Leadership and Media: Jeff Bezos' Traits, Behaviours and Transformational Leadership Approach

This report discusses Jeff Bezos' traits, behaviours and transformational leadership approach in the media industry. It also explores the impact of his leadership style on employees and the organisation, and how external changes influence his leadership approach.

Business leader from the
media - Jeff Bezos

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................4
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................4
Describe the leader’s traits and behaviours and approaches to leadership.............................4
What is it about a particular leadership model or author’s point of view that is coming through
in practice with your leader....................................................................................................5
Impact of the leadership style/approach on the employee and organisation..........................6
Does the leader conform more to one particular model of leadership than to another..........7
Leader develop/influence/empower/motivate leadership in individuals, teams and or the
organisation............................................................................................................................7
How has the leadership approach been influenced by the organisation’s external global and/or
local contextual changes/trends..............................................................................................8
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................9
REFERENCE.................................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
Leadership is defined as the ability of an individual or group of individuals that enables
them to influence and guide followers and other members of organisation to perform operations
in defined manner. It is the art of motivating and inspiring people towards attaining common
goals and objectives in efficient manner (Beddo, Lanum, and Kawamoto, 2017). Leader is the
person who have charge to convince and motivated other people. Great leader has quality to
enhance confidence in others and move their actions.
In this report, chosen leader is Jeff Bezos who is an American entrepreneur, investor,
media proprietor and computer engineer born in January 12, 1964. Jeff Bezos is the executive
and founder of Amazon and served at the position of CEO and president. The company has
began as an online book store and expanded to variety of other e-commerce products and
services that includes cloud computing, artificial intelligence, video and audio streaming and
various others. Jeff Bezos is considered as the wealthiest or second-wealthiest person in the
world according to both Bloonberg's Billionaries Index and Forbes.
This report covers traits, behaviour of Jeff Bezos and leadership approaches that are
adopted by the leader. Impacts of leadership style on employees and organisation as well as how
leader develop or influence leadership in individual, team and organisation are explained.
Furthermore, influences of external changes and tends on leadership approaches are mentioned
in this project report.
MAIN BODY
Describe the leader’s traits and behaviours and approaches to leadership
Traits of Jeff Bezos:
Risk Taker: Jeff Bezos has the trait or skill of taking risk for exploring opportunity in
calculative manner. The entrepreneur take risk to start his own business without having money,
investors of his business are only his parents. He know that there is 70% chances of failure but
his perseverance ability enables his to take risk. The trait of risk taking make him richest man
and successful entrepreneur in the world.
Highly competitive: One of the renowned quality of Jeff Bezos is his competitive
attitude. He doesn't believe in creating competition, he has aim of eliminating the factor of

competitiveness. As Amazon provides child products and other organisations also dealing in
same products but Jeff Bezos dropped prices of their products in dramatical manner to stand out
from competition. Competitive trait of Jeff Bezos make him come out on the top as a winner.
Behaviour of Jeff Bezos:
Realistic: Jeff Bezos is hardcore realist that enables him to become most aspiring as well
as successful entrepreneur. He is the most realist person who evaluates various probabilities and
possibilities before taking decisions and actions. He has recognised every adverse aspects and
take decisions on the bases of his assessment.
Ready to adopt changes: Jeff Bezos is known for his transformational and task-oriented
behaviour. He evaluates changes in current trends and always ready to adopt them for
betterment. He is innovative as well as envision by nature that enables him to gain various
opportunities to attain success in life.
leadership approaches:
Transformational leadership approach: Transformational leadership is the defined as
the leadership approach in which leaders inspire, encourage and motivates employees to innovate
and create changes that enables them to ensure business growth and success in future.
Transformational approach is the cause of changes in individual and social system. It creates
positive and valuable changes in followers with the objective of developing followers into
leaders (Benson, 2018). Jeff Bezos adopts transformational leadership approach to run business
in efficient manner. For the purpose of transforming its business, he searches various ways to
become innovative. He is the leaders who is known for planning and delivering quality results
through creativity.
Democratic leadership approach: Democratic leadership approach is related to the
approach in which leaders involve team members in the process of decision-making. Leaders
motivates employees to take active role in business decisions through provide their ideas,
opinions and suggestions (Jeff Bezos Leadership Style, 2021). Jeff Bezos implements this
approach in organisation to take decisions. It motivates employees and enhance their
performance as well.

