Conscious

CHAPTER 23Lead with Constructive Impatience

In the pantheon of great living leaders, you will always find Germany's Angela Merkel and Amazon's Jeff Bezos. What do these two powerhouses have in common? They both lead with constructive impatience. Merkel leans toward constructive and Bezos leans toward impatience. But both know how to engage people and get things done, making it safe while challenging the limits, being constructive in approach, while being impatient to reach desired outcomes.

Raised behind the Iron Curtain, Merkel first appeared in the West as a divorced 35-year-old East German physicist specializing in quantum chemistry. Her scientific lens empowers her to make sense of seeming randomness in human systems. As the German chancellor governing over 87 million people, Merkel sees solutions where most people see confusion. This allows her to challenge people, in her constructive way, to higher levels of performance. Merkel knows how to bring out the best in others. As a result, her power and influence have steadily grown within the European Union and around the world. Yet, she's not afraid to show her impatience either, whether she is pushing Germans to rethink the refugee crisis or making it clear that there is no place for walls, nation-states, fascism, or totalitarianism in Europe.¹

Jeff Bezos enjoys more high-velocity decision making. Amazon was launched in 1994. Today, he oversees 150,000 people and $90 billion in revenue. In his 2016 letter to shareholders, ...