Tag: quality of work life

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Leadership, love, and authenticity: Howard Schultz and Starbucks

I just finished Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul for a chapter on compassionate leadership that I’m writing.  And I’ve fallen in love with the leadership of Howard Schultz. His philosophy — leadership is not just about winning, but about finding a right way to succeed that brings hope for a brighter future to others – is a reminder that if you love what you do and respect the people who help you do it, you’re on a good path.

On the day in 1987 that Schultz bought a local business in Seattle called Starbucks, he held an all-employee meeting. He had three talking points: “1. Speak from my heart. 2. Put myself in their shoes. 3. Share the Big Dream with them.” Schultz saw two requisites for Starbucks’ growth: (1) sustain the passion and personality upon which the company had been built; and (2) instill in every employee a reverence for the coffee experience – the capacity to recreate the transcendental “blend of craftsmanship and human connection” that Schultz encountered with the Italian barista who brewed his first espresso in Milan in 1983. Create a high-quality experience for people, and they will reciprocate with loyalty. Profits will follow.

To quote Schultz:  A company can grow big without losing the passion and personality that built it, but only if it’s driven not by profits but by people . . . The key is heart. I pour my heart into every cup of coffee and so do my partners [the company name for employees] at Starbucks. When customers sense that, they respond in kind … If you pour your heart into your work, you can achieve dreams others may think impossible. That’s what makes life rewarding. 

Starbucks is an amazing success story. In the 1990’s, it was opening a new store almost every day and is now the world’s largest coffeehouse company with more than 18,800 stores in 55 countries and more than 10 billion U.S. dollars in annual revenues – a ten-fold increase in a decade that also necessitated Schultz’s return as CEO (from his position as chairman) to address the company’s 2007 financial slide and reignite the innovation needed for continued success in an increasingly competitive global market.

Starbuck is also, by Schultz’s label, “a love story:” a testament to his love of coffee and of the work in growing a company and building a corporate culture that inspire and excite customers, vendors, and employees.

To quote Schultz again:  Infusing work with purpose and meaning is a two-way street. Yes, love what you do, but your company should love you back. As a merchant, my desire has always been to inspire customers, exceed their high expectations, and establish and maintain their trust in us. As an employer, my duty has always been to also do the same for people on the other side of the counter.

Schultz translated his personal philosophy into a company philosophy to treat all employees with respect and dignity and into company practices like affordable comprehensive healthcare for employees (even part-timers), flexible work hours, competitive wages, stock options, and other perks that repeatedly land Starbucks on Fortune’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” list – and got Schultz named Fortune’s 2011 Businessperson of the Year. 

So are you doing what you love?  Bringing your best self to the workplace so as to encourage others to do the same?  Walking your talk?  Creating a work environment that inspires your employees to create transcendental experiences for your customers?  Making contributions to a more hopeful future? 

If not, grab a cup of coffee and get out your pencil.  You’ve got some personal – and organizational – planning to do.     

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Avoiding the Boss from Hell: Look Before Your Leap

Advice abounds for how to interview well, as if the process is a one-way street. Your new boss will play a large role in the quality of your daily work life and in your career future.  Are you looking carefully at that?

Stephanie Taylor Christensen in ForbesWoman Online had great advice on assessing your new boss. I repost below. Take a look before you leap!  

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5 Ways To Spot A Bad Boss In An Interview

imageA boss can literally, make or break your career. Here are five ways to spot the bad ones before they become yours.

A great boss can make you feel engaged and empowered at work, will keep you out of unnecessary office politics, and can identify and grow your strengths. But a bad boss can make the most impressive job on paper (and salary) quickly unbearable. Not only will a bad boss make you dislike at least 80% of your week, your relationships might suffer, too. A recent study conducted at Baylor University found that stress and tension caused by an abusive boss “affects the marital relationship and subsequently, the employee’s entire family.” Supervisor abuse isn’t always as blatant as a screaming temper tantrum; it can include taking personal anger out on you for no reason, dismissing your ideas in a meeting, or simply, being rude and critical of your work, while offering no constructive ways to improve it.  Whatever the exhibition of bad boss behavior, your work and personal life will suffer. Merideth Ferguson, PH.D., co-author of the study and assistant professor of management and entrepreneurship at Baylor explains that “it may be that as supervisor abuse heightens tension in the relationship, the employee is less motivated or able to engage in positive interactions with the partner and other family members.”