What is it about a particular leadership model or author’s point of view that is coming through in
practice with your leader
Jeff Bezos uses transformational leadership style in business which is related to the
approach where leaders work with team and followers beyond their self-interest to identify
requirements of changes, developing visions to guide changes by influence as well as
implemented these changes in organisation to with committed members of group. Jeff Bezos is
the CEO of Amazon which is the example of pioneered e-commerce. There are various factors
that influence leader to adopt transformational approach. First of qualifying transformational
leadership is Core repositioning in which organisation creates reposition of business activities
through investing in new business, whereas Amazon expands its core retaining platform in
several new categories like food and steaming content as well as respective organisation is
developed as the world's largest cloud computing enterprise.
Through implementing transformational leadership approach in organisation brings
changes in organisation activities and products through launching new products services and
business model. These changes provides extra revenue to organisation that ensures organisational
growth and development in competitive business environment. For example Amazon Web
Services are just 10% of Amazon's $150 billion revenue is generating extra profits.
Organisational financial performance which is related to growth, profits and stock performance
as compared to benchmark performance. Amazon has revalued 40% in last year.
The understanding and knowledge of these matrix enables Jeff Bezos to make change in
inside business environment to attain success in competitive business. Implementation is changes
through using transformational leadership helps Amazon to enhance overall performance and
profitability of organisation (Weber, 2019). There are some areas that are not achieved by the
leader during the execution of changes in organisation such as changes are not sustainable in
sustainable in business environment until they are not implement in efficient manner. Respective
organisation works on the factor to attain long-lasting success in competitive business
environment.
Impact of the leadership style/approach on the employee and organisation
Impact on employees: In transformational leadership, leaders set specific standards for
performance and demonstrate confidence in employees that enhances their motivational and
creativity level. It enables employees to adopt changes and perform defined task in efficient

manner. It provides room to employees to become creative that help them to analyse situations
and find appropriate and creative solution that enhances their performance level.
Transformational leadership approach enhances employees compassion, sensitivity, empathy and
builds effective relationship (Dyer, Furr, and Lefrandt, 2019). It enhance confidence level of
employees and encourage them towards their individual growth and development.
Impact on organisational culture: Transformational leadership approach is tend as a
change agent in an organisation that impacts business culture. In Amazon, Jeff Bezos adopts
transformational leadership that facilitates to maintain trust as well as create a learning culture
within organisation. It enables organisational culture through develop flexibility to adopt changes
in efficient manner that lead business towards attaining success in future. Leadership approach
enhance high level of engagement of employees that develops positive culture of Amazon.
Does the leader conform more to one particular model of leadership than to another
Jeff Bezos adopts transformational leadership style to lead business in right direction. He
commands a descriptive organisation and uses cultural change for driving engagement. He is
known for his ability to motivate and inspire employees with clear goals and visions of
organisational future as well as defined essential steps that are important to achieve goals and
objectives (Gershon, 2018).
In transformational leadership, Jeff Bezos inspire and motivates team towards attaining
business goals and objectives in most efficient manner. It is most suitable leadership approach
for Amazon as compared to other leadership styles because it unite whole team members of
organisation towards attaining common cause and enhance their potentiality to achieve them
(Jeff Bezos: The best living transformational leader as example, 2021). There are various reasons
that enables Jeff Bezos to adopt transformational leadership approach them others because it
helps to make work meaningful for both leader and follower (Noam, 2018). This leadership
empowers employees, enhance their job satisfaction, sense of attachment form organisation and
decrease their frustration and anger level. It enhances workers connection with organisation and
help to stay them in Amazon for longer period of time.
Leader develop/influence/empower/motivate leadership in individuals, teams and or the
organisation
In context of individuals: Leaders inspire employees through appeasing their
performance by providing rewards and recognition in front of others. It enable them to work in

