When was the last time your communications skills were put to the test?
Your interviewer is curious about how growing as a leader has impacted your sense of responsibility. Sometimes taking charge and remaining humble while getting everybody on the same page isn't easy, especially when you meet resistance and have to prove yourself. When your communication skills are tested, it is always incumbent on the more skilled communicator to meet the lesser-skilled communicator more than halfway. This requires humility, empathy, and a strong sense of responsibility for your leadership position. So share the communication skills you employed when relaying your story and explain how you ultimately achieved success.
Jeff Bezos said, "People must see that approaching the world in a more intellectually humble fashion is both rational and beneficial. Intellectual humility is rational in the sense that we can't all be right in most of our disagreements. We are often irrationally overconfident, and the evidence on which our beliefs and viewpoints are based is often rather flimsy. So why would rational people be as sure of themselves as most of us are?"
Under the Leadership Principle, 'Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility,' Amazon states, "We are far from perfect. We must be humble and thoughtful about even the secondary effects of our actions. We must begin each day with a determination to make better, do better, and be better for our customers, our employees, our partners, and the world at large. And we must end every day knowing we can do even more tomorrow. Leaders create more than they consume and always leave things better than how they found them."
"I was working with someone in senior management with a big personality. This person believed they were always right. Anytime they felt challenged, they would talk over you. It was impossible to get in a word edge-wise. Once, when I tried to explain a situation that directly affected them, this person kept drawing the wrong conclusion. Once they'd made up their mind that what they misunderstood was reality, they heard nothing else. So I ended the conversation by saying I would carefully consider their response and get back to them shortly. I then sat down at my computer and constructed a carefully worded email. Having them read what I was trying to say circumvented their interruptions, and I was able to get my point across. After I sent the email, they thanked me and closed with, 'I wish you had just said all of this to begin with. If you had, it would've saved us all a lot of time.' And I was fine with that. The point is, the message sent was now the message received."
Unlock all 30 Amazon questions
Prepare for behavioral questions tied to Amazon's 16 Leadership Principles framework.
Get Started