Part 1:

From my understanding, leadership is a process in which an individual influences

and motivates others towards a common goal. I will go even farther to say that
exceptional leadership is a process in which influence and motivation radiates from the
positive interpersonal relationships in one's work group, towards a unified and ethical
vision. There are many ways in which a leader can operate in their position, ranging
from exceptional to egregious, all of which affect employee performance differently.
To begin, under exceptional leadership, each employee has a unique and effective
relationship with their leader, which results in many beneficial consequences. This bond
creates referent power, in which all of the members want to work for their leader,
creating a willingness to go above and beyond basic job requirements (Northouse,
2019). These relationships also create a cohesive, kind, and safe environment for
partners at work, allowing for opportunities to express organizational concerns and
personal problems in hopes of stopping any and all friction that could hinder
production.
An exceptional leader is also someone who is able to lead their team smoothly
towards achieving their common goal. Ways in which they do so are fully explaining
objectives, clarifying roles, forming the vision and helping their team every step along
the way. It is hard to do your job when you don’t know how to do it, so by making
everything crystal clear the leader is setting up their followers for success. An
exceptional leader has the capabilities to coach, reward, motivate, and problem solve
whenever needed by the team. In doing so, they are uplifting, helpful, and providing
mentorship to their employees, utilizing themselves as a safety net for whenever a
follower falls, thus boosting employee performance.
Of all of the leadership theories we have studied throughout the quarter, the
philosophy which best matches my current leadership style would be servant leadership.
Originally I wasn’t going to pick this style, but while looking through my notes I
remembered that Spears’ 10 Characteristics of a Servant Leader (qtd. in Northouse),
might as well be “1o Characteristics of Crystal”. The list comprises: listening, empathy,
healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment
to the growth of people, and building a community (Northouse, 2019). You may be
thinking to yourself, this girl has self-confidence coming out the wazoo, and in this case,
you would be right. One of the only things I am truly confident about is my ability to see,
hear, understand, comfort, and love those of who I am connected with. I excel in many
of these qualities and I am at least proficient in the rest. Something I have been working
on is fully transitioning all of these skills to professional life.
In my leadership role already, I am known to be someone who partners can come
to to talk about their day, their dog, something that happened on shift, or any personal
problems they may have. I am naturally very perceptive when it comes to the emotions
of others, and tend to make it my mission to uplift others when they are feeling down.
Due to the positive relationships I have with my partners, I am able to communicate
with them to create beneficial change. Since I have been a partner for over 3 years now, I
am confident in my ability to lead my team through whatever challenges may arise, I am
capable of predicting how situations may unfold, as well as prepared and readily
available to find creative solutions to problems. Whenever anyone needs assistance with
a task I am more than willing to walk them through it, and whenever I hear someone
wants to promote, I begin teaching them the skills required for a position like mine.
Lastly, my partners and I are a small family where we all feel safe to express our true
selves.
While I highly resonate with servant leadership, I also relate to path-goal theory
and transformational leadership. The main reason I resonate with these approaches is
due to the fact that they are all centralized on ensuring followers are respected, heard
and cared for.
The basis of path-goal theory stems from how leaders can motivate followers to
accomplish goals, while focusing attention on their needs and motivations. Through this
approach, leaders assist their members through whatever obstacles they may encounter,
as well as teaching different leadership approaches to utilize based on what type of help
they need. The main leader behaviors required to excel in this technique are directive,
supportive, participative, and achievement-oriented leadership.
One of the most popular theories at the moment is transformational leadership.
This approach stems from the concept that leadership is a process, in which one can
change and transform oneself and others for the better, through their emotions, values,
ethics, standards and goals. Transformational leaders act as role models to their
followers, they have the capacity to inspire, motivate and support their partners
whenever need be.
On the other hand, two theories that were not necessarily “my cup of tea” would
be trait theory and adaptive leadership. The whole concept of trait theory throws me off.
I do not believe leadership is an exclusive rule designated only to those who were born
with a specific, and unchangeable, quality. If you told little Crystal that one day she was
going to be getting a degree in leadership, she would have laughed in your face. When I
was younger I was not outgoing, I had no self-confidence, and I would have preferred to
not have to work with people on a day-to-day basis, let alone tell them what to do. I
didn’t even realize leadership is something I had interest in till I started working at
Starbucks. Leadership is a process in which one can grow through and into.
In terms of adaptive leadership, I don’t have nearly as many negative feelings for
this approach as I do with trait theory, but from my perspective it is unnecessary to have
as a whole, stand-alone concept. I do think adaptability is a valid and useful skill for
leaders to study, understand, and utilize if they aren’t proficient, but personally I am
already very adaptable, and don’t need much formal training to apply it in my life and
leadership. Life is crazy, I have adapted to a number of situations, behaviors and
environments, as well as having an almost overwhelming amount of problems thrown at
me that I have overcome. That’s life though, there isn’t always going to be someone to
guide and protect you through the challenges you will face. The only reason this theory
didn’t resonate with me is because it was attempting to teach me something I already
excel in.
The first similarity between most of these theories is that leadership is a process
(except for trait). I like this idealization of the leadership process because it makes the
position attainable to everyone. The second similarity (besides trait, again) between
these concepts is that they work towards making the most out of every situation. Many
of the theories promote motivating your partners to be the best “them’s” they can be,
and the others attempt to prepare each other for whatever challenges they may
encounter.
The main difference between these theories would be trait leadership. Most of
these pathways focus on real life situations and how to be a good leader, while this one is
essentially just a checklist. This is kind of understandable though as trait theory was one
of the first approaches designed to study leadership. The hypothesis for this approach
stemmed from The Great Man Theory (1840), so I think it’s all just a bit outdated.

