Analysis of a Project Leader

The report analyzes the leadership style of Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com, and its impact on the growth and development of the company. It identifies the positive effects of his transformational leadership and negative impact of his transactional leadership. The report also sheds light on the effectiveness of his leadership behavior and its impacts on the project lifecycle.

Running Head: ANALYSIS OF A PROJECT LEADER
Analysis of a project leader

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Executive summary
The report has identified the transformational and transactional leadership styles of the
chief executive officer Amazon.com. It has identified the positive effects of his leadership which
led to the growth and development of the company in the competitive market. It also highlighted
the negative impact of his transactional leadership, which created a stressful work environment.
Identified the fact that, Jeff Bezos never misses a chance of advancement and innovations in the
project that are carried on by Amazon. The report has identify how effective the ship style of Jeff
Bezos is, which has impacted the project in the organization.

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Table of Contents
Executive summary.........................................................................................................................1
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Biography of the chosen person......................................................................................................3
Leadership Style Deployment..........................................................................................................3
Effectiveness of Leadership Behavior.............................................................................................4
Impacts of Leadership Behaviors on Project Lifecycle...................................................................5
Conclusions......................................................................................................................................6
References........................................................................................................................................7

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Introduction
Leadership is defined as an attempt that influences the activities of the followers with the
help of effective communication to attain a specific goal aimed towards the followers
(Shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in. 2018). Effective Leadership of the managers in the organizations
helps the employees to stay motivated and achieve the organizational goals (Bolman & Deal,
2017). The report below will highlight Jeff Bezos as an ideal leader and shed light on his
leadership style, effectiveness, and impacts of his style of leadership.
Biography of the chosen person
Jeff Bezos Is a popular name of the present times. He is an American entrepreneur, who
is the chief executive officer and founder of Amazon.com. He is also the owner of ‘The
Washington Post’. The E-Commerce Pioneer and successful entrepreneur was born on 12th
January 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico (Prachititalathi.files.wordpress.com, 2018). Jeff
Bezos loved to deal with computers in his early life so he studied computer science and electrical
engineering at the Priceton University. After he completed his graduation, he began working at
Wall Street and later in the 1990 he became of the youngest senior Vice President at D.E. Shaw,
which is a renowned investment firm. After 4 years, he left his job and launched Amazon.com
as a virtual bookstore, which became very successful and what are the most popular success
story in the history of internet (Jencinar.typepad.com. 2018). Later, in 2013 he made a $250
million deal and purchased ‘The Washington Post’. With his amazing leadership, he was able to
become one of the most successful and richest entrepreneurs of all times (Kennedy, 2016).
Leadership Style Deployment
Leadership plays a very important role in the creation of healthy, successful and
sustainable organization. The organization is hugely impacted by the ability of its leader to
determine necessary actions and steps for the growth and development of the organization
(Anderson & Sun, 2017). The leadership of Jeff Bezos has a valuable relationship with the
wellbeing of Amazon.com. Jeff Bezos’s leadership style is a combination of transactional and
transformational leadership styles.

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Jeff Bezos as a Transactional leader:
Bezos is known to be a transactional leader, who is task oriented. He is described to be a
micro manager, who has rigorous standard and is at times not interested in the opinion of other
people. This Style of leadership is termed as the transactional leadership. The transactional
leaders are those who influence the subordinates as they feel that the subordinate’s best interest
is to perform according to the needs of the leader. This leadership style is very effective in the
achievement of operational goals and in the creation of a thriving business, which will succeed in
the competitive market (Sata, 2018).
Jeff Bezos as a Transformational leader:
Bezos possesses transformational leadership qualities apart from being a transactional
leader. He is a person who can be called a change agent as he seeks innovation in the business
(Donohoe & Kelloway, 2016). Transformational leadership helps to produce extraordinarily
desired results And Delivers the creativity of the followers. The transformational leaders are the
ones, who create a fascinating vision of the near future and with the help of that gains mind and
heart of people. The transformational leaders link the long term goals of the company with the
values of the people and this helps them two arouse commitment and interest in order to act
according to the vision, thus driving the team efforts beyond the ordinary possibilities. The
continued growth of amazon.com and innovations made by the company, Prove the fact that
Bezos is undoubtedly a great transformational leader (Sata, 2018).
Effectiveness of Leadership Behavior
Amazon is a company with the huge number of projects which were completed in the
past, projects running currently and the ones for which planning is still being done. Jeff Bezos,
being a transformational leader always seeks innovation. However, the work environment at
Amazon is quite stressful. Amazon was ranked to have one of the most inflexible and stressful
working environment in the present day high-tech world. Theemployee turnover rate of the
company is the second highest compared to 500 Fortune companies. In addition to the Amazon
employees have cited that the CEO, at times berates them. Thus it could be found out that the

