Dynamic Leadership at Amazon

This article discusses the leadership journey of a customer success manager at Amazon and how culture, communication, and leadership models influence leadership. It provides insights on MBTI analysis, colleague feedback, and more.

Running Head: Dynamic Leadership
Amazon
Dynamic Leadership

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Table of Content
Brief Introduction..................................................................................................................................2
Reflection on Leadership Jounrey..........................................................................................................3
Key Event & Expereince.........................................................................................................................3
MBTI Analysis........................................................................................................................................4
Colleague Feedback...............................................................................................................................5
Influence of Culture on Leadership.......................................................................................................5
Communication Skills for Relationship Building....................................................................................6
Leadership Models................................................................................................................................6
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................7
References.............................................................................................................................................8

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Brief Introduction
Leadership for me is both art and a practical skill encompassing the ability of the individual or
organziation to lead or guide other individuals, teams and the entire organziation. Leaders set the
path for the entire organization and set examples for the employees by leading from
front(Northouse, 2018). They always have a clear vision for the organziation and they create and
develop team aroud the same visison. It is often seen that despite having a clear visison, leaders fail
to deliver results, it primarliy happens because they fail to use the guiding principles of the
management (Barney, 2014).

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Reflection on Leadership Jounrey
I have been workiing with Amazon for over 5 years as the customer success manager for its digital
and social interaction at the Australian office. The team was small and comprised of 10 people
whose major goal was to focus on social listening, create strategies to ensure the brand awarness
and product penetration. Another major KRA was to do a predctive analysis of customer shopping
pattern by noticing their online behaviour. My Avid interest in e-commerce and digtal tools of
marketing pushed me to understand in depth the process followed at Amazon, and I was doing
exceptionally well in my field. My immediate manager, who was apparenlty closed to Jeff Bezos
realised my potential and promoted me as the digital marketing manager for the entire team, it was
by far one of the most memorable day of my life. Ever since, my life changed and I got more and
more involved in creating strategies in and around the diigtal platform and was constantly hanging
around with a lot of decisison makers at Amazon.
Key Event & Expereince
I have had really great expereinces working at Amazon, but there are few which changed my outlook
towards leadership. I was attending one of the Annual conference of the biggest internet and tech
companies in the world, companies like Alibaba, E-Bay, Google, Facebook, Apple, Smasung and
qualcomm were part of this conference. I got the opportunity to listen to the great visionaries and
minds at work. At the conference, for the very fist time, I got the opportunity to meet Jeff Bezos and
hear out his views, live in front of the amazing audience, the feeling is beyond any comparison. At
the conference Jeff Bezos mentioned that he wants Amazon to focus only and only on its customers
and money will follow on its own. He had a visison for Amazon, he wanted the company to become
the most “CUSTOMER-CENTRIC” company in the world. It was really breathtaking to know how
deeply he cared about Amazon customers, he wanted the company to build all its process, policies,
procedures and technology in and around the customer and to give them maximum benefit. Jeff
mentioned “ If we take care of our customers, the customers will take care of its stakeholders” .
Hearing all these words from one of the visionary of the present times, who built a company from
scratch and at present is one of the highest valued company in the world is motivating in itself. This
particular event or moment made me realize that if I tweaked the digital marketing strategies
towards customer, my work will be done and I would be able to contribute to the organziation. Ever

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since, before implementing any strategy or a new process, I personally put myself in the shoes of
customers and accoridng create a strategy which will benefit me, The Customers.
My team grew from 10-20 in a span of 20 years, and I followed particiative type of leadership.
Amazon is highly decentralized in nature, which provides opportunity for people like me to take their
own decision. I always have involved my team in all of my decisions, I took their feedback, engaged
in brainstorming sessions with them and coherently reached a solution. I would definitely not boast,
but my ability to connect with my team mates made me extremly lovable by the team and they
valued the suggestions I gave to them. Hence, I would descirbe my leadership style to be based on
the feeling of mutual respect, employee empowerment and participative in nature.
MBTI Analysis
I never performed the famous Myers-Briggs Type Indicator personality test, until recently, when I
was considered to be sent to Amazon headquarters at Seattle to receive further training on
Leadership competencies. On taking the MBTI test I was a little amused with the result, it was one
area by which I was taken aback. My result of the assessment was ESTJ, wherein the alphabets stood
for; Extroversion, Sensing, Thinking and Judging. It was no brainer for Extroversion, I like talking to
people, I am a people’s person and not fearful of public speaking, I make connect with people easily
which makes me highly extrovert in nature. I am sensing in nature, my belief is that I focus on
attention to details, which helps me in making a better analysis of the situation, I don’t build a big
picture around the future possibilities, and rather I take things one at a time. I am a data miner, I

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believe in data rather than the theory behind the data, logic drives me, hence I am thinking in
nature. The last point which shocked me to the very core is judging, in comparison to perception. In
my opinion I take time to make decision and it is based on a careful analysis of the situation.
However, the MBTI test did not predict so. Still, the test was extremely helpful in determining how
my subconscious mind works and what kind of person I am; it certainly helped me in brushing my
leadership style.
Colleague Feedback
At Amazon, human resources followed a 360 degree balanced feedback process, which facilitated
the review of a person by everyone in the team, comprising of the seniors and juniors. I was really
glad and amazed to read out the review of one of my colleagues, who was working in the
organization before me and is still a part of my team. He mentioned my leadership style to be highly
encouraging, participative and visionary in nature. In one of the paragraphs he mentioned how I
resolved a particular conflict; he appreciated my accommodating style of conflict resolution. He also
mentioned how I would turn the Monday blues at the office by sharing some inspiring story with the
entire team, driving motivation in people. I was also mentioned as a visionary because of my abilities
to predict the future state of digital and create strategies which will suit the audience segment at
Amazon. One of the challenges identified by the colleague which I faced in my journey was, turning
people down or firing them. He mentioned that I am a soft spoken person and face big difficulties in
firing a member of the team. I strongly agree with them, I nurtured the team, made them into a
family and if someone is unable to perform at their best, I don’t fire them, neither I told them
anything. I always involved the human resource department to convey the message; this is certainly
one of the areas of improvement. Another thing which he pointed out was, that I was a hard worker,
once I step inside the office premises, I used to get so engrossed with my work that completely lose
track of time, due to this level of engagement the entire team suffered, because they respected me
so much, that they thought if they would leave before me it would definitely be a sign of disrespect.
Influence of Culture on Leadership
I strongly believe that organizational and national culture has a huge role to play in successful
leadership. For example, Jeff Bezos leadership style is known to be charismatic, he was a born
leader, had traits to be a great leader and he was quick to respond to the changing scenarios which
also made him a visionary leader. His leadership was based on customer, he wanted the company to

