What Jeff Bezos Taught Me About Leadership

Hey y'all, it's Tracy Holland. Today I'm going to have a solo episode with you and this is a leadership topic that really resonated for me so I hope this is helpful for you. I am really trying to figure out how I can continue to hire the right people in the right roles so that I can stay in my unique ability. And in order to do that, I first have to identify when it is that I'm feeling overwhelmed and recognize that that feeling of overwhelm, that low hum of continued drudgery means that I need to delegate that task to someone who's going to love it more than I love it.

And I now know that I am going to be my best self, my best entrepreneur, the best leader, the best revenue generator. If at the end of the day, I wake up in the morning excited to go to work and I go to bed at night feeling ready to get up the next day and go tackle something else. And when I start to get that low hum of drudgery and feeling like I can't sit in front of my computer and do another email, I know it's time to find a better who to come in and take on that responsibility.

So I look to people when I'm building a business and just when I need inspiration, I look to people in the universe who I feel are way, way, way more successful than I've ever been able to even conjure up or imagine. And today, I wanted to dissect an approach that Jeff Bezos uses in his leadership strategies, because the more I get to know Jeff Bezos, and I have to say, of course, he has a public persona, and then he has a private persona. And the public persona, I've always seen him as a little bit awkward and maybe just kind of a highly technical person who may not have a high social EQ.

That's all my projected judgment on him because what I found out as I've looked under the hood and I've done some research and I've listened to lots of his leadership interviews, he's actually a highly EQ sensitive guy. And really, who am I to project on him all of these stereotypes about a highly technical, successful, wealthy billionaire who's built a major technology company, I know now I'm putting all of my own stories onto him as to who he must be as a leader. But here's something interesting for you to think about today that I learned about him that has really helped me integrate some of his techniques.

And I think whenever we're trying to build something and it feels heavy or stressful or thick, one of the things that I do sometimes to just get myself out of the headspace is to listen to a podcast or to tune into a YouTube and watch someone like Gary Vee or Jeff Bezos speak, who I think of as like, wow, okay, that motivated me. I feel like I picked up something there that made an impact. So hopefully that will do that same thing for you today. So one of the things Jeff Bezos does, which I think is so smart of him and shows how savvy he is on his EQ, is that he believes that real leadership is not being the loudest voice in the room.

And it's really about knowing when to use your voice. So that's interesting, okay? Because I know you're listening to this and you're an entrepreneur, you're an alpha, you're highly driven, you're super motivated, you get out of bed, your energy is like a 10, you're working out, you're coming home, you're putting your list together. And just by default, like your mojo, your mojo shows up sometimes as being the loudest voice in the room.

And the thing that Jeff Bezos says is, it's not about being the loudest voice in the room. In fact, it's about knowing when to use your voice. And he proposes that the powerful habit of a successful leader is that they always speak last. Take that in.

Can you imagine you running the company? You're the entrepreneur. You're the owner. You're the CEO.

You're the boss. You're the person in charge. Walk into a room, have all your people at the table, and you sit down and you say nothing. I can't even imagine because I know that energetically when I show up into my team meetings, I'm like, hey guys, here's what we're going to do.

Here's our goal. Here's the vision. Here's what we're wanting to reach. Here are the KPIs.

And what I love that Jeff Bezos has said and I going to quote him for you so you can hear it directly from his mouth and not my interpretation He says I always speak last because I know from experience that if I speak first even very strong highly intelligent people will start second-guessing their own ideas. They think, well, if Jeff believes something is right, then maybe I'm wrong. Well, maybe if Jeff believes something is different, maybe Jeff believe something is a good idea or a bad idea, then maybe I'm wrong.

Think how powerful that is. Think about Amazon, okay? I cannot imagine there is a single human on the planet today, 2025, who could tell me that Amazon is not a blockbuster success on every level, like immeasurable success, okay? I go back in my mind and I see those pictures of Jeff Bezos sitting at the door of his desk.

I think 30 years ago, there's this picture I've seen float around where he has a physical door that he has converted into his desk sitting on like, I don't know, a couple of stumps. And he's basically sitting in this weird windowless office that looks awful. Okay. And all I can tell you is that that was 30 years ago.

And I don't know about you, but in 30 years, I have not built an Amazon. And I honestly know no one in my universe who has, okay? Except that I do know people who have. And so when I think about the size of Amazon, Amazon is a legacy business for decades, hundreds of years potentially to come, who knows, decades to come for sure.

