Amazon CEO on the leadership principle people always get wrong [Video]

At Amazon, employees are taught that good leaders “are right, a lot.”

That doesn’t mean your boss knows more than you do, or that their first ideas are always the best. Rather, it means the best leaders are willing to listen to an array of viewpoints — especially ones that might differ from their own instincts — and have good enough judgement to pick the best way forward, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in a video posted by Amazon earlier this month.

Ironically, Jassy sees leaders get that concept “wrong” with some frequency, he said. An idea that comes from your boss isn’t necessarily the best idea possible, he noted.

“We’re trying to get to the best possible answer for customers, whoever’s idea it is,” said Jassy. A boss’s job is often to get “the right people in a room” to give their feedback and ideas, so they can listen and weigh the potential options, he added.

The “right, a lot” principle …