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Today is a historic day for four CEOs of the most powerful companies in the world: Amazon's Jeff Bezos,
Apple's Tim Cook, Facebook's Mark Zuckerburg, and Google's Sundar Pichai. Each of these men will be
answering questions from U.S. lawmakers. And each will try to defend their companies' business
practices.
In advance of the hearing, each executive was given the opportunity to present a written statement. Both
Tim Cook's and Sundar Pichai's statements were a tad over 1,300 words long. Mark Zuckerberg's was
more than double that, coming in just short of 2,800 words (complete with subheadings).
But Jeff Bezos's statement blows the others out of the water:
It's a whopping 4,540 words long.
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Maybe it's because this is the first time Bezos is testifying. (Pichai, Zuckerberg, and Cook have all
appeared before Congress previously.) Or maybe it's because Bezos has a special fondness for the written
word.
But as I read Bezos's statement this morning, which he published on Amazon's official blog, I couldn't
ignore the lessons it teaches in emotional intelligence--both for good and quite possibly for evil.
Here are some of the highlights, along with my comments.
No regrets
Next, Bezos talks about the beginning of Amazon, an idea that began simply: "an online bookstore with
millions of titles."
When Bezos told his boss at a New York City investment firm that he was leaving to pursue this dream,
his boss responded: "You know what, Jeff, I think this is a good idea, but it would be a better idea for
somebody who didn't already have a good job."
The boss persuaded Bezos to think things over for two days before making a decision. This was very
emotionally intelligent advice: You don't want to make a permanent decision based on a temporary
emotion. But, for Bezos, there would be no turning back.
"When I'm 80 and reflecting back," writes Bezos, "I want to have minimized the number of regrets that I
have in my life. And most of our regrets are acts of omission--the things we didn't try, the paths
untraveled. Those are the things that haunt us. And I decided that if I didn't at least give it my best shot, I
was going to regret not trying to participate in this thing called the internet that I thought was going to be
a big deal."
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Grit and resilience
Bezos goes on to detail Amazon's many stumbles through the years. Cumulative losses of nearly $3
billion by the year 2001 (the first year Amazon produced a profitable quarter).
"At the pinnacle of the internet bubble," writes Bezos, "our stock price peaked at $116, and then, after the
bubble burst, our stock went down to $6. Experts and pundits thought we were going out of business."
Bezos and company stuck with it, and Amazon eventually reached financial success.
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In my book EQ Applied, I compare all relationships--including the one between business and customer--
to a bridge. Any strong bridge must be built on a solid foundation--and for relationships, that foundation
is trust.
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To conclude, Bezos gets patriotic, in an effort to appeal to lawmakers' nationalism. He brings the story
full circle, drawing on his father's immigrant background. He even compares the U.S. to Amazon itself,
saying that it's "still Day One" for America, alluding to Amazon's philosophy of always thinking like a
small company, always striving to keep itself from going out of business.
But it's here is where I urge readers to be careful. Because, while the use of emotions to persuade or
influence others isn't always bad, it can be used to blind an audience to the truth.
I don't agree with everything in Bezos's statement. But I find it's an excellent case study of how emotional
intelligence works in the real world.
And for that, it's extremely valuable. Because the more you can recognize what emotional intelligence
looks like, the more you can build your own.
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