Management Assignment: How Jeff Bezos is Leadings Amazon?

Question

Task

Prepare a management assignment critically answering the following questions:

1. Apply the concept of “triad of awareness” to the case of Jeff Bezos’ leadership of Amazon and identify if he needs to pay more attention to any one the focused areas.
2. Discuss the importance of paradoxical thinking and examine the paradoxes that a leader like Bezos may need to address recurrently.
3. Describe the ways in which the theory of the business can be used to explain how Bezos’ is leading Amazon.
4. Discuss whether Bezos’ style of leadership aligns with two of the secrets of the super bosses as described by Finkelstein. Defend your answer.
5. In the context of “the five exemplary leadership practices”, identify two business areas/examples where you think Bezos fell short of exhibiting the exemplary leadership practices. Reflect on how he could have exemplified the practices more successfully.

Answer

Answer 1
The case of Jeff Bezos leadership considered in this management assignment clearly indicates that he implements a transformational leadership style and he is a task-oriented leader. While implementing a transformation strategy in Amazon, the key thing he looks for is creativity, which can help the business to grow further. The concept of the triad of awareness is applicable in the case of Jeff Bezos leadership as it reflects three key focuses that a leader must consider. As per the concept, the three key focuses are outward focused, inward focus and focus on others (Goleman, 2018). Focusing outward is helpful for the leaders to enhance their ability to devise innovation, strategy, and management of the organisation. Focus on others, and inward focus helps to cultivate emotional intelligence (Goleman, 2018). Emotional intelligence is one of the key strength factors that ensure the self-awareness of a leader and his/her connection with the employees. The inner voice is the key thing of self-awareness, which results in better decisions making. The self-awareness factor is positive in the case of Jeff Bezos leadership as he thinks as a vision of the company is everything to be followed.

Focusing on others is also a factor related to emotional intelligence. The empathy factor helps a leader to build a social relationship. The leaders who can significantly focus on others gain more support from the employees. Empathy triad is a part of a focus on others area, which consists of emotional, cognitive empathy and empathic concern. The empathy triad is the most important area that Jeff Bezos needs to pay more attention to (Goleman, 2018). His leadership skill lacks empathy is a crucial thing for employee motivation as well as their job satisfaction. The three core part of the empathy triad, cognitive and emotional empathy, and empathic concern, need to be focused on by Bezos to enhance the leadership skills. Cognitive empathy will help Bezos to understand the perspectives of others, whereas emotional empathy helps to feel the feeling of another person, empathic concern ensure the sense of the need of another person from the leader (Bezos, 2021). These three things will help Bezos to understand the exact need of the employees, and the strategies can be implemented accordingly.

Emotional empathy is crucial for group dynamics and effective mentoring. Assessment of the emotional empathy capacity can improve the empathy in an individual, which can help to relate oneself with the situation of others. Empathic concern is associated with emotional empathy allows the leader to understand the exact need of the employees, which is a crucial thing for Bezos to understand the problems the employees are facing. Among three of the focused areas, the most important thing Bezos needs to focus on is focusing on others.

Answer 2
The importance of paradoxical thinking is based on its primary crux that is related to openness, which can be anything, but it lacks the conviction of principles along with being indecisive, and it sometimes tends to be passionless as well. The concept of paradoxical thinking states that problems should be looked upon from different perspectives rather than from a single perspective so that problems can be solved efficiently (Levy, 2017). In addition to that, paradoxical thinking allows individuals to continue expanding self-understanding outside the comfort zone, and this can generate innovative approaches. Therefore, paradoxical thinking means that leaders are required to possess the skills that help to embrace forces that are incompatible and deal with contradictions. The main benefit is related to the art of managing that develops the ability to rationally manage by being a paradoxical thinker, and thus this ability differentiates a leader from other leaders.

In the context of the modern business environment, a leader such as Jeff Bezos of Amazon might need to address certain paradoxes, which will be crucial to keep future sustainability intact. The first leadership paradox that Bezos needs to address is considering the fact that success comes from failure. Since the inception of Amazon, Jeff Bezos has been extremely aggressive in his approach towards business decisions, and he has not experienced any failure yet. It is thus important for Bezos to address this paradox so that if in the future he experiences any failure, then he must considering it as a learning step towards more success. In addition to that, he must also try to look at the failure from a different perspective rather than a single perspective, as this can curve out several ways of overcoming the failure (Kouzes, 2012). The next paradox that Jeff Bezos can potentially address is making humility a key characteristic of his leadership practice.

