What makes a Great Leader? (Reed Hustings)

A great leader possesses various qualities and skills such as clear vision, integrity, humility, and the ability to inspire and motivate employees. Reed Hastings is an effective leader who implements various leadership styles and theories such as transformational leadership, reciprocity, and creative intelligence to motivate and encourage his employees to give productive outcomes.

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

leadership, Cialdini's Social influence and Triarchic theory of intelligence. Due to his
achievement and leadership strategy, Reed Hasting is famous for effective leader.
“Triarchic theory of intelligence is based on intelligence which is defined as an ability to
accomplish the success in life based on sociocultural and personal standards context.” In order to
achieve the success, it is important to have an ability to capitalise on one's strength and
compensate for one's weakness. According to this theory, success can be gained through balance
of creative, practical abilities and capabilities in order to select, shape and adapt the environment
(Lange, Bormann and Rowold, 2018). As per the viewpoint of Robert Sternberg's proposed
theory of human intelligence, there are various set of universal mental process underlies. There
are three aspects of intelligence such as creative intelligence, analytical intelligence and practical
intelligence. The theory of intelligence is developed as an alternative to the concept of general
intelligence factor and also it is comprised of sub theories such as experiential, contextual and
componential. Triarchic theory of intelligence was developed by Sternberg in 1985 as an
alternative to the idea of general intelligence factor. Sternberg also argues that practical
intelligence and creative intelligence is equally important for organisation. He depicts that
intelligence is not fixed and comprises a set of abilities that can be developed in order to produce
effective and efficient ideas (Carbajal, 2018). This theory has many benefits but also few
criticism which influence leader to implement the theory. In practical intelligence, Sternberg
called the ability of an individual to successfully interact with everyday world practical
intelligence. The creative intelligence develops an ability of an individual to use existing
knowledge in order to create new ways to handle new problems and deal in new situation.
Creative intelligence is related to experiential sub theory. In analytical intelligence, individual
use to solve their problems and measured the intelligence on the basis of standard IQ test.
Reed Hastings implements this theory in order to improve the intelligence level of its employees
in terms of creative, analytical and practical form. He focuses on increasing the creative
intelligence of its employees so that they can generate new ideas to develop and improve the
services in order to attract more and more customers and improve the performance of Netflix.
Creative intelligence plays an important role for Netflix and employees as it improves the
performance and productivity of business and also produce the innovative strategies in order to

compete with its competitors. By focusing on creative intelligence, company can focus on
improving the skills and knowledge of employees and also gain competitive advantage over its
competitors. Reed Hastings also focuses on improving the analytical intelligence of its
employees so that they can know what customer really want and evaluate the goals for operation
management (Akkaya, 2021). The person with analytical intelligence focus on improving the
process management and also identify the needs of customer in advance that helps in attracting
and retaining customer and develop strong customer base of Netflix. The brand also focuses on
improving the practical intelligence of their employees as it is all about common sense
reasoning. It generally results in experimental hands on operating style that leads to specific
learning. But this theory also has some negative aspects and many of psychologist argues that
this theory is not accurate to assume traditional IQ test as it doesn't measure practical
intelligence.
The leadership style which is implemented by Reed Hastings in its workplace is transformational
leadership as it helps in engaging, inspiring and supporting the employees due to which they give
productive outcomes in achieving the business goals and objectives. Hastings is best known for
transformational leader as he is the one that lead their team with example and use rapport,
empathy and inspiration to engage their employees to contribute their best performance
(Kappelman and et. al., 2019). By adopting this leadership style, leader inspires, encourage and
motivate their employees in order to produce creative and innovative ideas that can bring
changes and shape the future success of business. As an transformational leader, Reed encourage
the motivation and positive development of their employees and fosters an ethical working
environment with clear values, standards and priorities (Parker, Holesgrove, and Pathak, 2015).
It also helps in building company's culture by encouraging staff to move from an attitude of self-
interest to a mind-set so that they can work on common goal. Reed Hastings also provide
coaching and mentoring their employees but allow them, to make decision and take their
ownership of tasks. The positive aspects of using transformational leadership is that it lowers
down the staff turnover by making them feel valuable and engaged in organisation, by adopting
transformational leadership style owner has keep the company open, ethical and honest, it helps
in encouraging changes and also considered as effective form of leadership. In transformational
leadership style new corporate vision can be easily formulated due to which they can recognise
the gaps and allow them to make adjustments or recommendation to correct the situation (Peters,

