Howard Schultz-The CEO of Starbucks
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Introduction
Starbucks was founded in 1971 and from this time it opened its first retail store in Seattle’s Pike Place Market. The book Moby Dick inspired the formation of the name Starbucks attached to the romance of high seas plus the tradition of coffee traders spending their life at the sea (Schultz & Gordon, 2011). According to Starbucks Coffee Company, (2013) the company has over 18,000 stores in over 60 countries with United States having 13,279 coffee houses. The company provides varying products such as coffee and other hot and cold beverages, sandwiches, pastries plus other assorted snacks. Howard Schultz is credited for leading Starbucks and building the company to one of the global leading brand after purchasing and taking the role of CEO in 1987. He stepped down from his CEO role in 2000 but later returned in 2008 again as a CEO. He also undertook the role of being the Chairman of Starbucks Coffee Company during the same period.
Howard Schultz main reason of returning back to Starbucks was based on his need to transform the failing company that was suffering from self induced financial losses to a global brand in a competitive position. As a CEO in Starbuck, Howard Schultz main goal was aimed at rebuilding a brand that echoes a positive culture to every stakeholder during a global financial crisis. According to Schultz & Gordon, (2011) it is evident that the achievements that he has recorded can be credited to listening skills, relationship-building skills and his communication skills. Based on the availed analysis on his ability to transform Starbucks from falling company to one of the most leading global brands depicts how his leadership style is effective in relation to integrating policies, values and competition in the industry. The preceding analysis avails a clear insight on Howard Schultz leadership style by examining how he leads, whether he is authentic or not and such leaderships’ weakness and strengths.
How he leads
Analysis on leadership approaches and styles developed by Howard Schultz, it is apparent he embraces and deploys transformational style of leadership. This style of leadership embraces varying aspects such as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Howard Schultz communicates this leadership style via his board diversity of schemata plus conscious usage of symbols that enhances his leadership effectiveness to reach the set goals while also satisfying his follower’s needs. Howard Schultz integrates Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs hierarchy of needs arranged from, psychological to safety, belonging and love, self-esteem and lastly self-actualization needs to meet the motivational needs of the total person (Enquist, 2012). He believes that through its work force, Starbuck has been able to create a competitive advantage as a national retail workforce. The notion attached to his analogy enables him to offer modest paycheck to his employees hence satisfying their psychological needs. The company also avails its employees with a healthcare package, career counseling hence employee safety needs or security needs satisfaction. Through the modest pay, he believes that the employees are able to work harder and also smarter hence increasing the entire organizational performance.
Howard Schultz treats people like family as depicted in his book Pour Your Heart into It, if you to treat people like family you will make the loyal and hence encourage them to give their all. He also indicates that when the company cares, it is able to rub off somehow on its customers who will gladly return and keep on coming back for Starbucks coffee. The transformational leadership embraced by Howard Schultz enables him to satisfy his follower’s needs for belonging and love through creating and maintaining a culture on a family approach within the entire organization. The outcome is a company that doesn’t depict its workers as employees but rather as partners who makes tremendous contribution towards organizational growth and performance. According to a review conducted by Glass Door, (2013) employees in the company indicated that the love that they share with the people they work with enables them to feel very like a close knit family.
Howard Schultz leadership style enables him to fulfill his employees or partners self esteem needs through provision of education, training and recognition programs. Such programs include; Coffee Education and Learning that the company avails to its employees hence aiding them build confidence in themselves on their daily activities within the company (Starbucks Coffee Company, 2008). Based on the company report, 18 employees are offered recognition programs which enables the company to acquire feedback on its partners hence promoting motivational behaviors while also increasing degree of happiness, attachment and the willingness to work and stay with the organization. The massive expansion of the company forces them to recruit and hire globally over 140 partners daily with over 85,000 partners a year. According to Andrada, (2012) the high percentage of partners hired daily globally, only a small percentage of those hired replaces employees who have left or no longer works for the company. Howard Schultz also satisfies his partner’s self-actualization as stipulated on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. He is able to achieve this via constantly listening and researching information and feedback from his partners towards articulating his vision. According to Brookmire, (2012) he sends emails and also makes personalized phone calls to his partners on varying store locations with an aim of advising and offering feedback on their products and services, processes and procedures. Such roles and actions depicted by Howard Schultz tend to align with the characteristics and approaches attached to transformational leadership style.
He is an Authentic Leader
Based on the style, duties, traits and the effectiveness portrayed by Howard Schultz is an authentic leader. The leadership style and skills acquired by Schultz are some of the varying notions that depict the authenticity on his leadership style and roles within the organization. Further studies by Hackman & Johnson, (2010) indicate that there are five characteristics of transformational leaders’ posses. Similar characteristics attached to transformational leadership are displayed by Howard Schultz especially on his communication style, that is, he is interactive, creating, passionate, empowering and also visionary. He embraces an innovative and also foresighted approach based on the way he interacts and communicates with the stakeholders. Howard Schultz has been known to consistently challenge the status quo while also in quest of new ideas, products and processes. His authenticity leadership can be traced on the perception depicted by stakeholders who portray him as masterful based on his ability towards articulating and defining new ideas and concepts that aid the organization achieve a competitive advantage within the industry. This has made the company dominate and create a global leading brand that offers quality products and services to their customers. Through mystarbucksvisit.com, Howard Schultz is able to empower stakeholders through encouraging them on the need to participate and get involved on the company’s operations, under such a platform or forum, he is able to seek feedback from internal and external stakeholders through the interactive forum where stakeholders make suggestions and also vote for them (Daft, 2010).
