Servant Leadership and Starbucks: Minot 2, 19836

Sarah Brasher, Shift Supervisor

This store hasn’t always been a great store to work at. As Managers, District Managers,

and Regional Managers, you’ve seen the chaos that was once store 19836. During my first day

as a Supervisor at this store, the overwhelming lack of positive spirit and disregard to the

standards I’ve always known Starbucks to uphold caused myself to flee to the backroom in

tears. However, through a long process

over the past year, our current

leadership team has been able to turn

this store into the fun and well-

functioning store I’d wished it was from

the start. The active practices of

Servant Leadership at Minot 2

Starbucks have increased morale,

employee’s desires to develop within

the company, a newfound sense of

teamwork, and has even caused a lowered turnover rate. Because of my personal dedication to

these practices, I’ve been able to help build our team and impact this store’s development.

This Store’s Leadership History

Previously, we’ve seen a past Manager implementing their Laissez-Faire style leadership

technique. Laissez-Faire represents a leader who puts themselves among their followers, acting

as a follower themselves. They let things take course without interfering. An example as to why
this person clearly represented this style of leadership was through stating to a colleague of

mine, who’s also a Shift Supervisor, “You’re basically a barista who handles

money”. They’d also never interfere when baristas were insubordinate to my shift supervisor
colleague.

This attitude left significant damage to the team. Without direction, the standard rules

were ignored. Those who tried hard at their jobs weren’t recognized positively under this

leadership; and a lowered moral caused tension amongst

employees.

In an effort to remedy this complacency, a new manager

came and began enforcing rules that had been forgotten,

interfering when things were out of standard. This sudden

change of management caused many to quit, as it was

highly directive and opposite of the Laissez-Faire style

they’d grown accustomed to. As someone who entered this

store with this mentality, it was clear that morale was low, and that something significant

needed to be done.

Servant Leadership Defined

Servant Leadership within Starbucks is defined as being a leader who is that of a servant

to their followers. In this context, this means that as leaders we must strive to do what’s best

for our Baristas in supporting them in their development. Meredith Albrights states in her

article on Servant Leadership, “Servant Leadership: Not Just Buzzwords: The Strongest
Leadership Works in the Service Team” that Servant Leadership is all about focusing on serving

your team and create a trusting and open relationship (Albright, 2016).

It’s a type of leadership that is heavy in ethical responsibility to the follower and creates

an environment in which all members are encouraged to grow. Some, naturally, have criticized

it as a method which allows whatever

negative social normative ideas our society

has to flourish. In Helena Liu’s article, “Just

the Servant: An Intersectional Critique on

Servant Leadership”, she describes a specific

situation in which an Asian manager in

Australia found it difficult using servant

leadership because of the institutional

racism that existed in his company (Liu,

2017). In this situation, it was impossible for

him to be seen as their manager in opposed

to their ‘servant’ despite all he did for his

employees. However, we’ve discovered that servant leadership has caused a general increase

of inclusiveness in employee development that’s based purely on willingness to join the team.

Implementing Servant Leadership

Coming into Store 19836, I began my leadership by a more Authoritarian and Directive

Style. Authoritarian Leadership is a Leadership Style that is heavy on delegation and complete

control of tasks. As a perfectionist and a person who wants complete control of their shifts, this
was a natural approach to my first big leadership position. I quickly learned that while my tasks

were being completed in a timely manner by those I supervised, I was losing morale and trust.

While in a study done by Schuh, S, C., Zhang, X., and Tian, P, documented in, “For the Good or

Bad? Interactive Efforts of Transformational Leadership with Moral and Authoritarian

Leadership Behaviors”, it showed that in Authoritarian business styles, “there wasn’t a

significant change in their base line of moral and employee’s efforts” (Schuh, S. C., Zhang, X.,

and Tian, P, 2013) when compared to Servant Leadership. However, we’ve seen significant

change occur in M2’s store development.

The first way in which we began to see change was through a higher base morale

amongst employees. Servant leadership practices an interactive, deeper relationship with

subordinates and through this practice we were able to engage our baristas in a way that made

them feel appreciated. In an interview, a Barista,

Kristina said, “I didn’t feel I was allowed to give input before. Now

I feel like I can come to you guys with anything. You even helped me

find coverage for my schedule when I couldn’t, and I felt appreciated.”

Paige, reflects, “I love the big store meetings we have. It shows

ya’ll really care about us as a team”.

following this new behavior. Exact numbers show the starting turnover-rate at the time Andrea

and I began show a high score of 125. Within the following months, numbers had dropped to

108. While these numbers rise and fall in relation to our location being centered in a military

town, this improvement show a strong willingness for employees to be retained. When baristas

were asked at a recent meeting what would cause them to leave the company, Paige

exclaimed, “I can’t imagine anything that would cause me to leave!”

A lowered turnover rate means employees are staying longer and developing

friendships with each other. This helps us shift our attention to the team as a whole and

focusing on common goals. Because of the strong focus Servant Leadership puts on building

trust and strong communication between employees and supervisors, this allows us to focus on

specific goals such as customer connection scores. When relaying this to my team, in the spirit

of Servant Leadership, I’ve asked baristas, “What can I do to help us reach this

goal of a higher customer connection score?”. Typically, the answer would be

show a barista exactly what it means to be genuinely connecting with someone. At the

beginning of this process, our score sat at around 16, which is incredibly low. At the moment

we’re rising to 30 and are the highest in the District! This has never happened before for Store

19836.

From this sense of team and high morale, Servant Leadership is all about building up

your employees and developing them into higher positions. Since our constant practice of
Servant Leadership, we’ve promoted 2 baristas to be trainers, are in the process of developing

some more into this role, and have elected coffee leads and QASA leads. “A Multilevel Study on

Servant Leadership, Job Boredom, and Job Crafting” shows current studies into employee

output when in a Servant Leadership-based environment. It determines in this study that

Servant leadership tends to eliminate boredom by fostering job-crafting. This is because

Servant Leadership focuses on creating leaders within a team and promotes development that

wouldn’t be possible in other leadership styles (Lotta K.

Harju, Wilmar B. Schaufeli, Jarl J. Hakanen, 2018).

Overview

In the past year, we’ve seen Starbucks Store 19836 in

Minot become a successful store. Metrically, we see growth

in customer connections being made and a lower turnover

rate. However, unseen circumstances such as growth in

morale and an increased sense of belonging in employees

has been a large factor to this growth. These elements are a

large product of the Servant Leadership being practiced at this store. While trust is something

that is hard to gain and easy to lose, it’s clear that while continuous practice of earning the trust

of employees through development and relationship-building is being implemented, the growth

will continue. Because of Servant Leadership, my Starbucks store is now a great store to work

at, and I look forward to leading every day.

Albright, Meredith. “Servant leadership: not just buzzwords: the strongest leadership works in
the service of the team.” Strategic Finance Oct. 2016: 19+. Retrieved April 5, 2018
Business Insights: Global.

Liu, Helena. “Just the Servant: An Intersectional Critique of Servant Leadership.” Journal of
Business Ethics July 6, 2017, retrieved April 5, 2018
https://link-springer- com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/article/10.1007/s10551-017-3633-
0#citeas

Lotta K. Harju, Wilmar B. Schaufeli, Jari J. Hakanen, (2018) "A multilevel study on servant

Schuh, S. C., Zhang, X., & Tian, P. (2013). For the good or the bad? interactive effects of
transformational leadership with moral and authoritarian leadership behaviors. Journal of
Business Ethics, 116(3), 629-640. Retrieved April 5, 2018
http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/10.1007/s10551-012-1486-0 Retrieved from
http://login.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-
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