Leadership Style of Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos is one of the most prominent and successful entrepreneurs globally. He is the founder and the CEO of Amazon.com, an online platform that sells a wide range of products and services. Throughout the years, Bezos has illustrated effective leadership skills that have motivated and influenced employees to nurture Amazon’s success and development. The company has become a pioneer in e-commerce. It started with selling books and later expanded to selling other types of merchandise such as electronics, cloth wear, children, toys, music, and videos. These products and services have made Amazon a leading company in the online retailer. This success can be attributed to Bezos’s management and leadership styles, which have helped the company maintain a competitive advantage over other companies.
Background of Jeff Bezos and Amazon.com
Jeff Bezos’s real name is Jeffrey Preston Bezos, and he was born in New Mexico, the United States, in 1964 (Robinson, 2009). In terms of education, Bezos graduated from Preston University with computer science and electrical engineering honors and began his professional career on Wall Street. Bezos quit his Wall Street work and started concentrating on his interest in revolutionizing the internet and starting a company he operated from home (Robinson, 2009). After some years, he launched Amazon.com, which concentrated on selling online book retailing at relatively low prices (Byers, 2007). It faced many financial challenges during its operation and attracted a wide range of customers, which helped ease the problem. Bezos’s leadership helped expand merchandise to customers by including consumer goods like groceries and electronics (phone and computers). Currently, Amazon.com is the largest e-commerce business globally due to Bezos’s management and leadership skills. He has become a model leader and manager who is inspired by a lot of people globally. Besides, he is a visionary and charismatic leader who provides organizational direction and sets its goals and targets and gives guidance and strategies to achieve them.
Bezos as a Leader and Manager
Bezos as a Leader and Manager
Bezos’s leadership and management style can be summarized through various theoretical approaches that illustrate management and leadership styles. Therefore, this section will discuss different models that elaborate on the approach and characteristics that make Jeff Bezos both a leader and a manager.
Bezos as a Leader
Modern leader’s characteristics can be explained using various theories. Trait, power, contingency, and behavioral models can describe the leadership approaches of Jeff Bezos. Contingency theories posit that different circumstances require different leadership approaches, while trait theories state that different leaders have certain personality characteristics (Adeniyi, 2007). Conversely, behavioral theories concentrate on the behavior of leaders and their influence in succeeding. Power theories illustrate how leaders use their power and influence for achievement.
One of the contingency leadership models is the Hersey-Blanchard situational leadership theory. It explores task and relationship behavior and illustrates that successful leaders demonstrate different leadership skills in varying situations. It describes four leadership styles: telling, selling, participating, and delegating (Adeniyi, 2007). The figure below illustrates all four elements.
Figure 1: Situational leadership model
Jeff presents these leadership styles by providing directions to his employees and delegating authority in leading his subordinates (Rossman, 2016). Besides, he supports his workforce by developing their skills and abilities through coaching. Various studies indicate that Bezos encourages his employees to run the organization by sharing their ideas and implementing them towards their objectives (Rossman, 2016). Additionally, he holds weekly meetings with his management team to brainstorm and create approaches that nurture success (Rossman, 2016). These qualities make him a task-oriented situational leader.
Trait leadership theories illustrate Bezos’s leadership qualities that have been instrumental in the success of his organization. Some of those qualities he possesses include readiness to take risks, determination, visionary, innovativeness, and confidence (Hunt et al., 2013). Implementing an online business from scratch and making it one of the best illustrates his determination and ability to take risks. Conversely, his innovativeness is illustrated through his unique strategies that the business applies to remain competitive and maintain an advantage over its competitors (Rossman, 2016). Bezos also presents effective behavioral styles that have helped him steer the company towards more achievement. For example, Jeff influences the employee’s behavior, which in turn causes organizational success.
Lewin’s Implementation Change Model
This model explains that there must be a continuous process from the inception of a change to its implementation. For the change to be effective, it has to be accorded time because the teams have to be taught how to cope with the changes effectively (Hussain et al., 2016). Lewin states that change should be considered an investment because it needs time and to implement successfully. In that sense, Jeff Bezos follows this approach by changing its operations and taking time to manifest its changes. In Amazon, Bezos has applied this model effectively, and it has helped him avoid chaos if a new line of business is introduced. Such success has been achieved by allowing employees time to adapt to new changes and roles.
In sum, these theoretical perspectives indicate that Bezos is an effective leader who applies many styles and approaches to leadership to help Amazon succeed. Byers (2007) illustrates Bezos as a visionary, democratic, transformational, and transactional leader. Therefore, Bezos possesses different leadership styles to solve different problems, making him a successful and effective leader.
