respect, anticipating their needs, and empathizing with their problems, he kept his passengers happy. Happy passengers leave good reviews.
Team members can fall into the trap of trying to keep everyone on their team happy. But doing so will likely leave them as frustrated as Luis was with his previous jobs. Rarely does everyone on the team have the same needs or share the same perspectives.
The trick to being a good teammate is respecting everyone’s unique perspectives without compromising the team’s needs. In other words, choose to view the team as the “one entity” you strive to keep happy.
Sometimes keeping the team happy will translate into accommodating individual needs; sometimes it will mean sacrificing individual needs—including your own. Knowing that you chose what is best for the team over what is best for the individual affords you a sense of inner peace, which enables happiness.
When we arrived at my destination, I thanked Luis for his insights. In typical good teammate fashion, he respectfully declined my gratitude, saying, “No. Thank YOU for letting me be your driver.”
With those words, he earned yet another five-star rating.
As always…Good teammates care. Good teammates share. Good teammates listen. Go be a good teammate.
