Amazon publishes a set of 16 Leadership Principles that shape how the company makes decisions — and, more importantly for you, how interviewers score candidates. This page is a plain-English reference: what each principle actually means, what the interviewer is trying to find out when they ask about it, the phrasings that principle usually arrives in, and a one-line description of what a strong answer demonstrates.
What this page is not: it is not a collection of written-out answers. If you want full STAR-structured example answers for each principle, we keep those in a separate companion guide — Amazon Leadership Principles: examples and STAR answers. Use this page to understand the rubric; use that one to see what a finished answer sounds like.
How interviewers use the principles
Amazon's behavioral rounds are not a general chat. Each interviewer in the loop is assigned two or three specific principles and writes up your answers against those. Across a full loop you'll typically be assessed on four to six of the sixteen. Because you don't know in advance which ones you'll get, the efficient prep is to understand what all sixteen are probing, then map your real experience onto them.
The 16 principles, one at a time
1. Customer Obsession
What it means: Start from the customer and work backwards. Pay attention to competitors, but let the customer set the agenda.
What the interviewer is probing: whether you make decisions from evidence about real users, or from internal convenience and assumptions.
Typical phrasings: "Tell me about a time you used customer feedback to change direction." / "Describe the hardest customer problem you've solved." / "When did you put the customer ahead of a short-term metric?"
A strong answer shows: you went to the source of the truth about customers and let it change what you built.
2. Ownership
What it means: Act on behalf of the whole company, think long term, and never say "that's not my job."
What the interviewer is probing: whether you step into gaps nobody owns and stay with a problem past the point where it stops being your responsibility.
Typical phrasings: "Tell me about something you took on outside your role." / "When did you sacrifice a short-term result for a long-term one?"
A strong answer shows: you claimed an unowned problem and carried it all the way to a durable fix.
3. Invent and Simplify
What it means: Seek new ideas from everywhere, and remove complexity rather than adding to it.
What the interviewer is probing: whether your instinct under pressure is to bolt on more process, or to find the simpler design underneath.
Typical phrasings: "Tell me about a time you simplified a complex process." / "Describe something you invented or built that didn't exist before."
A strong answer shows: a measurable reduction in steps, cost, or failure modes — not just novelty.
4. Are Right, A Lot
What it means: Strong judgment and good instincts, combined with actively seeking out views that could disprove your own.
What the interviewer is probing: how you decide when the data is incomplete, and whether you deliberately test your own thinking.
Typical phrasings: "Tell me about a decision you made with incomplete information." / "When were you wrong, and how did you find out?"
A strong answer shows: a decision process — including who you asked to disagree with you — not just a lucky outcome.
5. Learn and Be Curious
What it means: Never stop improving; explore new possibilities and act on curiosity.
What the interviewer is probing: whether learning is something you do to solve real problems, or a line on a résumé.
Typical phrasings: "Tell me about something you taught yourself recently." / "What's the last thing you learned outside your job description?"
A strong answer shows: curiosity that produced an actual result at work, quickly.
6. Hire and Develop the Best
What it means: Raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion, and take coaching others seriously.
What the interviewer is probing: whether you invest in other people's growth even when you get no credit for it. This is asked of individual contributors too, not only managers.
Typical phrasings: "Tell me about someone you helped grow." / "Describe a hiring decision you influenced." / "How have you given difficult feedback?"
A strong answer shows: a specific person who ended up measurably better off because of what you did.
7. Insist on the Highest Standards
What it means: Hold a bar many people would call unreasonably high, and refuse to push defects downstream.
What the interviewer is probing: whether you can tell the difference between perfectionism and a standard worth defending — and whether you hold the bar when it's inconvenient.
Typical phrasings: "Tell me about a time you refused to accept 'good enough.'" / "When did you raise the quality bar for your team?"
A strong answer shows: you paid a real cost (time, political capital) to hold a standard, and it was justified by the outcome.
8. Think Big
What it means: Create and communicate a bold direction; thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
What the interviewer is probing: whether you can see past the task you were handed to the bigger opportunity behind it — and whether you can get others to follow.
Typical phrasings: "Tell me about a time you proposed something more ambitious than what was asked." / "Describe a vision you had to sell to others."
A strong answer shows: ambition paired with a concrete first step that made the big idea credible.
9. Bias for Action
What it means: Speed matters. Many decisions are reversible and don't need extensive study.
What the interviewer is probing: whether you can distinguish reversible decisions (move now) from one-way doors (slow down), and whether you actually move.
Typical phrasings: "Tell me about a time you made a decision quickly under pressure." / "When did you take a calculated risk?" / "Describe a time you acted without full approval."
A strong answer shows: deliberate speed — you named the risk, made it reversible, and moved.
10. Frugality
What it means: Accomplish more with less. Constraints breed resourcefulness and invention.
What the interviewer is probing: whether you default to asking for more headcount and budget, or to finding leverage in what you already have.
Typical phrasings: "Tell me about a time you delivered with very limited resources." / "How have you reduced cost without reducing quality?"
A strong answer shows: a resource constraint that you turned into a better solution, with the saving quantified.
