My Leadership Journey

This report explores the leadership journey of Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, and his leadership style. It discusses the principles of transformational leadership and how Schultz's leadership style aligns with these principles. The report also examines leadership stereotypes and the importance of challenging them. It concludes with reflections on personal career goals and aspirations.

My Leadership Journey 0
Title: My Leadership Journey
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My Leadership Journey 1
Contents
My Chosen Leader.....................................................................................................................2
My Career Goals and Interests...................................................................................................2
Leadership Theorizing and Schultz’s Leadership Style.............................................................3
Principles of Transformational Leadership............................................................................4
Schultz’s Leadership Style.....................................................................................................4
Leadership Stereotypes..............................................................................................................7
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................8
References..................................................................................................................................9

My Leadership Journey 2
My Chosen Leader
My chosen leader is Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks. The reason what makes
me drawn to his leadership is his principle of maintaining transparency or sharing the truth of
the company with the employees. He is criticized for this trait as many C-suits do not prefer
this decision for the profit of the company. Starbucks was in crisis in 2007 while its market
share reduces to 42% because of the competitors like Dunkin' Donuts and McDonald's (Chris,
2019). Mr. Schultz decided to transform the business and re-innovate it by changing the
existing product line. In order to avoid hard completion from McDonald's and Dunkin'
Donuts, the leader eliminated the sandwiches and introduced the aroma of freshly cultivated
Coffee. In response to this situation, he keeps an open apology to his employees and their
families associated with the existing products and services. He was questioned by the store
managers, whether sharing 100% transparency will be beneficial for the company or will it
affect the business. Schultz replied that the employee should have clarity of their business
and understand the needs for change management. He emphasizes the importance of
communication with the workforce in the time of dire situation which can keep the business
going on. The trait of giving importance to the employees and empathize with them while
introducing change management intrigues me most (Team, 2016).
My Career Goals and Interests
I am highly interested to take the role of leadership in my organization. The most
important trait in me what motivates me to this career is my empathy and high tolerance
ability. I have an inherent quality to influence the people and in real life, I found my friends
and teammates who value my decision. My people easily assume me as a representative of
themselves. As my empathic nature enables to listen to them attentively and consider their
problems instead of prioritizing personal interests, and they trust my decision making. Not

My Leadership Journey 3
only communicating with the workforce, but I am also capable to deal with the external
shareholders, including government, providers, and influencers. I believe that every
individual has different perception and values based on their cultural background and I am
aware of that. This cultural awareness makes me at ease communicating with the external
stakeholders as they come from different cultural background. I will consider their different
interests, priorities, values, and relationship while dealing with them. It leads me to match my
business interests with the needs of the external stakeholders. My ability to engage the people
with my communication strengthen my leadership ability. The leader needs to understand the
relationship of the stakeholders with the organization and wisely chooses the content to
convey them. For instance, the Influencers have no direct interest or relationship with the
company and so conveying the message regarding the equipment update is meaningless to
them. I have an ability to make people understand in an easy way, as many stakeholders get
disgusted with content embedding too many technical terms.
Leadership Theorizing and Schultz’s Leadership Style
Keller & Foster (2012) comment that the manager makes things right, whereas the
leader does the right thing (Keller & Foster, 2012). Grey (2013) explains this notion by
saying that, fixing the thing right denotes efficiency, whereas doing the right thing denotes
effectiveness. Allison, Goethals, and Kramer (2017) point out that making the balance
between efficient and effective, in response to change management or changing work
environment is critical. It is not possible by a single person, but needs the coordination of the
team. As a manager maintains the efficiency for short term, leaders make it effective in the
long run (Allison, Goethals & Kramer, 2017). For example, my chosen leader, Mr. Schultz
makes the change management effective by educating the Starbucks outlet workforces about
their new job role through Masterclass, an online educational platform. Schultz leadership

My Leadership Journey 4
consequences an organizational culture focussed on employees. This is enabled by his
transformational leadership style.
According to Rolfe (2011), a transformational leader encourages, inspires and
motivates the workforce to adapt to the changes or innovate something new for the future
success of the company. They are empathetic and are known to be a people's leader as their
first priority is people rather than a task. They prefer to work in a team and expect the
commitment of employees. While they recognize the need for change, they create a broader
view of the future success of the company and set a vision to guide the employees (Rolfe,
2011).
Principles of Transformational Leadership
The Principles of transformational leadership are:
1. Idealized influence: When the leader represents himself as an ideal leader, the people
will be more adaptable to changes as per the needs. By this way, the leader earns the
trust and commitment of the employees.
2. Inspirational motivation: The leader motivates the follower or inspires them to
accomplish their dreams (Williams, 2018).
3. Intellectual stimulation: A transformational leader encourages his workforce to give
their ideas to solve the problems by simulating their intellectual minds.
4. Individualized consideration: The transformational leader considers individual
employees and concerns on their career while they address their problem. The leader
is aware of cultural difference.
Schultz’s Leadership Style
Practices

