Amazon Leadership Principle - Earn Trust
The Thought - “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 their or their team’s body odor smells of perfume. They benchmark themselves and their teams against the best”
What is “Earn Trust” at Amazon
Earn Trust is the most important and likely leadership principle every organization must have, not just Amazon. Earning trust of the customer is probably the most difficult thing to do and retaining that trust is even tougher than earning it. Keeping promises, stepping up to help others, treating others with respect and acknowledging & learning from mistakes are probably the best ways to earn trust. Every employee in Amazon is expected to be open about their mistakes, termed as vocally self critical. From the other Leadership principles, you would have learnt that Amazon believes in experimentation, it is ok to fail while trying for something that improves customer experience. Hence, to make reversible decisions successful, amazon earn trust leadership principle is more about quickly acknowledge mistakes, learn from them and move forward to keep up the promises made to the customers. Earn trust leadership principle is going to be one of the default leadership principle at levels of interviews.
Read the sections below to learn more on earn trust amazon interview questions.
Keeping promises, stepping up to help other and treating others with respect
Earn Trust Amazon interview questions
Talk about a time when you received a criticizing feedback from your boss/peer/direct report/customer, what was it about?
Did you ever fail to meet a goal/commitment/promise made to a customer, what was the impact and how did you manage it?
Have you ever helped a struggling team member or a peer ? Why did you think you should help, what was your approach ?
Have you experienced a situation when you had to confront a differing opinion from your boss/peer/direct report/customer? What was your approach ?
Interviewers expectations from your answers on “Earn Trust”
Are you someone who is willing to accept mistakes and learn from them?
Are you someone who treats colleagues with respect and listens to their opinions?
Are you someone who keeps up to the promises made?
Are you someone who receives feedback positively and works on shortcomings?
Must have in your answers on “Earn Trust”
Never blame anyone for any failure, whether it is a team or an individual.
Vocally self critical means Being vocal about what you did wrong; to showcase you understand where you went wrong, acknowledge and recognize that something is to be fixed. It is about your ability to take responsibility of failures.
Mention about a feedback you received for working style or behaviour; immediately talk about the strategies you built for course correcting yourselves and you followed up with feedback provider to check if they see a change.
Even if you feel someone is speaking absolute no sense, you still have patience to listen to them and respectfully challenge on data and facts rather than opinions and ideas of others.