Part 2:
While looking through the posting of the 200 top paid American CEOs, the thing
that stood out to me the most is the sparse amount of women on the list. By my count,
which may be the slightest bit inaccurate, and in fact I hope it is, came out to be 14
women out of the 200 people on the lineup. This means that only 7% of the top paid
CEOs are female (Huang & Russell, 2017). In the United States, women make up 47% of
the entire labor force, and 40% of these women are in managerial positions (“Women in
Management”, 2020). The gap between 40% and 7% is so obvious that you could
probably see it if you had your eyes closed.
The second thing I noticed, which only makes this contrast drastically worse, is
the microscopic amount of people of color on this list. Disclaimer, this may have a slight
variance from the truth as I made this group using assumptions based on their pictures,
but there was so much white on this list that I almost thought it was snowing. From my
perception, only 3 of the women on this list are POC, totaling them to 1.5% of the entire
lineup (Huang & Russell, 2017). Kind of depressing right? Unfortunately the number
isn't much better on the national level, as women of color make up only 10.8% of the
managerial positions in our workforce (“Women in Management”, 2020).
While counting the women, I also made a tally of how many perceived men of
color were on the list. Fortunately, it’s a little bit better, totalling to 8 men, or 4% of the
collection. So just to be clear, only 22 of the 200 top paid CEOs are not white males,
leading to a miniscule 11% of the list (Huang & Russell, 2017). The extreme 89% of white
men on this list is an irrefutable argument towards our need to implement more
minority leadership training and mentorship programs. Especially considering that
white males make up only 31% of our nation's population (Henderson, 2014).