My Leadership Journey 5
Schultz revolutionizes the coffee industry and also transforms the original business of the
organization by creating one of the largest coffee chains with employee-centric company
culture. He adopts two transformational leadership practices:
1. Clear vision: Being a transformational leader, Schultz motivates his team with a clear
vision as he prefers to share his company’s situation openly. He arranges a policy to
support their employees or coffee-chain workers like training assistance, health
benefits, veteran hiring, and employee stock purchase. Being an empathic leader,
Schultz relates his personal life with the condition of his employees. It reminds
Schultz that his father was a truck driver who lost his job due to the breaking of the
ankle in an accident. That time Schultz was only 7 years old and he has gone through
the suffering when his family has no income (Çelik, 2017). This suffering makes him
prioritizing his employee while building his company culture. He has a clear vision
while emphasizing on dual objectives – people and profit. He inspires his fellows
towards performance as his program is driven by sustainability. Not only he
reintroduces the coffee industry, but differentiates his business from the competitors
by helping community people.
2. Intellectual Simulation: The practice of intellectual stimulation is reflected in the
leadership of Schultz as he introduces new business ideas breaking the status quo. His
challenge to the conventional coffee shop creates a "third place" of an American
citizen (Tranbarger, 2013). He creates a cosy atmosphere where people visit after
home and work. It was new in corporate coffee culture. Schultz simulates the "third
place" by adding inviting aroma, décor and favouring free Wi-Fi, which induces a
more domestic feeling (Shiwnarain, 2018).
Characteristics

My Leadership Journey 6
1. Hiring the right people: The reason behind the success of Starbucks is hiring the
right people who match with the company's interest and fit for the job role. When
Schultz returned to Starbucks in 2008, he creates a team consisting of 10,000
managers and arranges a conference for four days. He talks to the managers
personally to inspire as he needs managers with intuitive leadership skills. He boosts
his managerial team with an inspirational speech.
2. Consistency: Schultz believes in consistency in delivering products and services.
Starbucks has more than 22,000 stores around the globe, delivering the same taste of
coffee blend in every store for maintaining the consistency of products (Spring, 2014).
3. Nurturing employees: Schultz nurtures his employees like a transformational leader.
He is admired by his employees for offering health benefits, good perks and free
rides. His leadership has the trait of listening to his employees. Even the company
offers flexible shifts for their employees.
4. Cultural awareness: Being culturally aware, Schultz designs Starbucks outlets as per
the regional culture. He gives value to the others’ culture who belong to that place.
Also, he allows a diversified team of suppliers including Asian American, African,
Veterans, LGBT, and people with disability (Empson & Langley, 2015).
5. Mission and vision: The vision of Schultz, is to create a brand concerning on treating
people with respect and dignity. The mission of Schultz is not only offering a place
serving coffee and snacks, rather providing a place for meeting up with friends and
strangers.
6. Partnership: Schultz focuses on the right partners for gaining brand awareness.
Starbucks makes a partnership with Barnes and Noble, a book publishing company
for drawing the attention of the literary audience who loves the acquaintance of books
(Butler, 2018). The customers who are book lovers can enjoy the coffee with books

My Leadership Journey 7
which increases the profit and brand awareness. Later, Starbucks makes a partnership
with Apple which allows the customer to enjoy Starbucks play-tunes from iTunes.
7. Knowing the employees and customers: Schultz points out the two building blocks
of the business-customers and employees. He emphasizes knowing the customers and
the employees. For regular customers, Starbucks offers customized products to make
the customers feel special. In the making of Frappuccino, Schultz prefers to take ideas
from the employees (Love, 2012).
Values
Howard Schultz is widely known for his quality of valuing people. He is one of the
leaders who share their mistakes and appeal for an apology. In 2007, he emails the former
CEO that the company has undergone through an unintentional experience of compromise for
their business decision (Starbuck, 2013). He added that this situation makes him realize to
bring changes to the core business to get back the Starbucks' experience which evokes the
passion, heritage, and tradition. Even he apologizes to the employees and their family
because of the change management which dismantles their work.
Leadership Stereotypes
Leadership stereotype describes the perception of a leader's gender role in terms of
his/her leadership style. The identity of gender role describes a stereotype leader’s
perspective on his gender and the qualities possessed by the individual are considered as the
ideal for each gender in society. This theory introduces ‘agency communication’ where the
male displays agentic traits like high self-esteem, assertiveness, competitiveness, etc. (Hariri,
Monypenny & Prideaux, 2014). On the contrary, the female is expected to be nurturing
category who is benevolent in nature, concerned about others and loves to take personal care.
Breaking the stereotype means when the female displays agentic behaviour and the male