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transactional leadership style of Jeff Bezos is leading to unsatisfied employees in the
organization.
Even if there is working stress at Amazon, the company’s shares are very valuable and
have relatively shown science of positive growth. Asrecorded in the reports, on 13 January 2015,
the shares of amazon.com had been upgraded from ‘Neutral’ to ‘Buy’ by the Citi Bank.
According to the investment consultants of Wall Street, amazon.com will continue to grow in the
near future and will have a positive progress report. The company has also reported a significant
rise in the customers in 2014. There was also an increase in the number of Prime Members in the
same year. It was reported that the company had gained over 10 million Prime Members, despite
there was an increase in price and the company enjoyed 25% of increase in the overall sales.
Leadership and the focus of Jeff Bezos, has admirably help in the growth of the company in the
terms of customer base, reach and revenue. However, the company had Se significant losses
which could also be linked to the leadership style of the CEO (Collinson & Tourish, 2015).
The transformational leadership style of Jeff Bezos has significantly contributed to the
stability and the growth of the company over the past years. The company at the beginning when
launched by Bezos was and online bookstore but over the years it has developed to be an online
retail store, which significantly challenges the offline competitors. This development of the
company is a result of the visionary commitment and focus of the CEO. Is hunger for Innovation
and change, which he exhibits with the help of his leadership quality has led to a massive
revenORules and change for the company and creation of a loyal base of customers (Hall, 2016).
However, thetransactional leadership style has also led to the creation of a stressful work
environment, for which the company has suffered many losses. But from the overall scenario it
can be derived that the leadership quality of Jeff Bezos has contributed a lot to the positive
growth of the company.
Impacts of Leadership Behaviors on Project Lifecycle
Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, with the help of his effective leadership qualities,
facilitated on the growth and development of the company with its innovative projects in the
competitive market. According to Jeff Bezos, the vision highly matters and he and it take a long-
term positive perspective which will not allow his company to optimize the quarterly results at

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expense of long term disadvantage. The vision of the company is develop into the most
customer-centric organization in the entire globe. He focuses on improvement of thinking with
the help of simplifying the messages, which helps to find innovative concepts and ambitious
results. Amazon focuses on staying committed to it long term goals. Jeff Bezos never misses an
opportunity to self-promote in the global scale. There are several projects of Amazon, which
includes ‘replace tape with cloud storage’, ‘deployment of Python web app’ and others. The
CEO, Jeff Bezos, is a transformational leader, who constantly supports and motivates the
workforce and the team members to build optimal teams. These teams are responsible to carry on
with the projects and generate desired results based on the organizational goals. His constant
hunger for change and innovation has significantly contributed to the growth of the company in
the competitive era (Projects on Amazon Web Services (AWS), 2018).
Jeff Bezos Effectively communicate with the employees in the organization and guide
them to achieve the organizational goals. Attimes conflict and debates arise between the
stakeholders of the company. The CEO, with the help of his effective styles of leadership, deals
with the issues and hence generate desirable outcomes. These are the impacts of the leadership
behavior on the growth of the company. However, there is a negative impact due to the
transactional leadership which create a stressful working environment and due to which the
company has suffered loses (Saleh & Hu, 2016).
Conclusions
The report has highlighted that Jeff Bezos is the transformational and transactional
leader, who was task oriented. The report has shed light on the fact that the leadership style of
Bezos has significantly impacted and resulted in the growth and development of Amazon, which
made the company won the most successful in terms of sales, customer base, profit and revenue
compared to its competitors. The report has also identified the negative impacts of his
transactional leadership, which created a stressful working environment and that led to losses.
However, Jeff Bezos need to focus more on the transformational characteristics of his leadership
style to ensure or more amount of profit before any further expansion of the company. The report
has also focus on the fact that, if the CEO of Amazon, tones down a bit of his transactional

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leadership style, then he would be successful in making a flexible and friendly work
environment.

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References
Anderson, M. H., & Sun, P. Y. (2017). Reviewing leadership styles: Overlaps and the need for a
new ‘full‐range’theory. International Journal of Management Reviews, 19(1), 76-96.
Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2017). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership.
John Wiley & Sons.
Collinson, D., & Tourish, D. (2015). Teaching leadership critically: New directions for
leadership pedagogy. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 14(4), 576-594.
Donohoe, M., & Kelloway, E. K. (2016). Transformational leadership training for managers:
effects on employee well-being. In Creating Healthy Workplaces (pp. 231-248).
Routledge.
Hall, J. (2016). I-Gods: How Technology Shapes our Spiritual and Social Lives. By C.
Detweiler, Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2013, 256 pp. Journal of Sociology and
Christianity, 4(1).
Jencinar.typepad.com. (2018). Retrieved 8 October 2018, from
http://jencinar.typepad.com/PDF/Jeff_Bezos.pdf
Kennedy, D. (2016). The Bezos effect: how Amazon’s founder is reinventing the Washington
Post–and what lessons it might hold for the beleaguered newspaper business. Shorenstein
Center.
Prachititalathi.files.wordpress.com. (2018). Retrieved 9 October 2018, from
https://prachititalathi.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/the-everything-store-jeff-bezos-and-
the-age-of-amazon.pdf
Projects on Amazon Web Services (AWS). (2018). Amazon Web Services, Inc.. Retrieved 8
October 2018, from https://aws.amazon.com/getting-started/projects/
Saleh, H. G. A., & Hu, W. (2016). Dark Side of Leadership Impact on Project Failure: Towards a
Model. Innovation and Management, 1814.

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Sata, S. (2018). Uncovering Leadership Styles: An Analysis of Jeff Bezos and
Amazon.com. Academia.edu. Retrieved 8 October 2018, from
http://www.academia.edu/10333555/Uncovering_Leadership_Styles_An_Analysis_of_Je
ff_Bezos_and_Amazon.com
Shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in. (2018). Retrieved 8 October 2018, from
http://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/1991/18/18_chapter%203.pdf