The leadership philosophy of Tony Hsieh is about empowering employees. While Hsieh’s leadership has enabled Zappos to excel in many ways, it has also made tremendous impacts outside the company. The leadership philosophy that focuses on happiness as a common denominator extends its effects beyond Zappos.com’s employees and customers.
The company culture he has developed also points to his concern for employees; Hsieh believes that happy employees make happy customers, and he strives to make both happen every day (Reiss, 2010). Authentic leaders establish trusting relationships with others (Northouse, 2012).
Tony Hsieh has made customer satisfaction and company culture his missions, and he is passionate about both. He regularly states that money shouldn’t be a number-one goal, and that passion is what makes a business grow and succeed (Reiss, 2010).
However, that is exactly what Tony Hsieh, founder and CEO of Zappos, chose to do. And as it turns out, this leadership philosophy has empowered Hsieh as one of today’s boldest leaders.
According to an article from Forbes, Hsieh's key leadership lessons included defining the core values that guide each person's decision-making process, training teams to be self-organised, driving engagement through perks, and a hire-slow fire-fast approach.
Tony Hsieh - Leadership Style & Principles One of the core beliefs Tony Hsieh created and believed in is “Be Adventurous, Creative and Open-Minded.” Effective leaders must learn to be more open-minded, which means being receptive to the views, ideas and knowledge of others.
We can all learn from Tony Hsieh's leadership ideas, as embodied by the Zappos Core Values:Deliver “WOW” through service.Embrace and drive change.Create fun and a little weirdness.Be adventurous, creative, and open-minded.Pursue growth and learning.Build open and honest relationships with communication.More items...•
Why do you think Tony Hsieh is making this change? Why is he doing it now? Hsieh has adopted this change because of certain benefits that Holacracy movement provides. Hsieh wanted to create an innovative organization to tap the market opportunities and buildstrong collaboration in the teams.
Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh reveals 3 personality traits successful entrepreneurs have“One is being comfortable with ambiguity.“Second is a strong sense of curiosity.“And third — not as strong as the first two but still over-indexing compared to the general population — is emotional intelligence,” he said.
One of the most encompassing approaches to leadership, transformational leadership is concerned with the process of how certain leaders, like Tony Hsieh, are able to inspire followers to do great things.
Zappos Founder Tony Hsieh's Friends, Family Feud Over His $500 Million Estate - WSJ. News Corp is a global, diversified media and information services company focused on creating and distributing authoritative and engaging content and other products and services. This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only.
Tony Hsieh was a legendary entrepreneur who built Zappos and sold the online shoe retailer to Amazon for $1.2 billion in 2009. He was known for unusual experiments in management and business structure, and for pursuing long-term passions over short-term profits, as described in his 2010 book, Delivering Happiness.
transformational leaderJeff Bezos is widely recognized as a transformational leader — someone who motivates and inspires team members to achieve more than they thought possible. Bezos ensures that everyone on his team is committed to the vision for the organization.
The fact that 14% of the employees took Hsieh up on his offer if they weren't fullycommitted to the company's new direction. Changing culture and structure can absolutelybother some employees and make them leave. It is common for employees to resign due tochanges in the company that is running in a different way.
Core values include: be humble, do more with less, be passionate and determined, and create fun and a little weirdness. Zappos doesn't hire very experienced workers. They bring almost everyone in at an entry level and grow their talent from within.
Zappos is known for its weird, family spirit, and fun workplace culture. Happiness is at the core of Zappos culture. Great culture leads to employee happiness; happy employees drive higher engagement and profitability, and low turnover. Zappos has a customer-centric culture, as expressed in its purpose and core values.
Tony Hsieh, CEO of shoe retail giant Zappos.com, is a more current real-life example of authentic leadership. Hsieh joined Zappos after selling a company he co-founded to Microsoft at the age of 24, and was able to not only improve sales exponentially, but also to create a company culture that landed Zappos on the “Best Companies ...
Bill George developed an approach toward authentic leadership that examines the qualities and characteristics of authentic leaders rather than focusing on the actions of leaders in response to organizational problems (Northouse, 2012). The five basic characteristics identified by George, when examined in the context of Tony Hsieh’s leadership, ...
The intrapersonal perspective of authentic leadership focuses on the leader and characteristics like self-concept, while the interpersonal perspective defines authentic leadership as a relational process created by leaders and followers (Northouse, 2012).
Hsieh, from a young age, demonstrated an entrepreneurial spirit; he was only 24 years old when he became a millionaire after selling LinkExchange, which he had co-founded, to Microsoft in 1999 (Reiss, 2010). Zappos, as his new project, soared in sales from $1.6 million to over $1 billion in the first decade Hsieh was in the CEO spot (Reiss, 2010).
Hsieh is a bold leader, and at the same time, he embraces a leadership philosophy based on happiness. In breaking this leadership philosophy down further, three key aspects can be highlighted. First, work-life balance and integration offer happiness and life satisfaction. Secondly, choosing a life path that is personally fulfilling and has meaning brings about joy. And being able to contribute to society and give to others further enhances these qualities. As a bold leader, Hsieh has not only pursued these attributes himself but also enabled others to do the same. Despite a truly unique approach in his leadership philosophy, Tony Hsieh is clearly among one of the boldest leaders in the world today.
Without question, the web advertising company was a tremendous success eventually being sold for $265 million to Microsoft. But for Hsieh, the money and profits were not the most important. Instead, his leadership philosophy saw a culture of happiness and fun as being essential for real success.
Hsieh has invested $350 million in revitalizing the area through investments in both real estate and businesses. The project has already created over 1,500 jobs and made a $209 million economic impact for the community. This is just another example of how a leadership philosophy based on happiness can be quite bold.
But for Hsieh, these changes were not what you might expect. Hsieh continues to reside in a trailer park in Las Vegas where he pays $1000 a month in rent. He shares the community laundry, kitchen, and pantry with other residents. And he enjoys sharing stories and playing games around the campfire with fellow acquaintances there. By all accounts, his leadership philosophy is a unique one.
Though 18 percent of the company’s employees chose the offer, Zappos has benefited since. And the culture of happiness has lived on as a result. Part of Tony Hsieh’s focus is on individual personalities. We all are different and we work in different ways.