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be customer-centric, thus in all his interaction with the employees he always wanted them to focus
on customer-centricity. Thus, the entire organization, in all its office was having a culture where they
cared the maximum about the biggest stakeholders, the customers. All innovations, tech changes,
policies revolved around the customers reflecting the culture of the leadership on the entire
organization. Amazon is spread across 18 countries which make it a truly global organization, the
national culture does affect the leadership, as Amazon believes its global expansion strategy to be
“Go global and think local”. Thus the company prefers to hire leaders from the country rather than
from the headquarters proving that the leadership in influenced by the national culture. The culture
of the nation influences the leadership immensely and affects their decision making process (Bolman
& Deal, 2017).
Communication Skills for Relationship Building
I have been very vocal in communication and have always followed openness in communication
while communicating a topic of concern or to make any announcement. I always believed, the more
the employees know about the processes, change, policies or any modification in the company’s
policies, they can provide their valuable contribution to help the organization. Another benefit of
practicing openness in communication is that the employees don’t indulge in grapevine activities,
spreading rumours or gossips, as beforehand they know everything. It also helps in building trust
with the employees and all of them contribute towards the growing momentum to reach the goal of
business sustainability (Whetten & Cameron, 2014). Communication is also a great tool when it
comes to handling cultural bias, people are really not open coming from a different culture, thus if
the company follows openness in communication, the cultural bias can be easily removed from the
global organization(DuBrin, 2015).
Leadership Models
As I mentioned earlier that leadership is both an art and application of practical skill, there are
various styles of leadership which leaders across the world pursue. In order to give
comprehensiveness to the report, understanding of different leadership style is extremely important
(Klenke, 2016). Autocratic leadership is the style which revolves around the leader or the boss; he
takes decision on his own and does not consider his subordinates in decision making. He believes in
communicating direction and decision to the team without effective consultation. In this type of
leadership there is hardly any room for flexibility, the entire process is very rigid (Certo, 2015).

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Democratic leadership is one which involves the subordinates in making decision, the leader
considers all the stakeholders in taking a decision, which is very healthy for the organization and also
acts as a motivation tool for them(Hendricks, Taylor & Yasuhara, 2016). It is personally my favourite
leadership style and I try to follow it in my daily conduct at business. Another style which is hugely
popular is the strategic leadership approach, under this the leader focuses on the individuals who
share the same belief as that of leader, people who resonate with high performance, high team and
high organization becomes the inner circle of leader and he consults them in making decision(Priest
& Gass, 2017). A lot of leaders like Steve jobs, Jeff Bezos follow transformational leadership, in this
style the leader initiates the changes in the organization, groups, oneself and the team, and he leads
from the front and motivates employees to perform at their best. In transactional leadership ,the
leader follow a simple process, he motivates and rewards the people who are doing good and simply
criticizes people who are not doing good in the organization. This type of leadership has been under
a lot of flak for criticizing its employees (Lussier & Achua, 2015). These are some of the styles of
leadership which are present in the macro-environment and one adopts a style which suits his
personality and the need of the organization.
Conclusion
Hence the reflection can be concluded by saying, effective leadership is extremely critical for the
success of a business organization, a great leader can take the company to the Zenith of success and
a bad leader can destroy the entire company (Antonakis & Day, 2017). The expectation out of a
leader is to motivate its employees, set examples for them, take challenges, be visionary, engage
employees in decision making and lead them from front(Hersey, Blanchard & Johnson, 2017).

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References
Antonakis, J. and Day, D.V. eds., 2017. The nature of leadership.London: Sage publications.
Barney, J. B. (2014). Gaining and sustaining competitive advantage. United States: Pearson higher
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Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2017). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership.London:
John Wiley & Sons.
Certo, S., 2015. Supervision: Concepts and skill-building. NewYork City: McGraw-Hill Higher
Education.
DuBrin, A. J. (2015). Leadership: Research findings, practice, and skills. UK: Nelson Education.
Hendricks, D. G., Taylor, A. C., & Yasuhara, K. (2016). Work in Progress: Enhancing Student
Leadership Competencies through Re-flection. In Proceedings of the 2016 American Society
for Engineering Education Annual Conference.
Hersey, P., Blanchard, K. H., & Johnson, D. E. (2007). Management of organizational behavior (Vol.
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Klenke, K. (2016). Qualitative research in the study of leadership. Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Lussier, R. N., & Achua, C. F. (2015). Leadership: Theory, application, & skill development.UK: Nelson
Education.
Northouse, P. G. (2018). Leadership: Theory and practice. London: Sage publications.
Priest, S., & Gass, M. (2017). Effective Leadership in Adventure Programming, 3E. Human Kinetics.
Whetten, D., & Cameron, K. (2014). Developing Management Skills: Global Edition United States:
Pearson Higher Ed.