For coffee empire Starbucks, developing leaders is a no-brainer. Christine Deputy, vice president of partner resources of Starbucks Asia Pacific talks about her company’s leadership development philosophy. By Lisa Cheong.
Where does leadership development fit in with Starbucks’ long-term business goals?
One of Starbucks long-term business goals is to develop organisational capacity to support the success of the company and that means having partners move into different roles, learning new skills or taking a global assignment. From a HR standpoint, our common goal is to focus partners on delivering an enhanced Starbucks Experience to over 5 million customers ever week in Asia Pacific whether they are based at the support centre or in the field. Providing an enhanced experience to our customers and being known as a responsible coffee company are the keys to Starbucks long-term success.
What is Starbucks people resources’ view when it comes to leaders and leadership development?
We are focused on leadership development because we believe that the quality of our leaders are a major force behind the vision, values, beliefs, systems and rigor required to build a truly great company. Our goal is to ensure that our current and future leaders are prepared for the challenges and able to put the values into actions so as to guide the company towards sustained profitable growth and market leadership. Historically, Starbucks has sent store managers and senior leadership i.e. managing directors/heads of every market to an annual leadership conference to give them the opportunity to build camaraderie, work on common goals and share challenges, successes and best practices. This year, Starbucks leadership conference will be held in October in New Orleans.
What characteristics or traits does Starbucks value in potential leaders?
Hiring the right partners is the key to our company’s success – we hire new partners who have great talent, a thirst for learning and passion for coffee (of course!). In addition, we look at finding people who hold similar values to that of the company, our values include integrity, entrepreneurial spirit, drive, pride (in their work) and respect for others.
Why is Starbucks committed to promoting its employees?
We believe in offering our partners opportunities to grow and advance. More importantly, Starbucks believes in providing partners (employees) with adequate – and continuous – training throughout their career. Starbucks offers three foundational leadership workshops: Increasing Human Effectiveness, Servant Leadership and Situational Leadership.
Starbucks also has a variety of other courses and experiences to develop partners.
What are some of the programmes used to develop potential leaders?
Every leader is different and Starbucks adopts a personal approach to developing potential leaders depending on their strengths and opportunities. Training may include workshops designed to enhance partners’ understanding of their role in developing future leaders; increase their ability to help partners improve performance and develop new capabilities; strengthen their skills in assessing direct reports and settling performance expectations; and provide effective feedback and coaching in a way that is consistent with the Starbucks culture.
Why does Starbucks choose to develop leaders, even if they are not managing people?
Our definition of leader is “a person who influences a group of people towards the achievement of a common goal”. A leader may not have any direct reports but may often have to work cross functionally across different cultures and countries. Starbucks understands that hiring and retaining great people is as vital a commodity as our sourcing and serving great coffee.
