Amazon CEO Andy Jassy recently said that sucking up to your boss will not earn their trust. In a company YouTube video, Jassy said: “They (juniors) sometimes confuse it with meaning being nice to one another or having social cohesion or not challenging each other in meetings”. “I won’t challenge you if you don’t challenge me’ or ‘This person isn’t trustworthy because they challenged me in a group of people.’” He further said that this is the skill that people often get “wrong”.

Andy Jassy on earning boss’s trust

In the video, Andy Jassy said “What we mean by ‘earn trust’ is being honest, authentic, straightforward; listening intently, but challenging respectfully if you disagree”.“If you think we’re doing something wrong for customers of the business, speak up,” he continued, adding “If you own something, and it’s not going well, own it.”Jassy noted that it is a two-way street: Leaders who want to gain the trust of their team should get comfortable with being “vocally self-critical, even when doing so is awkward or embarrassing,” he said.

Andy Jassy on why speaking up during interviews is crucial

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said that speaking up during meetings is crucial for earning trust. “If you say you’ve got something, deliver it,” he said. “If you think we’re not as good as we’re saying we are, benchmark it, use data, and show us that we’re not as good, and vice versa.”Jassy shared a personal anecdote from his early days when he headed Amazon’s marketing team. He said that once he was presenting a 220-slide PowerPoint on the team’s operating plan to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and other executives, Bezos interrupted him just 10 slides in and said, “All of your numbers are wrong on this slide.” “I was taken aback,” Jassy recalled, adding that he quickly realized the Amazon founder was, in fact, correct. He further stated that instead of being “resentful or mad at Jeff for pointing that out”, he used the opportunity to hold his hands up, show accountability, and earn his boss’s trust.“I earned trust by owning it, being vocally self-critical, and actually getting better and improving it and providing a much better presentation and account for what was truth the next time I presented in a much broader group,” the CEO concluded.