Jeff Bezos as a Manager
Bezos can be defined as an exceptional manager. An effective manager understands functions and management and applies them successfully in the business. Some of the functions that leaders apply include planning, controlling, staffing, organizing, and coordinating (Hunt et al., 2013). The figure below shows these functions
Figure 2: Functions of Management
Over the years, Bezos has shown a clear plan to make Amazon one of the largest e-commerce businesses globally. His planning approaches have ensured various strategies are applied to create customer value and maintain a competitive advantage in the market (Stone, 2013). Also, his organizing and coordination abilities have helped the company to facilitate different projects effectively. Various studies posit that Bezos has high expectations from the employees and assigns work to maximize their creativity and innovation (Stone, 2013). Bezos advocates for employees to work in professional teams to maximize their potential. Therefore, he is a great manager because of his excellent staffing, controlling, and problem-solving skills.
Consequently, Bezos is result-oriented. He always sets high standards for all workers and guides them towards achieving certain organizational objectives. In some instances, his leadership style can be dominating; for example, in 1999, when the company was still young, Amazon had employed 500 employees and required each employee to reply to 12 emails per minute (Stone, 2013). In other instances, he focuses more on the satisfaction of customers that of his employees. In that sense, his dominant trait helps him control the online shopping market and ensures all activities are in line with the organization’s objectives and procedures (stone, 2013).
Bezos Leadership Notions
Observation over customers and not competitors
Bezos makes the point that teaches companies always to observe customers over their competitors: They wait to see what rivals bring up, then try to copy and one-up it. By listening to customers instead, Amazon founded Amazon Web Services (AWS) business designed to bring a solution to problems with too-expensive in-house application hosting and open-source products that weren’t robust enough to easily support fast-growing or already-large companies (Peppers and Rodgers, 2016).
Information hold
Bezos hardly discusses Amazon’s company’s profits, goals, and activities achieved in a business year. He advises that the more you speak about your activities, the more predictable you get. Information clutch is a skill that helps him from his market competitors as he stays unpredictable (Rao, 2015).
Making employees think like owners
Bezos asserts that its employees greatly influence a company’s success. It is necessary to make them feel like they are part of the business because this makes them offer their best in their roto more profits, accruing business advantages Employees should be motivated by bonuses or given a percentage of the profits accrued his name (Maylett and Wride, 2017).
Take risks for market leadership.
Bezos asserts that success and failure go handy because you have to invent to experiment, and the experimental process is where we have to fail at some time. If you don’t make it today, you have learned something for next time. Bezos once failed and rose again in business and continues to grow daily; this motivates people who look upon him as an inspiration hence drawing followers (Reimer and Meighan, 2017).
Literature indicates that Jeff Bezos uses different management styles over the years to ensure the success of his company. This is supported by the contingency management theory that asserts that managers should apply different management styles depending on their organizations’ internal and external environments (Hunt et al., 2013). Variables that affect the management approach that Bezos favors include technology, leadership style, and organization size. This shows that Bezos is not only a good leader but also a good manager.
Characteristics of Bezos that helped him drive the company forward
Trait theories of leadership explain that organizations’ success and failure depend on the qualities of their leaders. Therefore, the success of Amazon.com has been influenced by some personality traits of Jeff Bezos. Such traits include his ability to innovate (Garty, 2003). Through innovation, Bezos has transformed online retail into a more reliable service for customers from across the globe (Adeniyi, 2007). He also comes up with innovative service techniques to enhance the satisfaction of customers. For instance, through innovation, Bezos invented Kindle. Kindle is an iPod that people use to read books (Adeniyi, 2007). His innovativeness helped him start the business and continually come up with strategies to create and maintain a sustainable competitive advantage (Garty, 2003).
Bezos is also a risk-taker and visionary. He took a risk by quitting the employment at Wall Street to start a company. Despite the high levels of ambiguity and uncertainty and the challenges he encountered, he remains committed to starting an e-commerce business (Garty, 2003). Bezos is also visionary. Literature states that he named his company ‘Amazon’ because he wanted it to be huge like the Amazon River (Garty, 2003). Thus, he wanted to expand and grow the business to become a large e-commerce company from the start. This helped him in planning and providing organizational direction.