11. Earn Trust
What it means: Listen attentively, speak candidly, treat others respectfully, and be vocally self-critical.
What the interviewer is probing: how you behave when you're the one who got it wrong, and whether you can be candid without being abrasive.
Typical phrasings: "Tell me about a time you had to rebuild trust." / "Describe a mistake you owned publicly." / "How have you handled a colleague who didn't trust you?"
A strong answer shows: you named your own failure first, then fixed the underlying cause.
12. Dive Deep
What it means: Stay connected to the details, audit frequently, and be sceptical when the metrics and the anecdotes disagree.
What the interviewer is probing: whether you accept a plausible explanation or go and check. Expect follow-up questions specifically designed to see how far down you can actually go.
Typical phrasings: "Tell me about a time you found a root cause others missed." / "When did the data contradict what everyone believed?"
A strong answer shows: you can still explain the mechanism in detail, several layers below the summary.
13. Have Backbone, Disagree and Commit
What it means: Challenge decisions you disagree with, respectfully but genuinely — then commit fully once the decision is made.
What the interviewer is probing: both halves. Plenty of candidates can describe the disagreement; far fewer can describe committing wholeheartedly after losing the argument. This is one of the most-searched principles for a reason — it's the one people find hardest to answer well.
Typical phrasings: "Tell me about a time you disagreed with your manager." / "When did you commit to a decision you argued against?" / "Describe a time you had to push back on a senior stakeholder."
A strong answer shows: a real disagreement backed by evidence, followed by full-hearted execution of the decision that won.
14. Deliver Results
What it means: Focus on the key inputs, deliver them with quality and on time, and never settle despite setbacks.
What the interviewer is probing: whether you finish. Also whether you can distinguish inputs you control from outputs you only hope for.
Typical phrasings: "Tell me about a time you delivered under a hard deadline." / "Describe a goal you missed." / "How did you handle a project going off track?"
A strong answer shows: a number, a date, and what you cut or renegotiated to protect the core.
15. Strive to be Earth's Best Employer
What it means: Work to make the workplace safer, more productive, more diverse, and more empathetic for the people in it.
What the interviewer is probing: whether you notice the human system around the work — burnout, unfair load, exclusion — and do something about it.
Typical phrasings: "Tell me about a time you improved your team's environment." / "How have you supported someone who was struggling?"
A strong answer shows: a concrete change to how the team worked, and a visible improvement afterwards.
16. Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility
What it means: Decisions made at scale have consequences well beyond the immediate customer; be thoughtful and self-critical about them.
What the interviewer is probing: whether you think about second-order effects — on users who aren't your target, on society, on the environment.
Typical phrasings: "Tell me about a time you considered the broader impact of a decision." / "When did you weigh a business gain against a wider cost?"
A strong answer shows: you saw a consequence nobody had raised, and you traded something real to address it.
How to use this reference
Don't write sixteen scripts. Take six to ten genuine experiences and label each with the two or three principles it can support, since most stories serve several at once — a launch you argued for might cover Bias for Action, Deliver Results and Have Backbone depending on which details you lead with. Then check for gaps: if nothing you have touches Frugality or Hire and Develop the Best, that's where to look for another story.
Once your mapping is set, move to structure and delivery. Our companion pages cover both: worked STAR examples for every principle, and how the Bar Raiser round and the wider loop actually work.
Practise your LP answers out loud
CoPilot Interview runs mock Amazon LP rounds with realistic follow-up probing and tells you which principle each answer landed on. There's a free tier to start with.
Start free →FAQ
What are the Amazon Leadership Principles?
They are the set of values Amazon uses to make decisions and to evaluate candidates. Amazon currently publishes 16 of them, from Customer Obsession through Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility. In an interview loop, each interviewer is assigned specific principles and grades your answers against those, so the principles function as the actual scoring rubric.
What are Amazon's 16 leadership principles in order?
Customer Obsession; Ownership; Invent and Simplify; Are Right, A Lot; Learn and Be Curious; Hire and Develop the Best; Insist on the Highest Standards; Think Big; Bias for Action; Frugality; Earn Trust; Dive Deep; Have Backbone, Disagree and Commit; Deliver Results; Strive to be Earth's Best Employer; and Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility. Amazon has revised this list before, so check Amazon's own careers site for the current canonical wording.
Which leadership principles get asked about most often?
Customer Obsession, Ownership, Dive Deep, Bias for Action, Deliver Results, and Have Backbone, Disagree and Commit come up most consistently because they apply to almost any role. Insist on the Highest Standards and Earn Trust are close behind. The remaining principles appear more often for senior or manager-level loops where scope and judgment are being tested.
Do I need a separate story for all 16 principles?
No. Most candidates are assessed on roughly four to six principles across a full loop. A better approach is six to ten real stories, each tagged with the two or three principles it can serve, so one project covers several principles depending on which details you emphasise.
What does a strong Leadership Principle answer actually show?
It shows a specific situation, what you personally decided and did, a measurable outcome, and honest reflection on what you would change. Vague team-level narration is the most common failure. For worked STAR examples of each principle, see our companion guide of Amazon Leadership Principles examples and STAR answers.