My Leadership Journey 8
displays nurturing behaviour. In response to this argument, Ferguson (2017) introduces "role
congruity" theory which denotes a mismatch of the role of a female leader in respect to the
demands of leadership. As a result, society has biases while evaluating a woman as a leader.
‘Role congruity' claims, a less favourable assessment of a female's leadership ability and
actual leadership behaviour (Ferguson, 2017).
The study of sociology finds many drawbacks in women’ leadership while Hariri,
Monypenny & Prideaux (2014) suggest that transformational leadership is more feminine.
This type of leader transforms the goals of the workforce and matches their values to the
organization’s value, through the help of communication. They create a vision that has an
emotional appeal. I would like to be a transformational leader in my organization like Mr.
Schultz which does not break the stereotypical concepts purposefully, as this leadership style
encompasses more feminine qualities. Being a transformational leader I prefer to be a more
flexible organizational structure, breaking the masculine leadership concept of hierarchical
structure. My leadership invites a change in traditional leadership concept by engaging
collaboration, interpersonal relationship, power-sharing and empathy for the people which
reflect more feminine. I did not consider my gender role for the leadership purpose, while
adopting the Schultz’s leadership style.
Conclusion
In this report, I have explored the leadership portray of Howard Schultz and theorized
his leadership styles. I have mentioned why his leadership fascinates me and how it
strengthens my career goals. I am concerned about the leadership stereotype, but I do not
challenge it by breaking the status quo of leadership gender.

My Leadership Journey 9
References
Allison, S., Goethals, G., & Kramer, R. (2017). Handbook of heroism and heroic leadership.
New York: Routledge.
Butler, L. (2018). Coffee's Dark Secrets: Linguistic Variation in Starbucks and Dunkin
Donuts. Lingua Frankly, 4.
Çelik, A. (2017). Evaluatıon Of Personal Atrıbutes Of X, Y And Z Generatıons Accordıng To
Human Re. International Journal Of Academic Value Studies (Javstudies
JAVS), 3(11), 182-188.
Chris, J. (2019). 7 Howard Schultz Leadership Style Principles - Joseph Chris Partners.
Retrieved from http://www.josephchris.com/7-howard-schultz-leadership-style-
principles
Empson, L., & Langley, A. (2015). Leadership and professionals. The Oxford handbook of
professional service firms, 163, 188.
Ferguson, T. (2017). Female Leadership and Role Congruity within the Clergy: Communal
Leaders Experience No Gender Differences Yet Agentic Women Continue to Suffer
Backlash. Sex Roles, 78(5-6), 409-422.
Keller, J., & Foster, D. (2012). Presidential Leadership Style and the Political Use of
Force. Political Psychology, 33(5), 581-598.
Love, A. (2012). Passion and purpose: Leading from the inside out. Leader To
Leader, 2012(65), 50-56.
Rolfe, P. (2011). Transformational Leadership Theory: What Every Leader Needs to
Know. Nurse Leader, 9(2), 54-57.

My Leadership Journey 10
Shiwnarain, M. (2018). By 2020 Starbucks Hopes To Eliminate Plastic Straws From Their
Stores. Science Trends.
Spring, C. (2014). Starbucks: Examining Brand Equity Through Effective Social
Media. Journal Of Purdue Undergraduate Research, 4(1), 94-95.
Starbuck, K. (2013). Nazis. Sewanee Review, 121(1), 136-144.
Tranbarger, R. (2013). Being a Manager Does Not Make You a Leader. Nurse Leader, 11(6),
68.
Team, T. (2016). Here' How Starbucks Will Be Impacted By A Change In Management.
Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2016/12/05/here-how-
starbucks-will-be-impacted-by-a-change-in-management/
Widiana, M. (2017). Tranformational Leadership Effect On The Marketing Performance
Through Market Orientation. Advances In Social Sciences Research Journal, 4(9).
Williams, R. (2018). Becoming The Leader The Company Needs. Leader To
Leader, 2018(88), 56-60.