Part 3:
Throughout the pandemic I have worked at 6 different stores, which means
meeting and interacting with an almost countless number of followers, coworkers and
managers. As an introvert, this has challenged my ability to create positive interpersonal
relationships and work environments, but for the better. This is part of the reason I am
die-hard fan of the servant leadership approach.
The experience I would like to specifically expand on would be my most voluntary
transfer, to my store in West Hollywood. All of my previous transfers were within the
same district in San Francisco, so I always had at least one person I knew going into
these stores. Moving 400 miles south, I was forced to develop fresh relationships with
each of my new coworkers.
In my personal experience, nobody likes the person who comes in and starts
changing everything from the jump. The process of enacting change encounters less
friction once you have developed relationships with those who will be affected by the
change. This is due to a common understanding of competencies, motivations and
shared trust.
Back to my experience, the way I was able to begin developing these new
relationships begins with positive communication. Having the ability to communicate
tasks and goals is a key part of leadership, but interpersonal communications and the
ability to be an objective listener and support system for your followers is the basis of a
good working relationship. Here the leader is able to show empathy for their individual
situations and assist in finding solutions, or providing the comfort that they are reaching
out for. This can be a slow process due to questionable trust, but I was able to do this by
asking personal questions (friendly, not intrusive) and reminding them that they can
always come to me for anything. Eventually, they began expressing their concerns and
confiding in me, which resulted in snowballing trust.
While in the process of developing these relationships, I worked towards “proving
myself” to them by taking responsibility for the team and any outcomes would result. I
was also able to do this by showing my followers that I appreciate and care for them.
This involved verbal praise for hard work, which in fact I do so frequently that one of my
baristas made a joke, “Crystal will tell you good job even if you sucked.”. When your
efforts are appreciated, you are more likely to keep up positive performance, and prove
that you are deserving of the praise. I responded to my barista's joke saying, “Just
because you don’t think you killed it today, doesn’t mean you didn’t put in the effort.
That is all I can ask for, and why I appreciate you.”.
 All of these layers in which I have involved my leadership position to create
positive interpersonal relationships with my followers, results in the establishment of a
cohesive and positive work environment. No one likes coming to work with the worries
it may be a bad day due to the people you are working with, that is a rather toxic
situation, which only adds stress to an already stressful job. Having fun with coworkers
makes the day go by quicker and easier, but also gives more opportunities for positive
customer connections.
I can confidently say that if I had come into any of the stores I have worked at,
with an authoritative, task focused leadership style, that I would not have been
successful in forming the referent power my leadership style requires. As stated earlier,
no one likes someone who comes in and says, “I’m here to fix this store.” because the
main reaction you will receive is, “Who is this joker?”. You could be the best leader in
the whole world, with information, legitimate, expert and coercive power, but the
problem is your followers don’t know this about you. They don’t know that you are
highly competent, and their trust doesn’t stem past the fact that you have the job, so
maybe you know what you’re talking about. If I had come into these stores and instantly
began coaching my partners, there would be a wall of resentment I would need to
overcome before I began creating cohesive interpersonal relationships. It may form me
to be a leader who cannot not be trusted to handle the personal needs of my followers.

