Leadership Skills: The Running Of Netflix Company (Essay Sample)

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Leadership Skills of Reed Hastings.
Reed Hastings, is the founder and chief executive officer(CEO) of Netflix, an online subscription-based DVD rental services. The company was founded in 1977 when the home video market was largely flooded with outlet retail shops. However, Hastings came in and co-founded Netflix with Marc Randolph offering flat rate online movie renting by mail.
Leadership Skills
Chapter 5
Hastings has used networking as one of his skills in promoting the success of Netflix. He has managed a delicate balance by focusing on delivery of movies while expanding to the original content. During the mid-2000s Netflix moved into social networking by trying to get friends to recommend movies to each other.
Personal power has also been minimally used by Hastings. Ideally, he makes fewer decisions while leaving the rest to teams he has assembled. Basically, he puts half an hour in reviewing decisions made and mostly deals with the vision of the company.
Chapter 6
Hastings leaderships skills are also founded on communication. In the beginning of 2005, there was a conflict on how Netflix was planning to separate live streaming with renting DVDs through e-mail. The company was facing a backlash from customers after the announcement for the separation was made (Andrea). However, Hastings, the CEO discovered that the problem was how the information was communicated and therefore he took a step of emailing 24 million customers apologizing for the mistake.
The use of feedback was another skill that Hastings used to change the manner in which information was received in Netflix. The outrage of customers following separation of live streaming and DVD through e-mail made Hastings understand perceptions and feelings of customers. This led to feedbacks from the CEO which was considered as a change in Hastings as compared to pure software.
Coaching has been applied by Hastings in the running of Netflix. The success of the company has been built on how risks are taken and coaching guidelines are uploaded on their websites. The CEO also enabled the introduction of management of talent which has helped in attracting and retaining talent.
Conflict management has also been used by Hastings to enable the success of Netflix. Essentially, the main goal was to build a company that grows at a rapid rate without loss of the spirit of entrepreneurship (Snyder). Although different levels of conflicts always arise, the use of different personnel in the company helped to solve such problems. This has enabled the shaping of culture, motivating perform and managing of talent.
Chapter 7
Member exchange has also been used by Hastings to improve the relationship between the leadership and followers. For instance, in Netflix, different level groups were formed which enabled the social exchange between the leader and follower. The leaders developed a positive social exchange with a select subject of followers. Followers have a high-quality relationship with leaders which has enabled job satisfaction and higher performance.
Good followership relationship between Hastings and employe...