Leadership Principle Worksheet
This worksheet was designed to share how I align my experience with Amazon’s Leadership Principles. I’ve written down a couple of detailed examples from my experience that relate to each of Amazon’s Leadership Principles. Enjoy! Sandra Burns
Earn Trust: Leaders listen attentively, speak candidly, and treat others respectfully. They are vocally self-critical, even when doing so is awkward or embarrassing. Leaders do not believe they or their team’s body odor smells of perfume. They benchmark themselves and their teams against the best.
Example 1:
Situation: What do they really want?
Task: Listen to what the customer wants to learn or do.
Action: When taking to customers I would ask them: What do you want to learn? Why do you want to take this course? What do you want to create?
Result: I sometimes found out issues to later be avoided. For example, if they called to book a Photoshop class to layout newsletters. I would explain that actually they need InDesign to do that and explained the differences and how even both could be helpful. Sometimes they added another class hearing how both could work together. In the end, I’ve earned the trust of my training clients, asking what they really wanted, taking an interest in solving their issues and answering their questions.
Example 2:
Situation: Many team files had multiple issues, sometimes the same issues that could be avoided.
Task: Show the team how to fix these issues.
Action: In a very compassionate way I would show them how they could fix certain issues they were having.
Result: I’ve earned the trust of my team at Amex, helping them through issues. They didn’t feel as frustrated. They also confided in me when they did have an issue and thanked me for helping them. Many companies don’t offer that feeling we are in a safe place to communicate issues, those with the knowledge keep it to themselves while other struggle, then projects leak into deadlines or scope creep. A healthy functional company allows for sharing, learning and thriving together.
Example 3:
Situation: My boss at Schwab piling up work on me, more projects than others.
Task: Find out why I am getting so much more work than the others.
Action: I asked my boss why I have been given yet another project.
Result: Because you are fast, basically he trusted me to get the job done.
Example 4:
Situation: Hundreds maybe thousands of files to brand and convert to html. My AMEX boss hired more people to help. She needed help in helping her with this extended team.
Task: Who is interested in being a Sr. ID as she posed in a meeting.
Action: As I was formulating an email to put my name in the hat and why I felt I would like to take this on. I get an IM from her asking me she hopes I will take the position if I am interested.
Result: I quickly finish my letter not to oversell her, lol, and sent it to her, yes, I am and she quickly announced I was her new SR ID to aid her with the dozen of ID’s we now had. I guess she felt she had to put it out there she was looking vs. things go behind the scene although it appears she already made her choice. I feel she trusted me to help her.
Sandra J. Burns, M.Ed. 