2018). It also helps in creating enthusiasm by encouraging employees to be successful in their
pursuit of new vision and experience that success as well. Transformational leaders create
enthusiasm within employees by their ranks due to which their productivity, morale gets
increased and the turnover rate of employees gets lower (Haque, Fernando and Caputi, 2019).
But it also has some negative aspects such as it develops negative outcomes and also requires
consistent and consistent feedback in order to maintain enthusiasm of their team so that they can
achieve the goals in effective and efficient manner. In order to keep enthusiasm high, it is
important to provide consistent stream of feedback about the progress. It is important for
transformational leaders to make their followers agree with them so that they can achieve
common goals.
Reed Hastings has used various strategies of leadership in order to change the business
performance and lives of people. By bringing Netflix, Reed Hastings creates disruption through
technology by expanding its customer base at continual pace such as with the implementation of
pocket friendly package of the consumers, the company is able to capture the large market share
appropriately. The company was shipping DVDs through the mail and they also focus on
eliminating the late fees that leads to blockbuster's crush. According to the time, they moved up
from mailing the content to streaming movies in good and high quality. Netflix has already
begun the production of its unique content in order to attract more and more customer towards
the brand. The one of the benefit which is given by Reed Hastings is flexibility to its consumer
so that they can watch any content with convenience. Customers of Netflix can watch the content
on demand and make sure to give smooth experiences with personalised tastes. The other
changes which is bring by Reed Hastings in the lives of people are providing variety of options
in the range of movie, documentaries and TV series by distributing partners (Harrison, Burnard
and Paul, 2017). Netflix also planned to spend more on the content in order to attract and retain
more and more customer towards the brand (Fadipe, 2019). They also enhance the user
experience by offering customer created preview videos so that they can download and watch
shows offline. It also gives an opportunity to facilitate to share the Netflix account and gives 30
days free trial. Reed Hastings also provides personalised experience through Netflix
recommendation engine where it knows when customer is watching and how many episodes they
have watched. He uses the machine learning in efficient way in order to help their algorithms
learn enable the platform to automate the millions of decisions as per the user activities. Netflix

offers AD free content to their customer due to which they prefer to use this platform as people
generally get irritated if AD comes frequently between their favourite program time. The ad
blocking software is becoming popular due to the continuous ad coming between the favourite
program time (Dawson and et. al., 2018). It helps people to prevent from annoying and
irrelevant ads and give ads free experience to its customer in order to increase the customer base
and retain more and more people towards the brand. Another leadership strategy which is used
by Reed Hastings is to offer feedback anytime and anywhere. Netflix appreciate the feedbacks
comes from customer and focuses on solving the issues in order to gain competitive advantage
and gain loyalty of consumers.
There are several leadership styles that I can adopt in the business in order to increase their
efficiency and productivity in the business. Leadership style must be chosen correctly as this
assist the business in developing and managing the workforce according to the goals and
objectives (Naqshbandi and Jasimuddin, 2018). Leadership styles help the organisation in setting
up a format at which the organisation will conduct its further activities.
Autocratic Leadership style, the power is centralised and the decision making power is limited to
one person. In this type of leadership, the authority of making decision generally lies in the hands
of top authority. This leadership is generally implemented in the businesses where the decisions
making is tough and the decisions highly influence the operations and profitability of the
business. I do not believe in such kind of leadership styles as I am an open minded person and
thinks that everyone's opinion and ideas are good enough and have the capacity to change the
business prospects. I do not promote usage of this leadership style in Netflix.
Roles and responsibilities of leaders in Autocratic leadership style are that he leaders are fully
responsible for making decision in the organisation and these decision must be well backed by
information and facts (Wang and Li, 2019). The decision taken by me in the organisation must
be appropriate for everyone who is associated with the business. The decision made by me must
be made on their own belief as they cannot take opinions and ideas of anyone else in the decision
making process.
Democratic leadership style, this leadership style promotes the concept of decentralisation and
democracy where every person has a right to convey his ideas and opinions in the major decision
making part of the business. This leadership style is generally partially imparted by the