The majority of the people around the world consider Jeff Bezos to be arrogant because of his aggressive nature of leadership, and despite arrogance being considered as a prime personality trait of leaders, humility sometimes becomes essential to create a positive impression of one's personality. Jeff Bezos can potentially cultivate more humility in his personality so that his valuable contributions are recognised by people around the world. The third paradox that Jeff Bezos needs to address is based on the understanding that leadership is not just about unilateral decision-making but also about relationships. It is a well-known fact that great leaders tend to be good with relationships as they efficiently develop authentic relationships with a large population base (PBS Frontline, 2020). The relationship network plays a vital role in terms of leadership success, and the best way to develop relationships is to make concerted and regular efforts to know the people and the employees (Goleman, 2013). Overall, it cannot be denied that Jeff Bezos is one of the most polarising and influential figures in today's world, but it will be important for him to address the mentioned paradoxes so that he continues to flourish as a top business leader.

Answer 3
Every firm or an organisation, whether it is a business or not, has a theory of business, which is the clear, consistent, and extraordinarily powerful focus. The theory of business has mainly three parts; where the first part comprises insinuations about the organisation's environment and structure, the market and the customer, and the technology. Concerning the first part of the business theory, Amazon, under the leadership of Bezos, the environment of the company is quite adaptable, as it keeps changing and growing as per the rapid change in the trends and the technologies, and sustainable too. The structure of the company is designed uniquely in such a way that it can reach the mass, and has a huge market, with the practice of the best supply chain method and a huge customer globally. As per the second part of the theory, there are insinuations about the particular mission of the organisation, and about Amazon, the company is very ambitious towards its aim, and hence successfully established as one of the world largest and most successful retailers, with its mission, not only to maximise the values and profits of the company but also the contentment of its consumers.

As suggested by the third part of the theory, insinuations about the core competence needed to accomplish the mission of the organisation, and as noticed in Amazon, the core competence is identified as the capability to design and modify the product of what is being sold rather than the capability to invest, and as technical leadership, facilitating the company to develop services consistently while regularly reducing the rates, as precisely practised by Bezos, while leading Amazon. However, these insinuations of the business theory must fit in reality, fit to one another, and must be understood and analysed by the organisation, and has to be approved and examined constantly, which is indeed analysed by the leader as well organisation. Also, there should be preventive care, which has two measures which are to alert the organisation and make it capable of promptly changing itself along with its theory, and another measure to study noncustomers, as well as to study what goes on outside the business. The early diagnosis and cure, which is very important to build an organisation monitoring and testing of the adaptive theory, and need to innovate the theory, to make it more effective into action, changing the policies and practices, as per the environment, and demand of the situation, bringing the organisation into the new reality, with the new mission, and new core competence to be developed and acquired, and following all these practices, Jeff Bezos is leading Amazon, making the company a leading one in the global market (F. Drucker, 2021).

Answer 4
Among many of the secrets of Super bosses, as described by Finkelstein, Bezos’s style of leadership does align with the two many of them, but the two precisely align secrets are 'focus on intelligence, creativity, and flexibility, and 'Encourage step-change growth". Bezos's leadership is quite similar to the first-mentioned secret of the super bosses, as he highly values these three things under his leadership. Bezos prefers to approach problems from a new angle and also looks for the same people who can handle surprises, learn quickly, and excel in any position. As a leader, or to say a super boss, Bezos hires innovative people to create the new ideas and products as per the change and demand, agile, and flexible enough to be adapted and work in any situation, as such quality is also possessed by Bezos himself, that makes him a positioning leader. The position of Amazon in the global market today is a fine example of the intelligence, creativity, and flexibility of Bezos, who keeps developing the company as per the rapid changes in culture, core competence, trends, environment, and demand.

