Though I do not often find myself in conventional leadership spots, I have found myself exhibiting some of the core Amazon Leadership Principles.
I was on the school broadcast news team in high school, where each week one of us was voted to be the core producer of the episode. I often found myself in this position and perhaps at these moments is when I exhibited my best moments of leadership. Insisting on the Highest Standards was a trait that I had whenever managing the news team. Though at times I may have been an asshole about the work that we were doing, I knew that everyone in the class had pride about the work that they were doing and they themselves wanted their best work to go out to the school’s population. I tried to motivate and critique the work of my peers in the room when I had to.
Another core leadership principle I have practiced is Delivering Results. There was always a strict deadline for the news episodes produced each week. Wednesdays at 11:05am there was a time slot in the day where teachers would air the show and we had to have all our prerecorded news stories ready by the night before to have a soft cushion before the airing of the show. When producing the show, timeliness was always my number one objective: getting the show done in time, pushing people when they were slightly lagging behind and taking part and physically involving myself with groups that would need extra help to finish their segments in time. I always thought that an imperfect result is better than no result at all.
Disagreeing and Committing may have been something I partook in too much to be honest. If I felt like something wasn’t working I would be very vocal about it. Though as mentioned above that I may have come off as an asshole at times, I always tried to be more constructive about arguments than destructive over ideas.
Of the core Amazon Leadership Principles, I would say the “hardest” for me is Be Right, A Lot. I’m an idiot, so I am often wrong. However I try to combat this by attempting to listen to others, I surround myself with people I think are smarter than me so they call me out if I am wrong and I try and understand/hear them out.