organisation as there are some major disadvantages of using this leadership style in the business
(Berger, 2020).
I have implemented the delegation of authority and responsibility in Netflix but only to some
extent as Netflix is a multinational company and their decisions can impact the highly operations
and profitability of the business. Therefore Netflix only delegates the power of authority and
responsibility to middle level of management and that too at only some extent.
Roles and responsibilities of leaders in Democratic leadership style are that the leaders using the
democratic leadership style must be open minded as it requires extensive listening of the ideas of
other people. It is the responsibility of the leader to listen to the various ideas that the employees
have and comprehend it and analyse if this idea is productive enough for the company or not. My
role is to effectively communicate the situations that the organisation is facing so that the
employees can contribute to the decision making process and help the organisation in coming out
of the problem. The other role I need to fulfill is to time to time supervise the tasks and decisions
that are taken by the employees so that they can know that they are not blindly following the
style and employees will also make decisions with full attentiveness and concern.
Laissez-faire leadership style, this leadership style revolves around the concept where the leader
generally passes the responsibilities that they have to their subordinates and they further take no
initiative in bettering the organisation (Qiu, Dooley and Xie, 2020). This kind of leader does not
help at all in attaining the goals as they just keeping passing on the roles and responsibilities that
are assigned to them . They do not take part in the goals setting and further transfers this task to
the team. These leadership is focused on the concept of not interfering in the decisions and tasks
of their employees.
They think that the employees can give their best if they are not interfered in their work and they
create their own guidance throughout the journey in the corporate. This leadership also ignores
the constant pushing of the employees in order to make them achieve the goal. I do not apply this
leadership style much in the organisation as their operations is on a big scale across the world
and hence the decision making and guidance is essential in the business. I do not blindly follow
this leadership style in the business, I have set objectives and goals for the employees but they
are not much interfered during their work which helps in generating a feeling of trust and
credibility on each other.

Roles and responsibilities of leaders in Democratic leadership style are as that the leaders main
role is to effectively communicate the tasks and responsibilities that they are assigning to their
employees. The communication must be clear enough so that the employees understand what
they are expected to do in the organisation. They should not interfere in the work and tasks that
are assigned to the employees. The do not stop the employees in putting ideas in the business as
it will be against the leadership style. The employees are totally on their own and they are
expected to deliver good results in the organisation.
Plan for the leadership of change at an appropriate level of complexity is that as there are several
complexities of situations in the business where the applied style of leadership is not compatible
enough to support the organisation in tough situation. The leaders strategies must be flexible so
that they can easily change in the situations where their current style becomes obsolete and of no
use. (Hesse, 2018). Netflix currently works on the decentralised and centralised mixture of
leadership style where they evaluate the process and then decide the level of decision making
that needs to be given to the employees working in the organisation. There are certain situations
in the organisation where the uncertain events lead to several complexities and the leader is
unable to come to any final decision using their current state of strategies. To avoid these
situations the organisation must develop a plan which can help them in easily adopting to the
environment. The plan to adopt to leadership of change by myself in Netflix is implied on the
business with the help of three that are Communicate, through this the leaders must be able to
communicate the purpose of the change and how the change will help the business in addressing
the purpose of business. The communication with the people that are closely associated with the
operations of business. This helps in effectively adopting to the new change in the leadership
style. I am great communicator and I have good capability of effectively influencing the persons
by telling them the purpose behind the change that the organisation needs to go through.
Collaborate, through this the active binding and working in the team which enables the
organisation in managing the operations with most effectiveness and efficiency. The critical part
of bringing change in the organisation is to make everyone in the organisation excited about the
new change that the business is about to enter in. The employees must fully contribute to the
process and collaborate with the employees and help the leader in successfully implementing the
change in the organisation . I have developed a feeling of team building in the organisation
which helps the people in collaborating and working together in order to fulfil the same purpose.

Commitment, through this successful leaders can only developed if they are fully committed to
the work. Change in the organisation can be difficult but the company must address this change
with full and mere commitment (Sanders, 2017). The leaders and the employee must walk out of
their comfort zone in order to embrace the new change that is going to happen in the company's
operation and overall leadership pattern. I am sheerly committed so that I can attain the goals
they are set in the organisation. Netflix uses several techniques of problem solving in the
organisation to which they devote themselves in the business.
CONCLUSION
From the preceding discussion it can be concluded that leadership is one of the prime part of the
organisation as it plays a huge role in accomplishing goals and making the organisation succeed.
Further the leader must have skills of influencing and motivating so that they can push the
employees in helping to attain the set objective. There are different types of leadership styles
which can be adopted by the leader in order to ensure that the business becomes well versed in
operations and profitability. There are different roles and responsibilities that are associated with
every type of leadership style and the leaders must have relevant skills so that they can address
the problems that the business is going through. Further the leaders must be flexible enough to
adapt to new leadership style in case there is some change in the situation and the current
leadership style is unable to serve the purpose. The companies can further use a mixed leadership
style in the organisation which is able to serve the purpose and further helps in the long term
growth of the business.

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