There are many ways to try and combat the effects of a bad boss, including confronting him or her directly to work towards a productive solution, suggesting that you report to another supervisor, or soliciting the help of human resources.  But none of those tactics guarantee improvement, and quite often, they’ll lead to more stress. The best solution is to spot a bad boss—before they become yours! Here are five ways to tell whether your interviewer is a future bad boss.

1. Pronoun usage. Performance consultant John Brubaker says that the top verbal tell a boss gives is in pronoun choice and the context it is used. If your interviewer uses the term “you” in communicating negative information ( such as, “you will deal with a lot of ambiguity”), don’t expect the boss to be a mentor.  If the boss chooses the word “I” to describe the department’s success—that’s a red flag.  If the interviewer says “we” in regards to a particular challenge the team or company faced, it may indicate that he or she deflects responsibility and places blame.

2. Concern with your hobbies. There is a fine line between genuine relationship building, and fishing for information, so use your discretion on this one. If you have an overall good impression of the potential boss it may be that he or she is truly interested in the fact that you are heavily involved in charity work, and is simply getting to know you. On the other hand, the interviewer may be trying to determine whether you have too many commitments outside of work. The interviewer can’t legally ask if you are married, or have kids, so digging into your personal life can be a clever way to understand just how available you are.

3. They’re distracted. The era of email, BlackBerrys and smartphones have made it “okay” for people to develop disrespectful communication habits in the name of work. Particularly in a frenzied workplace, reading email while a person is speaking, multi-tasking on conference calls and checking the message behind that blinking BlackBerry mid-conversation has become the norm of business communications. But, regardless of his or her role in the company, the interviewer should be striving to make a good impression—which includes shutting down tech tools to give you undivided attention. If your interviewer is glancing at emails while you’re speaking, taking phone calls, or late to the interview, don’t expect a boss who will make time for you.

4. They can’t give you a straight answer. Caren Goldberg, Ph.D. is an HR professor at the Kogod School of Business at American University. She says a key “tell” is vague answers to your questions. Listen for pauses, awkwardness, or overly-generic responses when you inquire what happened to the person who held the position you are interviewing for, and/or what has created the need to hire. (For example, if you are told the person was a “bad fit,” it may indicate that the workplace doesn’t spend much time on employee-development, and blames them when things don’t work out).

You should also question turnover rates, how long people stay in given roles, and what their career path has been. All of these answers can indicate not only if the boss is one people want to work for, but whether pay is competitive, and employees are given a career growth plan.

5. They’ve got a record. Ask the potential boss how long he or she has been at the company, in the role, and where he or she worked before coming to it to get a feel for his or management style, and whether it’s what you respond to.  For example, bosses making a switch from a large corporation to a small company may lead with formality. On the other hand, entrepreneurs tend to be passionately involved in business, which can be a help or a hindrance, depending on your workstyle.

Goldberg also recommends searching the site eBossWatch, where you read reviews that former employees have given to a boss. If you’re serious about the position, she also suggests reaching to the former employee whose spot you are interviewing for, and asking for their take on the workplace. (LinkedIn makes this task easy to do). The former employee’s recount may not necessarily reflect your potential experience, but it can help you to determine whether his or her description of the job and company “jibes” with what the potential boss said.

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Raise your Joy Quotient (JQ): Step III – Look Around with Different Eyes

The final step for raising your joy quotient is a variation on the old adage, bloom where you are planted.

Life doesn’t work such that most of us can pick up and find new opportunities to express our evolving talents. And sometimes we can find ourselves far down a path that seems, if anything, to be leading us further away from where we hope to be. But that doesn’t mean that we’re stuck in a joyless work life. It means that we’ll need to look at our current situation with different eyes to discover the untapped opportunities or experiences that can build toward others we want.

Part of this is attitude adjustment. Feel stuck and you are. See yourself as wasting time, and you will. How can you find ways to make the most of what you have until you go?

