Vladimir Putin and Jeff Bezos

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Approaches to leadership

There were always different views about leadership and there is no wrong or right answers to what effective leadership is. Since there are different situations in every organization, culture and country and leadership needs to develop appropriate skills to connect with followers and society in general to satisfy their wants and needs. Leadership theories just help to understand what effective leadership is, and leaders must adapt these theories to satisfy followers, to find their needs and wants. And true leaders have to understand the impact of these different leadership styles to the follower`s behavior (Giuliani and Kurson, 2002). Furthermore, we will consider theories and approaches of Jeff Bezos and Vladimir Putin.

The qualities or traits approach

The qualities or traits approach depends on whether leaders have had enough life experience or they were born with needed type of qualities. Thus, leadership traits and qualities is the thing that individual can be born with or the special skills which can be only developed through the experience. However, many 20th century researchers didn`t find out that most effective and successful leaders may be considered with the general set of traits. Below given list of traits do not prove that individual with these qualities and traits may be considered as successful but this show their potential.

Leadership motivation: Strong belief and desire to lead follower to achieve targeted private or shared goals

Self-confidence: Strong belief in your idea and views.

Achievement drive: high level of initiative, energy, and ambition.

Cognitive ability: ability to receive judgment and critic. Conceptually and intuitive skilled.

Knowledge: readiness to continuous learning and self-improvement.

Honesty and integrity: reliable, trustworthy and openness, responsibility

Qualities and Traits of President Putin

It is obvious that Vladimir Putin is not a born leader, he became a leader. He developed many of his traits and qualities from his childhood. For example, he is from family where his brothers didn`t survive from hunger and actually he had a tough childhood. These types of situations in the past motivated him to develop skills to the better life. And there is no doubt that he developed core traits during his training in KGB and education as civil law mayor in the university. At university he developed skills as diplomacy and he learned how to make relationships with people and how to motivate them. He also improved communication skills by learning foreign languages to communicate with different individuals from different countries. From that time he started to gain respect through his knowledge thus gain followers. Through the KGB training he became very tough, he became better physically as well as mentally. The ability to control his mind reflected him to be an autocratic leader. All this factors: KGB military training, tough childhood, and desire to make him better, his communication skills made him built up leadership qualities and traits to be a leader of Russia. There is another factor which helped him; he is very expansionist and ambitious which shows his controlling and dominant traits. Step by step his discipline and conscientiousness helped him to one of the successful political leader with his communist vision. This vision is the legacy from Soviet Union.

In addition, Putin is dominant leader with strong vision who is able to control Russian federation and can provide citizens better life. He has a power and ability to influence to the political situation in the world. Despite on the fact he has old communist principles but mixed with his democratic vision he perform successful external foreign policy. Nowadays Russia shows improvements in living conditions and improvements in such aspects as military and etc. He is strong political positions have impacted to the fight with the corruption within the country as well.

Qualities and Traits of Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos is a visionary leader because he focuses on long-term goals. When asked what makes his company successful he states, “Willingness to be long term oriented and willingness to be misunderstood, willingness to fail, those cultural traits are important contributors to what we have built at Amazon”. The visionary characteristic of long-term goal setting allows for his firm to make mistakes, be patient and correct the mistakes based on customer feedback data. This in turn reduces large risks and increases innovation by allowing for relatively inexpensive research and development. “We are willing to plant seeds and wait a long time for them to turn into trees…” As a visionary leader Bezos persistently displays an ability to see the big picture.

Bezos is a visionary leader because he has a constant focus on innovation through invention. His theory on innovation is to start with the customer and work backwards. Amazon is constantly inventing using this approach. As a constant reminder to his employees of what is possible and what is to come in the future, he named an Amazon corporate building in Seattle “Day 1”. The intention here was to reiterate that the internet is still in its infancy and that there is still an infinite amount of innovation to capitalize on. This core visionary characteristic of innovating and inventing has enabled Amazon to consistently grow.

Finally, Mr. Bezos focuses his attention on numerous smaller teams within Amazon, using this team mentality to motivate his employees. Best

illustrated by his famous “Two Pizza Team” concept his thought process is that “if you can’t feed your team with two pizzas, then it’s too large.” This emphasis on small-team collaboration fosters feelings of individual ownership and connection that is oftentimes lost in the corporate America hierarchy, and thus is core reason for the success of Amazon. He recognizes that for Amazon to thrive and continue to innovate, he must bring out the best in all the players on his team, and to do so require that each team member feel their contributions are meaningful, and thus an integral part of the company’s success.

The action centered leadership

This leadership model was developed by John Adair (1973). It may be considered as a framework for leadership to manage team or organization.