Part 4:
The team experience I would like to discuss stems from my work environment. I
am a supervisor at my store, and typically I have anywhere from 2-4 coworkers. Above
us, we have our manager, and below are our baristas. My two recent Starbucks
managers have a largely laissez-faire style of leadership. They are so focused on their
admin duties that they don’t really spend time on the floor dealing with day-to-day
situations that we do. The leadership pressures are then placed on our shoulders, the
SSV’s.
All of my coworkers are competent performers, with small variations in how they
run their floor. When there is a shift where there are multiples of us, typically one will
take the lead and act as the “key holder”, and the others of us will support them
wherever we are needed. In this position we are able to remain a valuable source for
questions and assistance if needed, while also reducing the amount of responsibility
placed on us. In this position, we are able to ensure everything is running smoothly
while the key holder is focusing on whatever task they need to be completed. During
shifts where I am the only supervisor, I maintain most of the control, but will designate
responsibilities to my baristas who are up for the challenge.
I enjoy relinquishing my control every once in a while because I get to observe the
different leadership approaches my coworkers use. Observing leadership from a position
without responsibility is useful because I am able to view the consequences of choices
without the stress that comes from possible failure.
As I stated earlier, I have had the opportunity to see how laissez-faire leadership
affects day-to-day operations. I am a competent supervisor, who doesn’t need much
assistance to complete my tasks, so this style is partially beneficial to me. I don’t enjoy
having a manager breathing down my neck, watching every little thing I do, so the
absenteeism of upper management actually reduces my stress level. On the other hand, I
am also able to observe how my partners react to this approach, and it isn’t necessarily
as positive. For those of us who require more assistance and hands on support, it can be
upsetting to have a manager who is never there. This style does create tension when it
comes to corrective action, because how is someone who never sees me work, supposed
to tell me I need to do better at my job?
While there are many different types of resources for studying leadership styles
and techniques, I do not believe there is a way to prepare for the major “real-life”
situations that will challenge our team and our leadership. Our education on the subject
can be extremely useful for giving us a push in the right direction towards constructing a
creative solution. But I believe there are too many variables to be fully composed when
handling obstacles. My main reasoning for this would be our natural fight or flight
response to stress.
There are many physiological reactions when the cortisol reaches your
sympathetic nervous system (the fight or flight response in our body). Most of these
changes are physically based to prepare us to literally run or fight in situations, but there
is also a mental reaction. “Quicker thinking allows us to evaluate danger and make rapid
decisions. It can be very difficult to concentrate on anything apart from the danger.”
(“Fight Or Flight Response”, n.d.). So, when you are encountering “real-life” challenges,
likely your calm brain will go haywire causing a lapse in memory for the procedures
discussed in our studies.
Another reason I argue it isn’t possible to be fully prepared for the tribulations
one will face in a leadership position, is the amount of layers / moving parts
surrounding these challenges. As we are taught in our textbook, there are numerous
factors that can “hinder production” like interpersonal relationships, task
incompetencies and environmental reactions (Northouse, 2019). Thus, there are many
approaches leaders can enact to understand the situation in hopes of solving these
problems, which is where our own leadership competencies come into play.
I believe democratic leadership styles are the best approach when working in
teams. This style involves a leader sharing day-to-day responsibilities with their
followers, allowing them to find solutions to their problems while remaining as a
support system whenever needed. In democratic work environments followers feel
empowered in their roles resulting in a higher rate of group commitment as well as
increased productivity. This approach fosters cohesion, trust and respect in a given
group.
The most critical aspect, in my opinion, for approaching leadership in teams is
ensuring followers are heard, respected and supported. One of the strongest tools a
leader can utilize is referent power. Your team can experience an extremely challenging
day, where all they want to do is throw in the towel and give up; but a leader wielding
this power has created bonds with their followers causing them to feel motivated to
continue on because it is in your best interest, which should aligned with the best
interest of the organization. Teamwork makes the dream work, but if your team doesn’t
want to work for you, the dream won’t work.
In conclusion, I believe a good leader is someone who can create a cohesive
environment in which all members are “putting in their all” to create the best possible
outcomes for both the organization and themselves. My personal leadership style is a
blend of many approaches but is largely centered through servant leadership, path-goal
theory and transformational leadership. Creating positive interpersonal relationships is
a key part towards maximizing your groups potential while simultaneously making work
a fun experience. Leadership is a process in which all members are able to grow,
motivate each other and become the best possible version of themselves.
 References

Fight Or Flight Response. (n.d.). Psychology Tools. Retrieved from https://www.psyc

hologytools.com/resource/fight-or-flight-response/
Henderson, N (2014, October 8). White men are 31 percent of the American population.
They hold 65 percent of all elected offices. The Washington Post. Retrieved from
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/10/08/65-percent-of-
all-american-elected-officials-are-white-men/
Huang, J., & Russell, K. (2017, May 26). The Highest-Paid C.E.O.s in 2016. The New
York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/26/
business/highest-paid-ceos.html
Northouse, P. G., (2019). Leadership: Theory and Practice, 8th ed. Sage Publications.
Women in Management (Quick Take). (2020, August 11). Catalyst. Retrieved from
https://www.catalyst.org/research/women-in-management/