Uncovering Leadership Styles

Introduction

Jeff Bezos is a prominent business leader that is commonly regarded as an intense, highly innovative and exhilarating leader. He is talked about in various television shows and written about in various magazines. This person is famous for being a founder and business leader of the Amazon Company, world’s best internet seller. Moreover, he plays a significant role in the world of internet business. The well-known concept of “predictive analytics” is also created by this person. The above-mentioned concept offers products and services to customers basing on the history of their search and their buying habits. This innovative technique made online shopping easy and comfortable for customers all around the globe. In addition, it has made online business more profitable and sufficient. Undoubtedly, in order to achieve such great results, Jeff Bezos used particular strategies having developed his personal approach to leadership.

The Leadership Style of Jeff Bezos

Regarding Jeff Bezos’ leadership style, one can state that it is worth being followed and distinguished from the other business approaches. It has led Bezos to a great success, bringing high profits to the company and making it one of the leaders in the sphere of internet trading. Under the rule of Jeff Bezos, Amazon has become a giant of internet commerce (Haas Edersheim, 2013). Moreover, this company on its example shows how smart leadership can continue its development, improvement, and growth even after achieving its major goal.  

Over the years, Amazon remains a widely recognized company offering its services to a number of loyal customers all over the globe. Obviously, it is Bezos’ leadership positions and style that led the company to such success. What is more, his main priority is customers’ satisfaction. In fact, there are more than 500 assessable goals and objectives that are being followed in order to control the rates of Amazon’s performance and its position on the market. Surprisingly, 80 percent of such goals deal with the issue of the customer satisfaction. One of the strategies applied by Bezos’ proves his attitude to customers. According to the history of meetings of Amazon board, the leader of the company always keeps one chair empty so that everyone could imagine that a representative from the customers is present at the meeting. Jeff Bezos believes that before implementing any innovations, the staff must think of customers’ reaction to them. However, there are opponents of his leadership techniques considering his approach as rather weird. For instance, it is known that the company uses drones in deliverance. Bezos is sure that taking risks that confront expectations can raise creativity in the workplace (Byers, 2007). Therefore, this business leader is very creative yet decisive. He is not afraid to make decisions which the society, employees, partners, and media may consider eccentric. In other words, Jeff Bezos is open to any experiments if he truly believes that they can lead to the desired result. Another leadership principle of Bezos is communication and vivid discussion. In other words, the founder of Amazon insists that communication and discussion are healthy ways to come to particular conclusions and make decisions even if such strategy leads to disagreements and arguments.

To conclude, one can state that the leader of the Amazon Company is fully focused on customers and their desires.

Health of the Amazon Company

The success of Amazon and its leading position in the market is the result of an effective leadership of Jeff Bezos. Besides the managerial aspects, there are also other issues that he solves in a rather untraditional way. First of all, it concerns an HR department. The success of the company is impossible without qualified and skillful employees; hence, the company must choose the best people to work with in order to achieve positive results. Moreover, fair treatment and encouragements of the workers is one of the key elements of the company’s strategy. Every employee may ask for a promotion at any time; he/she may easily come to a manager and say that he/she believes that it is time for a promotion, and the manager agrees (Thompson, 2013). However, the procedure is not a standard one. The manager is willing to provide a promotion to the worker, but the latter has to make a six-page report about pros and cons of his/her promotion. After the discussion of these arguments at a meeting agenda, the board makes a conclusion whether it is a good idea to give a promotion to this particular employee. Moreover, during the discussion, it may be detected that a person does not perform his/her obligations well, and the conclusion that the company does not need the services of this employee may be drawn. Hence, a desire to receive a promotion may turn into a job loss.

However, in the Amazon Company, the number of possible promotions per year is limited. Anyone may ask for a promotion, but only the best ones will receive it (Anders, 2012). According to this fact, climbing the career ladder is a complex task in Amazon, only the best employees receive the top positions. As a result, the unique leadership style together with qualified and motivated employees make the company move forward and demonstrate better performance every year.    

The Relationship between Jeff Bezos’s Leadership Style and the Amazon’s Health

Bezos’s leadership style has predetermined the future success of the Amazon Company. Jeff Bezos has always acted according to his vision, ignoring the basic principles of running the business and Wall Street’s recommendations. He carefully chooses people for top positions in his company and does not reveal too much of the information. His desire to extend the influence of his company turned Amazon from a bookseller to the world- level seller where one can buy everything he/she wants (Saricks, 2014). However, sometimes, the wellbeing of Amazon can be in a dangerous position because Jeff Bezos is not afraid of risks and is ready to lose money if it is necessary. Thus, it can be said that he is a risk-taker who cares more on the possible opportunities and benefits than on the current wellbeing. 

His leadership style, which is much influenced by his personal qualities, created a company that reflects the leader’s real being. Jeff Bezos is a competitor and a reliable supplier. These two qualities shaped the main strategy of his company and led it to the top of the market. Probably, if Jeff used the traditional approach to running business, his company would have never become so popular and successful as it is now. Thus, when one talks about the health of Amazon and the role of Jeff’s leadership in it, it can be stated that only due to the unordinary and innovative leadership style this company could survive and successfully withstand the competition. If there were no unique approach to leadership as Jeff Bezos’, there would not be such company like Amazon.

Conclusion

Bezos’ leadership style is considered to be one of the most unordinary and creative. It is often said that Bezos must have a big luck to do what he does with his company and keep the leading position on the market. Nevertheless, it is more than good luck; Bezos is a risk-taker, and he is not afraid of trying something new even if it endangers the wellbeing of his company. According to this fact, the success of his leadership style is a constant movement forward to achieve new goals and extend the areas of influence. He does not fear possible consequences because if he could bring prosperity to his company once, he can do it again if it is necessary.