Allyson Anderson

July 1, 2022

OGL 321

Short Paper

The person that I look up to as a great leader is Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks.

Howard Schultz, I believe, is a great leader because he is very employee focused versus being

metric focused. He has always been the leader that is determined to get the benefits that he

believes we deserve. For example, he was the one to make sure that any Starbucks employee can

attend ASU and Starbucks would cover the majority of the cost. For me, this shows a leader that

cares about the well being and education of his team members. Also, Howard is great at

motivating everyone within the company. He recently returned from retirement to take back the

role of being the CEO of Starbucks from Kevin Johnson, who was a metric focused leader.

While Kevin was in the CEO role, morale within the company had hit an all time low. The

turnover rates were high, employees were very unhappy and causing problems with customers,

and we were losing loyal customers due to price increases. Overall, the company was not doing

well. But after Howard took back over, we have already seen an increase of morale. A few

people that have been with the company for more than a few years, mentioned that it felt like we

could all take a deep breath when Howard took back over. Another great trait that Howard has is

that he always presents himself as centered and grounded. He never shows that he is unsure of

his decisions or that he doesn’t know how to get out of a bind. I believe every leader should be

like this. I believe that a leader should present themselves as calm and collected. They should

never be seen as nervous or stressed because this will only cause chaos within the team or

company.
 There are three qualities that I hope to incorporate into my skills as a leader. The main

quality is to be authentic. I want to be the type of leader that is very upfront with my team when

it comes to my expectations, the reasoning behind my decisions, and sharing what is going on

behind the scenes. I have had many leaders that did not explain their thought process with certain

decisions, and it made the team feel as if their opinions did not matter or were not considered.

Also, it is hard to see if a decision was the right one if there was no reasoning given by the

person making the decision. By asking for other opinions, different point of views can be seen

so that a decision can be made with all factors being considered. Another quality that I hope to

become a master at evaluating risks. I tend to not think about every potential risk when it comes

to making a decision, and I know this can be harmful to any project that I am working on

completing. Therefore, I have been practicing on finding potential risks and how to overcome

those risks if they arise during a project. My last course helped me start my journey to improve

this skill by having plenty of activities that I could practice using the skill. The last quality that I

want to embody as a leader is to be grounded and centered. I am the type of person that is very

easy to read and unfortunately, I show emotions very well without even realizing it. I want to

learn how to stay calm under any circumstance and control my body language to not show when

I am stressed or frustrated. I believe I can do this by researching videos or articles and learning

tips or tricks to stay calm in stressful situations.