The other part is building your capacities for creative visioning and for recognizing hidden opportunities in everything you do. Where you are may be exactly where you need to be to fine-tune skills, get valuable experiences, or establish professional networks and supports.  Are you taking full advantage of all this?

Are you, for example, thinking about your current job in too limited a fashion? Are you really as constrained as you feel? 

Can a job that now uses too little of your true talents be redesigned?  Enriched?  Are there other opportunities in your organization that you want to alert folks of your interest in? Can current networks be used to enhance your reputation in other areas? Can volunteer opportunities at work or outside help you make progress toward your new goal?

The ability to look at the potential in events and situations and to see how they can be leveraged to help achieve your future plans can reframe a dead-in now into an important stepping stone for a brighter tomorrow.  There’s great joy in that.

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Raise your Joy Quotient (JQ): Step II – Using your Full Self

Nothing signals leadership like confidence, and those who seek influence are warned to develop theirs. It takes confidence to stand for something. It requires confidence to stay strong in the face of inevitable resistance and to listen carefully and openly to others’ concerns while advancing your own.

Confidence comes in two measures. One is basic – the self-assurance from having done your homework: knowing the situation you face, what you believe, what needs to happen, what you plan to do, and what you can anticipate. This part is tied to preparation, resolve, and readiness for action. Determination is its close companion.

A second part is more personal – and is the direct link to joy. It involves the unabashed and uncensored use of your talents, leveraging your full self with its full range of quirks, to your efforts. This is not advocacy to shoot from the hip and let it all hang out. Leadership is a strategic art and science. Rather, we increase our effectiveness – and raise our capacity for joy – when we implement our plans in ways that don’t stress and stifle us.

Students and executives too often come to leadership training and weigh themselves down with a self-imposed, heavy leadership mantle. In their search for more skill, impact, and effective, they get stiff and serious.  Seriousness about learning and making a difference is not the same as becoming rigid or downright dour in how you handle your professional self.  Nor does it mean that you’ll succeed by learning to be like someone else.

You have your best shot of success when you bring a light heart and confidence that you have something to offer. People will want to connect with you – and leadership, after all, is all about relationships.

Here’s where leaders – and leaders-in-training – can learn from artists who often exhibit a professional confidence and public comfort with their idiosyncrasies.

I’m very big these days on the PS22 5th grade Chorus from Staten Island. (See previous post. Check the Chorus out on YouTube. Mark your calendar to watch them on the 83rd Annual Academy Awards, February 27.)

As a leadership scholar, I like studying their leader, Gregg Breinberg.  Mr. B’s a terrific musician and teacher, no question about that. But I particularly enjoy his authenticity – he’s been clear about his vision, unyielding on his focus, and relating to the kids and audiences in the same manner since the Chorus’s founding.   The teaching point for leaders is his willingness to do whatever it takes to keep the Chorus positive, on key, and performing to their best – without feeling in any way self-conscious or as if he needs to become “more professional or serious” or to acquiesce to those with more status as the Chorus’s status rises.  Those who have watched him work describe his style as that of an “overgrown 5th grader.”  He is proud to claim his own “inner clown.”

“Watch my face. I can help you,” you hear repeated across rehearsal and performance tapes – and he’ll use his face, movements, body, humor, and energy the same whether he is in front of Oprah Winfrey, a famous musician who’s come to hear the Chorus, or the kids in the school auditorium during rehearsal.

No evidence of any worries about how to lead or of that nagging inner voice that leadership students report – the self-evaluations that keep them questioning themselves and just a little off-center.  Am I dressed for success? Am I doing it right? Do I have the right stuff? How will others respond? Am I leading yet? What will my boss think?  

So prepare, and then let go and act.  Be the leader you were made to be.  Give yourself the freedom to work in ways that fit your talents and style.  It’ll make your work — and life — more joyful.

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Leading with Passion and Soul: Why Gustavo Dudamel is now My Dude

For the last thirteen years, The Dude to me has been the Jeff Bridges character in the Coen brothers’ film, The Big Lebowski.  Memorable character. Great film. I have fun associations from enjoying the film with my younger sons.  I quote lines from it regularly.  When I’m at my wits ends, that’s the film I want to see.  I never expected to replace The Dude with another.  But it happened.   