more efficient manner. Jeff Bezos communicate all roles and responsibilities that inspire them to
perform operations efficiently. Leader motivates employees by telling them success stories that
they can adopt to improve their skills and competencies. Leader provide chance to individuals to
interact with current leaders that enable them to grab knowledge and understanding regarding
how to perform functions with great leadership (Kakabadse,Bank,and Vinnicombe, 2018).
Leaders educate, train employees and provide them support through provide clear direction.
In context of team: Jeff Bezos provides various training and development opportunities
that lead them to enhance their skills and capabilities. Leader provide clear guidance and road-
map to group members and lead them at every stage of task that empower them to adopt
leadership skills. Leaders develop leadership in employees through provide them challenging
task with clear deadline and expectations that help whole team to find innovative solutions of
problems that lead their efforts in right direction.
In context of organisation: Leader develop effective goals and objectives of
organisation and lead employees through providing clear guidance to perform operations
efficiently. Leaders ensure proper organisation of employees as well as resources to attain
objectives in best possible manner. Leaders supervise or evaluates employees performance to
ensure that determined task are fulfilled in defined period of time (Muenjohn, and McMurray,
2018). Leaders provide feedbacks to employees for their improvement and allocate that empower
them to contribute in organisational objectives. It helps business to lead in right direction and
enhances overall performance as well as higher profitability objectives. Leaders can strengthen
organizational values through helping its organisational employees grow and develop by goal
setting, opportunities, and recognition.
How has the leadership approach been influenced by the organisation’s external global and/or
local contextual changes/trends
There are various local contextual changes that are related to legal and regulatory
framework, political and governance context and cultural characteristics that influence leadership
approach of organisation. As in Amazon, transformational leadership approach is adopted that is
affected by the changes in legal regulatory framework and economic changes. If there are some
changes or new trends are measured in external business environment at global level, to deal
with that factor organisation bring innovation in their products and services that influence
leadership style because organisation has to create changes in goals and objectives, process and

working style accordantly (Lubián and Esteves, 2017). Market trends are changing on regular
bases on the requirements of customers, in order to remain competitive in environment
organisation create changes in organisation and leadership styles as well.
Leaders have to change their strategies to influence employees accordingly and provide
them motivation as per their needs and demands. Changes in political and economic environment
also impacts business activities positive and negative manner, leaders analyse than factors
properly than formulates strategies to gain competitive advantages then other competitors.
CONCLUSION
As per above report, it can be concluded that leadership is the process that enables
organisation to inspire and motivates employees to perform defined functions in efficient
manner. There are various traits, characteristics and behaviour that enables an individual to
become successful leader. In business various leadership approaches are adopted by the
organisation that guide business to run in right direction. Leadership styles impacts on
performance of employees and organisation. Leaders analyse these impacts than take decisions
accordingly. In business environment, various factors or changes that impacts on business
leadership approaches. Jeff Bezos Leadership Style

REFERENCE
Book and journal
Beddo, S. J., Lanum, J. and Kawamoto, C., 2017. A retrospective study of escalation and
problematic approaches of corporate executives: An analysis of one Fortune 50
company. Journal of Threat Assessment and Management, 4(1), p.12.
Benson, R., 2018. Rethinking the sociology of media ownership. In Routledge handbook of
cultural sociology (pp. 387-396). Routledge.
Dyer, J., Furr, N. and Lefrandt, C., 2019. Innovation Capital: How to Compete--and Win--Like
the World’s Most Innovative Leaders. Harvard Business Press.
Gershon, R.A., 2018. Media innovation: Three strategic approaches to business transformation.
In Handbook of media management and economics (pp. 241-258). Routledge.
Mooers, J., 2020. Review and analysis of all shareholder letters from Warren Buffett
and Jeff Bezos. Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University Working
Paper, (243).
Kakabadse, A., Bank, J. and Vinnicombe, S., 2018. Working in organisations. Routledge.
Lubián, F.J.L. and Esteves, J., 2017. The New Digital Economy. In Value in a Digital World (pp.
1-25). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Muenjohn, N. and McMurray, A., 2018. LEADERSHIP AND DECISION
MAKING. Leadership: Regional and Global Perspectives, p.379.
Noam, E., 2018. Beyond the mogul: From media conglomerates to portfolio
media. Journalism, 19(8), pp.1096-1130.
Weber, L., 2019. Restoring trust and rebuilding reputation: The critical roles of corporate
purpose, earned media and the new CEO mandate. Journal of Digital & Social Media
Marketing, 6(4), pp.332-340.
Online:
Jeff Bezos: The best living transformational leader as example.2021 [Online] available
through :<https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/jeff-bezos-best-living-transformational-
leader-f%C3%A9lix-de-andr%C3%A9s>
Jeff Bezos Leadership Style.2021 [Online] available through
:<https://financhill.com/blog/investing/jeff-bezos-leadership-style>