Analysis of Jeff Bezos Leadership Styles

  

Analysis of Jeff Bezos Leadership Styles

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Introduction

The notion of leadership is a widespread topic these days, examined from different perspective and similarly presents a very enviable status. The scientific literature is plentiful and theories about what characteristics are needed so as to achieve an identifying position. A lot of people have revealed their shingle and have this commanding push to put in more efforts so as to aobtain those skills, while others are naturally talented in this field of leadership and rely on their instincts. Whether on is born a leader or can become one is still up for debate, one thing that can be affirmed about leadership is that it is closely linked to changes and progress. Under the right circumstances, leadership can bring about growth at a fast and efficient rate. In order to explore this concept in-depth, this paper will focus on the leadership styles of Jeff Bezos and Amazon.

            Jeff Bezos is one of the most successful entrepreneurs across the globe, the proprietor and CEO of Amazon, Washington Post, and blue origin company. He has become the world richest leaders from his popular and famous business ventures. Throughout the years Jeff has demonstrated effective leadership skills to efficiently motivate and influence employees to foster the success and growth of his organization. Amazon is a pioneer in E-Commerce that started as book seller and over the years it hs expanded to selling other products like electronics, clothing, and toys among other products. This has made the company leading online retailer.

Born in Mexico in 1964 Jeff has had an admiration for computers since then. Bezos pursued electrical engineering and computer science in Princeton University. Upon finishing his bachelor degree, he was employed in Wall Street and in 1990 he became the youngest senior vice president in D.E. Shaw, a well known investment company.

 

Jeff’s Leadership style

            Jeff’s has an exceptional and distinctive leadership quality and style. His leadership style depends on autocratic leadership style as he control and manages everything on his own. Jeff BEzos is a task oriented leader. Stone (2013) describes Jeff as micromanager with rigorous standards who is often not interested in other person’s opinion. This could be termed as transactional autocratic leadership. Transactional leaders influence because it is in the best interest of subordinate to do what the leader wants (Northhouse, 2013). Transactional leaders are quite effective in achieving operational goals and outcomes and creating business that can thrive in the era of global competition (Zhen et al., 2010).

            In addition to Jeff’s transactional leadership quality, the CEO of Amazon can also be termed as an agent of change who seeks to innovate. Transactional leaders produce extraordinary results and develop follower creativity. They are known for creating a vision of the future that gains heart and minds of the people (Djmlieva et al., 2015). By linking their company’s long term objective to their people’s values, transformational leaders arouse interests and commitment to act on the vision, driving team effort beyond ordinary possibilities (Howell & Avollio, 1993). Jeff undoubtedly ranks high in this filed, this can be seen from the growth of Amazon that is arguably a result of his ability to envision, inspire, and innovate even when competitors and investors alike did not believe in his creation could bring positive financial returns.

Jeff is also known for his dual personality that changes him from a generous individual toa strict manager that posses fear and distress in his employees. He believes that everyone should behave and work according to his rules. He has no issues operating the company while taking into consideration and working on customer feedback personal. If any genuine issues rise, the penalties can be strict on the person responsible for the issue. There is an authorized system within the Amazon that levels the harshness of its fundamental problems.

Career achievement
            The greatest career achievement of Jeff Bezos was the Amazon.com. this was started as a small shop in a two bedroom house where they first tested the Amazon code. From here he opened the site to the world, and told his 300 beta testers to spread the word and in 30 days he had sales o 20,000 USD. This business grew faster and went public in 1997. The success of Amazon has allowed Jeff Bezos to experience his lifelong interest in space travel and out of this he founded the blue origin aerospace company to develop new technology for space flight (“Academy of Achievements”, 2020).

            Jeff Bezos competitor in the space travel industry is Elon Musk. Elon Musks leadership style, transformational leadership focuses on creating real change to the world. This type of leadership is action-oriented. Instead of sitting around and philosophizing about how to change the world, they outline and execute strategies that make their visions a reality. For instance the Tesla management style is centered on meeting company’s goals. Leaders place a heavy emphasis on deliverables because, for the business to stay alive, growth, and fulfill Elon Musk’s vision, a team must complete these objectives (Miller, 2021).

            There are significant similarities between the leadership of Elon and Bezos. For instance they both have successfully turned visions into realties by building and leveraging their innovation capital, their capacity to win resources and support to pursue radical new ideas. However these two icons are ranked differently by their employees. Musk’s ratings vary between Tesla and SpaceX. While 96 percent of SpaceX employees approve of their CEO, that drops to a sizeable of 84 percent in Tesla. An average approval rating of Tesla and spaceX gives Elon an overall rating of 90 percent.

            On the other hand, 87 percent of Amazon employees approve of Jeff. An averaged approval rating at Amazon and blue origin gives Jeff Bezos an overall rating of 90 percent similar to Elon Musk’s rating. The only issue at hand is that Jeff is not the CEO of Blue Origin making Elon musk the most appropriate leader of the two (Cain, 2018)

Effective leadership behavior

            Adopting positive leadership behavior motivates one subordinate to be more effective and increase their ability to attain the ultimate goals. This also helps in retention of top talents within an organization. As team members will value the opportunity to work by your side as a leader. Leadership behavior that one can demonstrate so as to be successful include, being honest, being confident in your decision, be approachable, provide objective feedback among others.

            Honesty helps to create a work environment that feels fair and open. Employees will be more likely to your decision and trust you with their problems id they have a feeling that you are honest and open with them. Doing what one said that they will do proves to your team that you can be trusted. Similarly making decisions swiftly and confidently is a primary duty of a leader. Your team should have faith that you are capable of making decisions confidently making the employees have confidence in your decisions as their leader. Furthermore, one should work to keep line of communication open so as your team feels like that they can talk to you. A leader should display open listening skills to encourage communication.

References

Academy of Achievement. Academy of Achievement. (2021). Retrieved 22 November 2021, from https://achievement.org/achiever/jeffrey-p-bezos/.

Anderson, W., & Ross, R. (2005). The methodology of profit maximization: An Austrian alternative. The Quarterly Journal Of Austrian Economics, 8(4), 31-44. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12113-005-1002-9

Cain, Á. (2021). We compared Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos to find out who’s the more successful visionary — here’s the verdict. Business Insider. Retrieved 22 November 2021, from https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-jeff-bezos-amazon-tesla-spacex-2018-1?r=US&IR=T.

Djumalieva, J., Widlak, I. and Sarkar-Barney, S. (2013). Leader of Tomorrow: Secret Ingredients. What Matters in Talent Management, September. Retrieved from: http://www.humancapitalgrowth.com/

Howell, J. M., and Avolio, B. J. (1993). Transformational leadership, transactional leadership, locus of control, and support for innovation: Key predictors of consolidated-business-unit performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 78(6), 891-902.doi: 10.1037/0021-9010.78.6.891

Ismail, A., Mohamad, M. H., Mohamed, H. A-B.,Rafiuddin, N. M., and Zhen, K. W. P. (2010). Transformational and transactional leadership styles as a predictor of individual outcomes. Theoretical & Applied Economics, 17(6), 89–104. Retrieved from http://web.a.ebscohost.com.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=eb95e4b6-f676-4582-9944-4471e5450de8%40sessionmgr4003&vid=1&hid=4112

Miller, H. (2021). 4 Ways to Apply Elon Musk’s Leadership Style – Leaders.com. Leaders.com. Retrieved 22 November 2021, from https://leaders.com/articles/leadership/elon-musk-leadership-style/.

Northouse, P. G. (2013). Leadership: Theory and practice (6th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications

Stone, B. (2013).The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the age of Amazon. London: Transworld Publishers

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