Concerning the second secret, Bezos style of leadership is far more beyond that of the traditional organisations, as it offered advancement opportunities. The strategy of Bezos is not only dependent on the competency model, totally, but personalised career paths for improvement, proving the worth, pursuing dramatically compressing the learning and growth. The company, to match its step with the raising change, also has to encourage the change to ensure the growth of the company, and hence this quality is notably found in Jeff Bezos (Kouzes, 2021). It is all these qualities Of Jeff Bezos that make him one of the splendid and exceptional leaders, leading the world's number one company Amazon, competing against all the odds on its way. The second secret of super bosses reflects the leadership quality that ensures an opportunity for the employees to learn and grow in the organisation. In the case of Jeff Bezos, the leadership of Amazon allows the employees to learn and grow during their career, but the leadership of Bezos lacks empathy, which is a crucial thing for employee development. The appointment of employees for a specific job role needs to be based on the skills and knowledge of the employees, and it should be followed during the promotion of the employees. The leadership of Bezos is somehow credible, fulfilling those criteria, due to which the employees' satisfaction is high at Amazon. The salary package and the job satisfaction indicate that the workplace is the best to provide a learning opportunity for the employees. In this context, it can be said that the second secret is somehow aligning with the leadership style of Bezos. However, he needs to empathise more with the employees to maintain a close relationship with them (Bezos, 2021).

Answer 5
The five exemplary leadership practices are inspiring a shared vision, challenging the process, enabling others to act, modelling the way, and encouraging the heart. The CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, fell short in terms of exhibiting exemplary leadership practices in the areas of enabling others to act and encouraging the heart.

Jeff Bezos has undoubtedly achieved success, but his exemplary leadership practice lacks the process of enabling others to act. The leadership practice of Jeff Bezos is all about creating a way that establishes the benchmark of business innovation. In addition to that, the main factor behind the success of Amazon is its disruption strategy that has truly revolutionised today's digital platform of the business world (PBS Frontline, 2020). However, Jeff Bezos has lacked the patience of letting others act in terms of introducing new business concepts, and it will be important for Bezos to allow others to introduce new business concepts as based on this, he can assess his present innovative capacity along with learning from others' mistakes as well.

Jeff Bezos could have potentially exemplified such leadership practice by possessing the ability to be patient in certain aspects of business innovation. In addition to that, he could have also allowed other business leaders to introduce their business strategy as part of his learning, which will be extremely useful in his future endeavours. It is the natural tendency of human beings to idolise successful business leaders, and the aggressive approach of Jeff Bezos is somewhat controversial as many experts consider his strategies to be relentless (PBS Frontline, 2020). Therefore, Jeff Bezos could have earned a reputation of being a more generous business leader by enabling others to act.

The empathy factor is lacking in the leadership style of Jeff Bezos. However, the empathy factor is a crucial thing to assure encouragement as if the employees feel satisfied and motivated towards their work, then it has a positive impact on the overall performance of the firm. Individual contributions in the workplace extremely matter, and if the employees are recognised for their hard work, then they feel positive towards their work then. It will ensure better outcomes in the future and will improve employee retention at the workplace. Encouragement to the heart is selected as the exemplary leadership practice that needs to be focused on Jeff Bezos to improve his leadership. In team work, the hard work of each member needs to be recognised. The leadership of Jeff Bezos is more company-driven, so there is less room for employee empathy and motivation, which is the key factor Bezos is lacking.

References
Bezos, J., (2021). How Amazon Thinks About Competition. [online] Harvard Business Review. Available at: [Accessed 2 June 2021].

F. Drucker, P., (2021). The Theory of the Business. [online] Harvard Business Review. Available at: [Accessed 2 June 2021].

Goleman, D. (2013). Leaders Need Three Kinds of Focus. [online] Hbr.org. Available at: https://hbr.org/video/2838341939001/leaders-need-three-kinds-of-focus [Accessed 2 Jun. 2021].

Goleman, D. (2018). The Focused Leader. [online] Harvard Business Review. Available at: https://hbr.org/2013/12/the-focused-leader.

Kouzes, J., (2021). Before you continue to YouTube. [online] Youtube.com. Available at: [Accessed 2 June 2021].

Kouzes, Ji. (2012). Jim Kouzes, author: “The Leadership Challenge.” [online] www.youtube.com. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5c9llcQoos [Accessed 2 Jun. 2021].

Levy, L. (2017). Finding the Healthy Tension Between Being Confident and Collaborative. [online] Harvard Business Review. Available at: https://hbr.org/2017/01/finding-the-healthy-tension-between-being-confident-and-collaborative [Accessed 2 Jun. 2021].

PBS Frontline (2020). Amazon Empire: The Rise and Reign of Jeff Bezos (full film) | FRONTLINE. [online] www.youtube.com. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVVfJVj5z8s [Accessed 2 Jun. 2021].