Gustavo Dudamel, the young charismatic conductor of the LA Philharmonic, is now My Dude.  Jay Leno on late-night TV first alerted me to Dudamel’s possible contention for the title.  I scoffed.  I’ve seen (and I own) the 60 Minutes show on Gustavo. I have known about him and his work since his appointment at age 27 to lead the LA orchestra.  I use him as a model of leading with soul and passion in my teaching.  Charismatic leader?  Absolutely.  The Dude?  Come on. 

I travelled to LA to investigate – or to be more specific, I went on the first of two planned trips to hear the LA Phil, see Dudamel in action, talk with some of the musicians, and research the young conductor’s real impact on one of the world’s great orchestras. This pleasant scholarship was intended to tease out the hype and marketing from real leadership. 

The buzz in the classical music world is that Gustavo has something special.  I wanted a first-hand feel for what that is and to hear what the musicians say and do in response to it.         

I saw the banners hung on every lamppost in downtown LA — and I thought creative advertising campaign. I approached the Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall and enjoyed its beauty. Creative architecture.  I noted the crowds entering the Hall– people of all ages and ethnicities — arriving for a musical form declared dead by so many.  As a classical music lover, I appreciated the strong ticket sales.   

I took my seat in the Concert Hall, 35 feet or so from Dudamel and to his left at an angle that let me see his gestures and face up close and personal.  Nice.  Bernstein and Beethoven on the program.  Two of my favorites.  Front row, center seat for the after-performance talk-back with Dudamel, the vocal soloist of the evening, and a member of the orchestra before going downstairs to talk with other LA Phil musicians. Unexpected bonus. Who should hold the title of The Dude?  Not a question on my mind or in my research protocol. 

5 minutes into the first movement of the first piece of my first live Dudamel-conducted concert, I knew something powerful was happening. Interpretation, pacing, variations  like I’ve never heard.  Nuance that made known music new again. Musicians – many more than twice the conductor’s age – watching and responding intently and with faces that indicated more than ordinary attention to the boss. Many had smiles of joy and pleasure as they played complex and serious music.  That’s not what I’m use to seeing.

I’ve watched from close vantage, for example, many of the great conductors leading the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and I have studied their leadership, relationship, and interaction at work with the orchestra during many open rehearsals.  Something was different with Dudamel and this orchestra. He could influence them with the most subtle of movements: slight nod of the head, twinkle of an eye, squeeze of his shoulder blades.  And everyone on that stage was clearly having a good time.

Now don’t get me wrong.  Dudamel has been described as a conducting animal, and there were opportunities to see his athletic conducting style.  But that struck me as less important a feature of his impact than I had expected.  What was more palpable was shared energy and enjoyment.  The mutual affection. The relationship of reciprocal appreciation and connection between Gustavo and the musicians – and the music that came from that partnership. 

When the piece was over, soloists and orchestra were acknowledged by the conductor and crowd while Dudamel beamed at the players and stood with his back to the audience. Then he turned from the podium. He did not, however,  take his solo bow from center stage as conductors normally do. Rather he walked in among the musicians and then turned to audience: conductor and musicians took their final bows together. 

After the concert and talk-back, the word from the musicians with whom I spoke was that all this was genuine.  Dudamel made a significant difference in their playing – in their work lives.  No, they weren’t just a friendly, happier orchestra than the BSO or others.  Dudamel’s trust and respect brought out their best work.  Their affection for him resulted in a willingness to trust in return – and to follow when he lead with radically different interpretations of music than the musicians had been playing for years.  Experienced professionals led by a wunderkind?  No – and you could feel the musician’s affection and respect for Dudamel in their immediate protests:  experienced professionals led by a talented conductor who is taking the entire orchestra to new heights.  Musicians spoke of playing in ways they never thought possible. The innovation was fun. The fun added energy.  Audiences responded. The results are spectacular.  The Dude torch was passed by the time I left the Concert Hall.

The morale of the story: real leadership is talent and preparation wedded with shared purpose, mutual respect, humility, and a contagious spirit of enjoyment and innovation that facilitates joy at work and unimaginable results.  Leading with passion and soul.  No doubt.  That’s how My Dude does it.