The dynamics of the 21 st century require new leadership approaches. Business are increasing exposed to challenging business conditions such as stiff competition, high business costs, and an ever-changing regulatory environment. These challenging conditions require leaders who can adapt their behaviors and approaches to suit prevailing conditions. The current Corona Virus pandemic has exposed the global economy to uncertainty. With the appropriate leadership style, business leaders can develop strategies to maximize efficiency to attain organizational objectives. Jeff Bezos is a modern leaders who exemplifies the significance of leadership in attiring organizational success. He is the founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of amazon.com, an internet conglomerate that deals in e-commerce, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and digital streaming.
Jeff Bezos is a transformational leader due to his charismatic approach to vision and commitment to the relationship with his employees. Transformational leadership is the opposite of transactional leadership, which uses the “give and take approach.” Leaders who espouse transformational qualities are able to change their followers through their words (Senge, 2010). They are able to trigger big changes in their subordinate’s thinking, which leads to behavioral change and increases the motivation to attain extraordinary feats.
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One of the leadership traits of a transformational leader is the ability to communicate a grand vision to the employees. Amazon’s vision is to build the globe’s customer-centric company, where customers’ needs take precedence. Although the vision was established in 1999, it holds true even today. Everything that the company does starts with satisfying the customer and working backwards. Amazon’s focus on the customer does not end with organizational practices. Under his leadership, Amazon is willing to forego temporary profitability over long-term advantage in the company’s commitment to customers.
The other quality of Bezos that makes him a transformational leader is charisma. Charisma stems from the belief that that subordinates are over-managed and under-led (Senge, 2010). The significance of charisma in transformational leadership it the role it plays in influencing employees to be like their leader. A charismatic leader is an idealized risk-taker to follows a set of ethical beliefs and vales. The idealized impact of the leader creates trust among employees because they have confidence in him. Bezos displays charismatic traits because he does not miss an opportunity to self-promote. Regardless of the occasion, Bezos has a knack for casual self-promotion. He does not miss an opportunity to promote Amazon and its products, which makes them irresistible to employees and customers.
According to Senge (2010), transformational leaders inspire a sense of purpose, motivation and confidence in their followers. They requires enthusiasm, optimism, and excellent communication skills to be able to communicate clear inspirational messages. Jeff Bezos possesses these traits because he takes huge risks that often leads to failure, but is able to convince employees that they are risks worth taking. According to Bezos, taking risky and bold decisions is experimentation, which is difficult to predict if they are going to succeed. However, he believes that few successes from risky ventures compensate from the many ideas that failed.
Finally, transformational leaders encourage creativity and autonomy among his followers (Senge, 2010). Transformational leaders promote a culture of creativity and innovation because employees are encouraged and supported to take part in the decision making processes. At Amazon, employees are their own leaders because they have complete control over their ideas, projects, and thinking. It means that Bezos puts faith in people to develop ideas and innovations that can help the company grow.
Reference
Senge, P. M., & Random House. (2006). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization . New York: Currency.