Through the high passion for the company displayed by Howard Schultz, it is evident he is an authentic leaders. This is evident based on the passion and enthusiasm he portrays towards Starbucks hence motivating others towards performing to the highest degree. Among the five traits attached to the transformational leadership style, Howard Schultz embraces the vital trait on vision. He is able to successfully communicate his desirable and obtainable vision to every stakeholder groups hence falling under same conclusion on where the organization is headed. The effective communication of his vision enables him to create and attract commitment, energizing people, creating meaning for followers, establishing a standard for excellence, and also bridging the present with the future (Hackman & Johnson, 2010).
Howard Schultz posses more than just the transformational leadership traits, he also possesses charismatic leadership traits which are attached to unique leader behaviors, elements of charismatic situation and follower relation. Closer analysis on Howard Schultz leadership style, he is able to possess the stipulated traits which are normally closely related or associated with the traits of transformational leaders. Leaders such as Howard Schultz, who have such traits, are able to display behaviors for a strong need for power traced on his ability to gain control when he joined Starbuck after resigning in 2008. During that period, he felt that the company was indeed diverting and drifting away from its mission and vision by indulging in average and ordinary performance hence the need to return as acting CEO towards transforming the organization into high performing organization. Howard Schultz like every transformational leader with charismatic leaders embraces relational communication skills hence targeting the follower’s frustrations, hope, plus features while also ensuring that he creates a sense of excitement and adventure. This approach embraced by Howard Schultz when he returned back to Starbucks enabled him to understand that internal and external stakeholders will be affected by the changes. He was able to communicate effectively on passion with the stakeholders towards creating a new and improved Starbucks. The authenticity on his leadership is attached on his ability to effectively communicate clear and straight messages to every stakeholder. The same approach on effective communication that he embraces since his return to Starbucks is maintained in relation to his daily communication with the stakeholder. He is able to send clear messages on his new vision strategies and new developments that the company seeks to venture into towards offering quality and competitive services to their customers.
The stipulated analysis proffers some of the traits, roles and unique aspects embraced and possessed by Howard Schultz making him an authentic leader. He also posses the elements of the charismatic trait, uses power towards influencing others through modifying their attitudes and behaviors hence achieving his goals and merits, he also uses coercive power through demoting employees that normally underperform, offer rewards through delivering value to his followers among other entities. The availed traits summarize the authenticity on his leadership with referent power on communication with his followers indicting his ability to effectively and efficiently lead Starbucks towards a competitive advantage within the industry.
Howard Schultz’s leadership style weakness and strengths
The availed analysis depicts that Howard Schultz embraces transformational leadership style to effectively and efficiently lead Starbucks to one of the leading global competitive brands. Transformational leadership although an effective tool largely use by CEOs of leading global organizations such as Starbucks, Walmart, Facebook, Apple and Google among other possess strengths and weaknesses. This is based on the implementation and the response or the reflected outcomes to employees or the stakeholders in general. The preceding analysis summarizes the strengths and weakness of transformational leadership style used by Howard Schultz and other CEOs.
Strengths
There are vast strengths attached to transformational leadership which are researched on how effectively the influences associates on every level while also strongly emphasize associates’ needs and values. Some of the strengths attached to the style, are (Hackman & Johnson, 2009): Emphases followers’ needs, morals, values; Process-focused where the style avails a process that occurs between the followers and the leaders; It is intuitive appeal with the style making sense to those embracing the style and the followers; Broadly researched as an effective style embraced by prominent leaders and CEOs of some of the leading and major firms; Embraces an expansive leadership view hence providing a broader view of leadership; It is effective based on the efficiency attached to the form of leadership and concepts underpinning the style, and it is one of the most popular effective style with intuitiveness and easiness to recognize by peoples making it one of the styles that fits notions of world known leaders such as, Obama, Adolf Hitler, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King.
Weakness
Transformational leadership also has varying weaknesses in relation to its implementations. Researchers tend to attach the leadership with personality other than a learned behavior with others attaching it with potentiality of abusing power. The preceding analysis stipulates some of the weakness of transformational leadership style; they are (Hackman & Johnson, 2009): The style is very complication based on the fact that it is an amalgamation of varying leadership theories hence making it unreasonable to be trained or be taught; there is potentiality of being abused with the high effectiveness attached to leader’s vision making the style undemocratic; the style also lacks conceptual clarity with the dimension not clearly limited; The measurement of the style has been questioned with the validity of MLQ not fully established; transformational leadership style is attached more on the personality trait other than a behavior which can be taught; the style is elitist and antidemocratic; there has been recorded of heroic leadership bias suffering; transformational leadership style is also based on qualitative data, and the style can be abused.
Conclusion
Howard Schultz is one of the most influential and aspired CEOs in the current leadership field. This is based on his ability to transform Starbuck to one of the leading global brands from a verge of collapse. His ability to embrace and reflect transformational leadership style traits has enabled him to engage stakeholders on the vision and the mission of the organization. Through integrating varying theories attached to the style, he has been able to create a competitive advantage for Starbucks through satisfying its partner’s needs hence offering quality products to their customers globally.
References
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