What makes a Great Leader? (Reed Hustings)

What makes a Great Leader?

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
ESSAY.............................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................11
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................12

INTRODUCTION
In organisation, it is important to have an effective leader and manager who can run the business
in smooth and efficient manner. Leadership is a process of influencing, motivating and guiding
staff for accomplishing the goals and objective of business (Ciulla and et. al. 2018). Leaders have
various qualities and skills such as willingness to listen, honesty, decisiveness, trust and
integrity. They mainly provide direction to organisation in order to improve the efficiency and
achievements of goals. It is important for company in order to attract, inspire and retain the
talent. For an organisation, leadership plays an important role in order to get people to work
together for attaining business goals. A great leader provides clear vision, has integrity, clear
focused and humility nature towards achieving the goals and objective. Leaders helps people to
reach their goals and hire the suitable employees in organisation that can contribute their best
efforts in making business successful. “One of the effective leader who inspire people with his
leadership quality is Reed Hastings, he is a CEO of Netflix.” “In 1960, Hasting was born in
Boston, Massachusetts”. He and his former pure software staff Marc Randolph has launched
Netflix by serving flat rate movie rental by mail to consumers in US (Ziegler, A., 2021).
ESSAY
Reed Hastings is an effective leader as he is dedicated towards his work and also known for
implementing effective leadership styles in order to motivate and lead the team. He also owns
most popular video on demand service provider and media streaming. He is also a man behind
one of the biggest underdog success story of Silicon Valley. “Reed Hastings is one of the great
leaders due to his main responsibility towards his company as he mainly focuses on setting
vision (Biddle, 2021).” He mainly implements hands-off approach to leadership by offering high
levels of autonomy and developing culture of providing direct feedback. “Reed Hastings is an
entrepreneur who produce their creative and innovative ideas in order to launch one of the
attractive online streaming videos provider”. “He is an American Entrepreneur and also owns
media rental service ‘Netflix’.” The brand was launched in 1997 by an idea of subscription based
movie rental service. “Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings launched Netflix in 1997 in California
and in 1998 they focus on starting first mail order DVD operation.” The leadership theories
which are used by Reed are transformational leadership, reciprocity and creative intelligence
plays an important role in describing the leadership abilities of Netflix owner. Main motive of

Hastings is to empower his employees and believes that they are sophisticated enough to manage
all the activities and working environment in effective and efficient manner. Employees will
always do right for Netflix and improve its profitability and success. He believes that creating
traditional corporate practices in company's culture at Netflix influence the performance and
efficiency of employees and also it negatively affects the motivation, behaviour, performance
and attitude of people. Hastings as a leader creates positive working environment where
employees can contribute their productive outcomes in achieving the goals and objective of
Netflix. He develops the culture where staff feel obligated to repay the company by perform their
best performance and work with dedication due to which he is selected as an effective leader
(Fernandez, 2021). The culture and performance of Netflix is well revered nowadays and the
profitability of business is also increasing. He is a leader who focus on making few decisions, he
allows his employees to produce the idea to generate new products and services. Hastings creates
a culture of freedom and empowerment as a leading contributor. The employees of Netflix and
Hastings together redefine how they watch cable television today. As a leader, Hastings has an
ability to see a need, design an effective plan and introduce it to market place by his
transformational abilities and creative intelligence.
Hastings main approach is to give their employee freedom so that they can enjoy their personal
life and also work effectively in workplace. The approaches of Hastings mainly include
compensation packages, personal time off, formal reviews and travel policies far from the
mainstreams. The normal reviews in the organisational structure are eliminated as he prefers
employees and managers must interact face to face in order to discuss about the performance and
issues in workplace. In Netflix, employees don't offer bonus to their staff they are generally
offered market based pay and also staff selects how much compensation would be in the form of
liquidity. The travel policy which is designed by the team of Reed Hastings is based on five
words “Act in Netflix's Best Interest” and also staffs are expected to act like adults. Netflix
generally provide their employees autonomy in order to take as much time off and work it
together for accomplishing the vision of company. In today's generation, leaders are not focusing
on implementing leadership based theories and design that fives value add benefits to followers
and leaders (Dhiman, 2017). Hastings is a great leader as he implements various leadership
theories and styles in order to motivate and encourage their staff to give productive outcomes.
The mindset and actions of Reed Hastings helps in supporting the validity in transformational