How 30 Minutes Per Week @ Starbucks is Making Me a Better Leader

What if I told you that you could invest in your own leadership development without spending any money or changing your routine?  And the investment was certain to advance your leadership capabilities? Well, guess what?  I've found just such an experience for you. In all likelihood you are already going to Starbucks a few times a week. But, what do you do while you're there? 

Try this…

Visit the busiest, craziest Starbucks in your area.  Start paying attention the moment you walk in the door.  After you order, sit at the bar where you can see behind the counter and look for the Starbucks employee wearing the black apron. This will be either the Store Manager or the Shift Supervisor. And they will most likely be working during the peak hours as the lead barista - making the majority of the hot drinks and working closest to the end of the bar where the completed drinks are handed off to the customers. If it's not the manager working this assignment, it will be a highly skilled, capable and high performing member of the team. This is a challenging, fast paced role requiring a good degree of skill and an incredible memory bank of drink recipes and procedures (not to mention thick skin and an enduring smile in the toughest of circumstances.) 

What to watch for…

1)   Continuous Feedback Environment (CFE?).  I'm not just talking about the customer feedback that ultimately shapes the efficiency and excellence of an organization. That is certainly continuous when you are serving over 100 customers per hour and there is no physical separation between the customer and the representatives of the company.  But it's important to also notice the “Continuous Feedback Environment” between the manager and his/her employees. This is an eye opening experience and will shed tremendous light on the importance of frequent and timely employee feedback.  Unfortunately the sterility of a corporate environment leads managers to wait for a private moment where they can sit down with an employee in the comfort of their office and provide the employee some sort of generic feedback on their performance. In the end, this doesn't happen often and is seldom timely enough to make a difference.  But in the Starbucks world the feedback has to come now. Perhaps an employee enters a drink incorrectly on the register and thus it gets prepared incorrectly.  This could happen again numerous times before the rush ends, so the employee has to be provided this quick instructional feedback on the fly so they get it right the next time (which might very well be in the next 5 minutes). So feedback whether it be instruction, correction or affirmation (which we’ll talk about later) is happening continuously and happening in a highly effective manner. In one shift a Starbucks manager might provide more feedback than a corporate manager provides in a month. 

2)   Delegation. Often one of the biggest challenges for new managers is knowing what to do and what to delegate. The cramped quarters behind the counter of a Starbucks require specific roles and a clear delegation of who is going to do what. This cuts down on the back and forth movement and allows everyone to surprisingly have enough space.  Take a look - it will give you new ideas for your staff. 

3)   Affirmation. The most powerful tool available to a manager and yet often so under-utilized is positive feedback. To quote a close friend and author of Sleeping Giants, Dr. Nathan Mellor, “you get more of what you reward.”  Positive feedback is part of the reward system in any organization. It empowers, motivates and energizes the workforce. Listen closely at Starbucks and you will hear this flying from all directions. And if your store is really special (like mine) where the team has been together a while and really likes each other. You'll hear it flying back and forth from every direction:  manager to employee, employee to manager, employee to employee.  

4)   Enthusiasm. Watch and listen as the manager expresses his/her enthusiasm for the brand, the products and the experience. It's intended to be infectious and it is. That's why the day is littered with hundreds of regulars who all feel they are a part of something special at their local Starbucks. 

If you don't find all of this and more, keep looking. It's out there.  And if you're ever in Southern California, I'll meet you at the Starbucks in Laguna Niguel on Golden Lantern & Marina Hills and together we can watch the magic, because it's definitely happening there the way @Starbucks intended.