Howard Schultz: The Personality Behind Starbucks

Student: Aurel Manushi

Subject: Team Leadership

Instructor: Kathleen Dove

Assignment: Week 2 Assignment

Howard Schultz:  The Personality Behind Starbucks

When we are talking about the most successful businesses in the world, Starbucks will be definitely on the list. The merit for reaching this achievement belongs mostly to the leadership of its chairman and CEO, Howard Schultz. Its leadership style is particular, comparing to the other CEOs and leaders around the world. Due to his continuous efforts to make his company successful, he was able to succeed by finding the right way to do so. The main focus was not winning, but bringing a bright future to his company employees.

1. According to a leadership theory formulated in 1978, there are two leaders, transactional and transformational. The man behind one of the world’s most ethical companies, Starbucks, applies the latter. Transformational leaders inspire their team and encourage members to develop as individuals and be part of a collective team to work towards achieving objectives. This is the type of leader Howard Schultz is and he ensures there is trust, respect, honesty and commitment in the company he is running.

As a leader, he loves what he does and respect the people around him that help him to achieve that. That is a good sign that he, as a leader, is on a good path. Choosing such a path requires more time, and certainly more efforts, but they are worthy when he sees that the success comes from choosing the right path and the right people. As a leader, not only he teaches people how to solve the problems that arise, but also he motivate them to be creative and stimulate their minds.

2. His motivation for going further was the key to the success that Starbuck has today. His recent bosses has been sufficed with the idea that success comes by managing just a single store and they were happy with that idea. Schultz, on the other hand, had the brilliant idea of creating a chain of espresso stores, first around the country and then around the world. He pushed his bosses to embrace this revolutionary idea, even though they were first skeptical at it. His motivation made Starbucks open four new stores the same year he started to put this idea into effect.

Among his contributions, we can mention the fact that he always think in collective terms, such as we, our and ours; not using individual terms, such as I, me or mine. During his successful career as CEO and a leader, he always is careful to listen to people, both customers and employees alike, and make sure that all of them are happy. Extending the service hours and adding more food items made his path more successful because he was able to make people happy by accommodating their needs. On one hand, the students would assemble to study on the stores and, on the other, these places would serve as meeting places for businesspeople as his customers.