So when this guy says, I do not speak, to me, that is a very powerful statement. And so when I think about that, when the highest ranking person in the room speaks first, it shapes the entire conversation. And what does that do? Think about it at your dinner table, right?

Your kids, if you have a strong opinion, you come in hot on a topic, what do your kids do? They hold back, right? They may change their answers. They may silence their instincts.

And what you lose in the moment, you guys, this is the real deal. What you lose in the moment is truth. You lose honesty. You potentially lose the creative spark that could have changed everything in that moment for how your business outcome would look in that day, in that week, in that month, in that quarter, or how your relationships to maybe your kids look as it relates to like, hey, how was your day?

Like, let them talk first, right? And give them the creative juices and the spark that would open a conversation up that allows a dialogue and you get to discern what's happening. So Bezos actually says he has this rule. If he is the most senior person in the room, he goes last.

And what he actually does is he asks the most junior person in the room, the person who's lowest on the totem pole in terms of hierarchy in the organization, whose perspective is often the most unfiltered and the most insightful to go first. Can you imagine? Can you imagine you hire a brand new assistant who's, you know, two, three months on the job, who's sitting in that room on behalf of someone on the leadership team, and you turn to the assistant and say, hey, assistant, you know, we are wanting to hear from all members of the team, and you're part of this meeting too, and we'd love you to start.

What do you think about this topic? Now, to me, that isn't just leadership. That is a sign of curiosity and that's also a sign of deep, deep EQ. It's also a place in which you're allowing people an opportunity to connect, right?

And it's giving space to the room to hold perspectives that you may not have in your purview as a leader in your business that could be going awry that you only find out after you're in the room for a few minutes listening to people discuss. Hey, gorgeous friends, just for a second, if you would do me a huge favor, if Potential to Powerhouse has touched your heart, inspired you, made you pause, made you think differently, been a resource for you, would you do me the favor to right now take a second to Give us a rating and review.

It makes such a difference. And we so appreciate hearing from you. Thank you. High five.

Let's talk about how this could translate into our world as women leaders, leading teams, leading companies and leading families. Okay. Because I'm leading three kids, all teenagers. I'm leading at home, three teenage kiddos.

Okay. And I guess my point in saying that is, I know that I can take up a lot of space, especially as parents, if we're conditioned to believe that leadership looks like taking on a role of being decisive and being strong Why the way we approach leadership and how we show up and how we allow people to take space and start first not only in our home life but also in our business life can translate our world, I think, as women leading teams, as companies, leading companies, leading families.

So here's what I think I was taught about leadership. And I'm curious about what your thoughts are here because this is all about stories, right? When you think about how we show up in the world, we show up based on the story that we're carrying about that particular thing that we're projecting onto our situation. And just to tie this back to how I started this conversation today, I told you I had this kind of notion as to who Jeff Bezos is in the world and the kind of guy he must be and how he must be low EQ or he must be technical and kind of, I don't know, removed emotionally or not present in the way that someone who's high EQ would be.

And all of that is BS, okay? Because like I said, I was projecting my own stories onto him as to who I think he must be when, look at the guy, he is clearly incredibly high EQ. I mean, he built one of, if not the most successful, one of the top five most successful businesses in the United States of America, I would guess. Certainly as a cultural icon, he has taken on and made a huge, huge impact on each and every one of us in every way we think, how we move through the world, how we shop, how we expect things to arrive on our doorstep.

I mean, it's like the guy is a phenomenon, okay? Going back to this idea of storytelling and what we think leadership looks like, I think leadership looks like certainty. I think leadership looks like decisiveness. I think leadership looks like having the right answer.

And what I'm going to challenge us to think about today, based on what Jeff Bezos has said to us about letting the most junior person in the room speak first is this idea about creating space. What happens when big personalities, entrepreneurs walk into a room and go last? What kind of space are we creating for others to think, to speak, and to rise? And when you speak last, are you sending a signal that says, I value your input, I value your perspective and I'm listening to you and when you do that are we creating by virtue of doing that are we creating psychological safety are we creating psychological safety for the lowest most junior person in the room and I don't mean lowest in terms of human I mean lowest in terms of ranking right the assistant or whoever you have in that room who's with your leadership team that person who is holding the title that says, I'm the lowest guy on the totem pole or gal, are we building psychological safety for her or him to be able to tell the truth, even when it's uncomfortable?

