Chapter 9
Throughout humanity’s history, great leaders have existed. Personally, Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, is an example of these great leaders. Looking at how Bezos has managed to bring Amazon from a small enterprise to a global business paints a picture of the type of leader he is: a transformative leader. According to Beebe and Masterson (2015, p. 228), transformational leaders focus on changing, elevating, and unifying their followers’ goals besides inspiring them to pursue challenging and shared objectives. As a transformative leader, Bezos has led Amazon to greater heights. The popularity of this type of leadership stems from its ability to establish a committed relationship between leaders and their followers. Thus, transformative leaders are capable of transforming others with their words.
Bezos has a unique style of leadership in which he can change styles depending on the individuals he is working with. He posses a strong sense of sarcastic humor and excellent memory that has helped him calm individuals, before making them do what he wants. Bezos’s success in leadership underlines his ability to prioritize customer service, having a small team, thinking long term, taking the risk for market leadership, and making employees think like owners.
Chapter 5
Every group has norms that guide the thinking and actions of its members. Beebe and Masterson (2015, p. 109) define norms as standards or rules that determine appropriate and inappropriate behavior. However, there are times when these norms could make members of a group uneasy. For instance, some of these norms could support prejudice, hazing, or bullying, while others could promote unhealthy behaviors. I was once part of an academic group that only allowed male participants to put forth their ideas during math discussions. Females were not allowed to share ideas with the group as members believed that they could not contribute anything substantial.
Personally, this rule was unfair to ladies; It made me feel uneasy considering the many ladies out there who are intellectually endowed. Unlike the widespread belief that females are not good at math – stemming from the conception that mathematics is a difficult discipline and only males have enough self-confidence to tackle math problems. The group norm illustrated how the non-participation of girls in mathematics is now a significant concern. It was time the group changed this rule.
Regarding the significance of this rule, I was not the only one against it. Two of my fellow group members were also concerned about the rule and how it limited female participation. To challenge this norm, I tried broaching the topic with the members who believed that it was wrong to restrict female participation during group discussions. We organized a separate meeting after one of the usual group discussions and planned how we would put forward our proposal. The following day, we requested a meeting with the rest of the members and presented our proposal.
Even though some of the members were somehow reluctant to change this rule, the discussion went on smoothly with minimal resistance. Following a lengthy discussion, all members agreed to change this rule. From this experience, it was evident that individuals need to take charge of their specific groups and change norms that threaten group productivity or those that contribute to personal harm. When deciding whether to challenge, to distance, or leave the group, one needs to consider the consequences of their decision.