When Asked to Become Amazon’s New CEO, Andy Jassy Wanted to Speak With 1 Person First. It’s a Lesson in Emotional Intelligence

Good decisions don’t come easy.

That’s the lesson Amazon CEO Andy Jassy provided in a recent interview with LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky. The interview is full of powerful lessons gleaned from Jassy’s long and winding path to becoming Amazon’s chief executive, but one story really caught my attention.

When Amazon founder Jeff Bezos approached Jassy in 2021 with the idea of becoming his successor as the company’s CEO, Jassy says it wasn’t an easy decision. Jassy loved his role at Amazon, which had included running several areas of the company, including AWS (Amazon Web Services, the company’s successful cloud computing division). He knew Bezos would be leaving big shoes to fill.

“I really wasn’t thinking about that role,” Jassy said. “I was surprised and I was flattered, and I said, well, if it’s OK I’d like to talk to my wife about it.”

Jassy went on to relate that his wife and he spoke about the job offer over dinner. (“It was a Tuesday night, which is our date night,” Jassy explained.) They arrived at the restaurant at 7:00 p.m., and stayed until about 11:30.

Jassy says most of the conversation that night consisted of his wife asking him deep, soul-searching questions, a few of which included:

Why do you want to do this job?

You love your current job. Do you feel you’re done with it?

Are you sure?

Jassy says he didn’t realize it at the time, but that conversation led him to a major discovery: He was ready for a different challenge. Soon after, he accepted the job.

Both Jassy and his wife’s actions teach powerful lessons in emotional intelligence, the ability to understand and manage emotions effectively. Let’s break down three valuable takeaways from this story and see how you can apply them to your own business. (If you find value in this lesson, you might be interested in my free emotional intelligence course, which provides a new tip for building emotional intelligence every day for a week.)

Take time to think it through

Years ago I received a valuable piece of advice that I’ve never forgotten:

Never make a permanent decision based on a temporary emotion.

In a high-pressure moment, your emotions will tend to run wild. Your amygdala, the emotional processor of your brain, may takes over–leading you to make a decision based purely on emotion.

In contrast, when you ask for time to carefully consider a decision or speak to a confidant, as Jassy did, you slow down.

You give yourself the chance to use other parts of your brain, like the frontal lobe, which is associated with higher-level cognition and reasoning ability. You also create an opportunity to get help to make the best decision possible–which leads us to the second lesson.

Speak to someone you trust

It’s hard to see the big picture when you’re in the middle of an emotional situation.

But a good coach, mentor, or adviser can provide perspective. They can help you both to see the big picture, and to think through the details and nuance of a decision, along with its implications.

The best part is you are surrounded by people like this. Like Jassy, my coach is my wife. She advises me on everything in my business and personal life. She reveals my blind spots, praises me for my accomplishments, and helps me make decisions I won’t regret.

But you don’t need to be married to have a good coach. You simply need someone whose advice you trust, like a:

• current or former colleague,
• former teacher or professor,
• good friend, or
• family member.

The key is that, whoever serves as your coach, they are available to hear you out when you need them, along with the freedom to speak freely. And you need to be able to truly listen and value what they have to say, as Jassy did with his wife.

But what if you’re the coach? Then you have to …

Ask the right questions

Notice how Jassy’s wife helped him reason through the decision: by asking deep, soul-searching questions. In doing so, she helped Jassy think through the reasons why he’d be taking the job, and to determine if doing so would be worth the inherent risks.

If someone looks to you for coaching or advice, you want to help the other person make a good decision–but you don’t want to make the decision for them.

That’s why good questions are invaluable. They allow the person looking for advice to cut through the fog, to connect reason and emotion, and to see beyond what they are thinking and feeling today, to see how they will think and feel in the future–and the reasons behind those thoughts and feelings.

So, consider asking questions similar to what Jassy’s wife asked him, like:

What do you truly want? Why do you want it?

How do you feel about things now? If you change, how will you feel in the future?

Are you sure?

The answers to questions like these will help the other person make decisions with confidence.

So, if you want to make better decisions, take a page out of Andy Jassy’s playbook and:

• take time to think it through,
• speak to someone you trust, and
• ask the right questions.

If you do, you’ll make decisions that you’re proud of, reduce regrets, and make emotions work for you, instead of against you.