Bezos is also charismatic and embraces teamwork. This ability helps him motivate and inspire his employees and management team to achieve the company’s goals (Friedman, 2007). Studies show that Bezos uses his leadership knowledge and abilities to inspire employees to achieve the organization’s short- and long-term goals (Garty, 2003). He also embraces teamwork. He groups his employees into workgroups comprising of 7 to 10 people. This helps him get the best out of his workforce’s skills, knowledge, and abilities. Also, it enhances employee and organizational performance.
Jeff Bezos is also customer-oriented and strategic. He is very concerned about customer perception and customer satisfaction (Garty, 2003). Through his leadership, Amazon.com tries to charge low prices to create a positive customer perception and provide the best services to enhance customer satisfaction (Friedman, 2007). Bezos is also strategic. He implements strategic plans to combat competition and provide services that create value to customers (Friedman, 2007). It helps the company to capture and maintain a large market share.
Bezos also can change his leadership and management style to suit the prevailing situations. This helps him create a good relationship with employees and third parties, such as customers and suppliers. Besides, it enables him to solve challenges and create an environment that supports success effectively.
Consequences of taking Bezos leadership style too far
The above section points out that Bezos applies a variety of leadership approaches according to the situation. While this facilitates the success of the company, it can also be detrimental. For instance, Bezos is more concerned about customers’ satisfaction and less concerned about that of his employees. Resultantly, he sets tough work conditions and expects his employee to work overtime to meet the organization’s objectives. For instance, Jeff fires employees who do not comply with his tough choices. It shows that although he always had the best interests of customers at heart, he was autocratic. As a result, the organization has attained a high rate of employee turnover.
Taking Bezos autocratic leadership too far may result in adverse consequences that may hinder employees’ performance, and thus, the functionality of the company (Ghuman, 2010). His autocratic approach causes an increased work burden for employees. This may increase employees’ work-related stress and pressure and, thereby, reduce employee efficiency (Ghuman, 2010). It may also affect the health of employees and increased employee turnover. An increased rate of employee turnover will make the organization incur increased costs in employee training and development. Due to the decline in employee efficiency, their performance may reduce, and the business may risk losing its competitive edge in the market (Ghuman, 2010).
Furthermore, autocratic leadership may reduce the morale of the company’s skilled and motivated workers. Intrinsically motivated workers put extra effort to understand their tasks and develop strategies to enhance productivity (Ghuman, 2010). However, Bezos only collects his workers’ views and does not involve them in the development of strategic plans or decision-making (Ghuman, 2010). This may dampen their morale and adversely affect their creativity, innovativeness, and productivity. It may also discourage them from providing essential information that Bezos and his team may use to foster sustained competitive advantage and growth (Ghuman, 2010). Bezos’s autocratic leadership may also result in leader dependence and may result in leadership problems if Bezos leaves the business.
Conversely, Bezos is also a charismatic and transformational leader. If he pays more attention to this leadership style, employee and organizational performance will increase, resulting in increased productivity. Transformational leaders act as role-models and demonstrate concerns for their workers’ needs and interests (Ghuman, 2010). This leadership approach would reduce employee workload, reduce the rate of employee turnover, enhance efficiency and employee performance (Ghuman, 2010). It would also create an environment that supports innovativeness among employees.
Bezos is the Right Person for Amazon.com
Bezos is the leader and manager that Amazon.com needs to be a leading company in e-commerce. His situational leadership and management approaches enable him to market dynamism, exploit market opportunities and gaps, and solve problems that may hinder his company’s success. Additionally, Bezos is also a pragmatic leader and thus is passionate about making decisions and providing ideas. Also, he creates robust associations with clients that help build customer loyalty essential for the organization’s future success. His transformational leadership style allows him to listen to the views of his employees and management team.
However, there is a need for Bezos to increase an environment that assists creativity and innovation among employees. Due to the competitive nature in the contemporary world, businesses such as Amazon should regularly develop products and services that increase customer value. Nevertheless, the experience and skills of a leader like Jeff Bezos are essential in any company’s future success.
Conclusion
Jeff Bezos, the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Amazon.com, has illustrated his great leadership and managerial skills through his company. Over the years, he has applied different traits and behaviors to ensure that his company remains competitive. Bezos is innovative, risk-taker, determined, and visionary. He has various business notions that make him stand out, such as keen observation of the customers, holding sensitive information, helping employees thin as owners of the business, and taking risks for market leadership. These great qualities make him a good leader and a manager, and they have helped make Amazon.com one of the world’s largest e-commerce businesses. Despite that much success in his leadership styles, his autocratic leadership style may discourage productivity and innovation in the future.