Here's something that I know for my own personal life, and I've seen it over and over again, is the best insights often come from the people who are not used to being heard. So when you think about that for a second, this is your assistant, this could be your intern, this is the new hire who just hasn't learned the way things are done yet and they haven't figured it out. But think about this for a second. When you think about the best insights are often from the people who are not used to being seen or heard, potentially in the room, how much can we find out if we allow them to speak and go first?

And are we actually creating space and psychological safety for them to have their voices heard? And is that when innovation starts to take place? So I want to talk about a real world example here because, man, as I started to think about this, I started to go back into my business life and start thinking about all the times in which we had this like catalyst, massive pivot or catapulting to success. And I think about a time in which I was in a high stakes meeting and we were trying to decide whether we were going to pivot on one of our product lines and it could affect our revenue to millions and millions and millions of dollars.

And I had a very strong opinion about that. I had a strong opinion walking in. And I also remember at the time thinking, I'm in one place and I've always been kind of at the forefront of the organization from a sales side, right? So sell in or selling to the first touch point is what I have experienced in my career.

And that is how I built my success as kind of being at the forefront of sales. But I remember in this particular instance, as we were trying to figure out what to do, and if we're going to pivot this brand, and if we did pivot the brand, what it would mean to pivot out of the channel and into a new channel and what the sacrifice would look like And I remember this idea of going gosh there are people in this room from marketing from field and education There are people in this room who spend time on the selling floor selling products to customers There are people in here who are digital people, who are first at the forefront of the Amazon store that we run or the direct-to-consumer business that we have.

And so I remember sitting back and thinking, what can I do to listen to everybody's perspective? And I remember there was one person who spoke up in particular in that meeting. That voice and her voice completely shifted my thinking. They saw things that I didn't see because they had details from the customer experience using the product and actually some of the complaints and the returns and some of the issues we were having.

And those were things that I would never have heard on the front line speaking to retailers and being at the forefront of the sales process. This is only stuff you would hear if you were on the forefront of the production floor or on the selling floor talking to customers. But by the time that information got to me, I realized that my initial instincts weren't the best decision for the business after all. And then that shift in me listening to some of the folks who had thoughts around the actual user experience ended up saving us time, money, and credibility.

Because can you imagine had we made a pivot and it had been wrong, it would have been cataclysmic, right? So here's what I'm going to leave you with today in this first solo episode. And I hope this is helpful for you. I'm going to be hosting more of these because I get so many inbound tasks from people who have been listening to Potential to Powerhouse for me to do solo episodes and help them work through some of the business ideas and issues that they're having and things that they're facing on the day-to-day level inside their business.

And I am here to give you my perspective on how I have tackled some of these issues, but I also am going to be pulling from people that I admire who have done it much better than I have and who have so much to teach us. And I'm going to be pulling examples for you and providing those as we go because I think we're going to learn together. And I find it incredibly interesting talking to and studying and understanding the success secrets of other people. It is really the genesis for why I started Potential to Powerhouse, which was we are the culmination of the five people we spend the most amount of time with.

And we are also the culmination of the things that we read and ingest and understand. And I always am this lifelong learner, as I'm sure you are, in wanting to better understand how I can see the blind spots that I sit in every single day, not even knowing they're blind spots, but they are. Obviously, they're called blind spots for a reason. So I think about it and I go back into my archives and I think, oh my gosh, if I could have hindsighted that thing, I would have done it differently.

And I wish I had done it this way or that way. And can you imagine, had I done it this way or that way, what the outcome would have been? It would have been so much better, right? We always do that.

I know you do that too. So here's what I'm going to have us do together and try this simple exercise this week and see if it makes an impact on your team. please DM me on Tracy Holland on Instagram or on Potential to Powerhouse because I'd love to hear your thoughts on this conversation. And if you've been positively impacted and if this has meant something for you, I'd love to hear that.

So here are your challenges for this week. Find a meeting on your calendar, look it up and decide you're going to go last in the meeting. I want you to go into that meeting, look at that, what the topic is. And I want you to encourage every single person in that meeting in order of seniority from the most junior person in the room, all the way up to the top level person, including yourself to go first.

And I want you to listen to what everybody has to say without reaction. Imagine that you're an observer, a board observer in a board meeting, And your job is just to listen, take notes, and capture information. So listen without reacting because the moment you do respond, even if it's in your face or how you lean forward or how you engage, that energy that you're bringing to the room will change. So I highly recommend just sit back, do that thing.

But know this, that people will adjust their answers to how you respond. So if you hold silence, you're going to get more truth-telling, which is the whole reason why we're doing this.