Differences between Leadership and Management
The differences and similarities between leaders and managers have long been debated as they usually confuse about that leadership is similar to management (Bennis and Nanus, 1985; Kotter, 1990; Zaleznik, 1977), therefore scholars keen on investigating how leadership and management differ to each others and how to look alike as clarifying the features of leaders and managers is important in the operation of both public and private sectors (Kumle and Kelly, 1999).
There has no universally accepted definition of leadership (Goethals et al., 2004) since there are numerous researches have been conducted on the issue of leadership. For instance, leaders sometimes are defined as engaging in motivating and coordinating individuals to accomplish their objectives (Bass, 1990; Fiedler, 1967). Some even argue that leadership is a process or ability, rather than a position (Bennis, 1989), of which influence and motivate follower to “contribute towards the effectiveness and success of the organisation of which they are members” (House, 2004). Consequently there are no commonly agreed definition of leadership, yet all scholars agree that leadership involves leaders, followers and situations, their power are from followers basing on dynamic situations (Bass, 1990; Kotter 1990; Terry, 1993; Zaleznik, 1977).
When discussion comes to the definition of management, not much debates have been conducted as the definition is commonly agree due to its features. All scholars agree that management is a process of seeking effectiveness and efficiency of accomplishing organisational goals through “planning, leading, controlling resources” (Daft, 2003). Compared to leadership, management shows more systematic manner as it involves rational assessment of situations, systematic selection of goals, control of activities to achieve goals and careful selection of means to motivate people (Drucker, 1988; Levitt, 1976).
Accordingly, the concept of leadership and management are different in the sense of ‘chaos’ and ‘order’ (Zaleznik, 1977). Managers focus on stabilizing changes, solving problems and process oriented, they obey to norms, rules and hierarchy (Kumle and Kelly, 1999; Perloff, 2004). While leaders are problem examiners and able to launch new approaches and changes (Maccoby ,2000). To conclude, leaders can be described as ‘pathfinder’ while managers are ‘practitioner’. It should be reminded that non of the role is better than another (Capowski, 1994) as they are blended and complementary (Kotter, 2006), overemphasis on either one is unhealthy for organisation.
Leadership style of Howard Schultz
Brief biography of Howard Schultz
Howard Schultz was born in Brooklyn, New York. When he was seven, his father lost all ability to work as well s benefits he had due to job injury (George, 2015), at the same time, his mother was pregnant and unable to work. Therefore Schultz grew up in poverty and he strived to survive by holding jobs as much as he can, such as newspapers boy and working in city’s garment district (Boardroom insiders, 2018). People believe that growing up in poverty and his father’s incident motivate him to build a company like Starbucks that he wishes his father could have worked for, of which also a driver for him to become a successful leader in food industry. He was then the first member of his family to attend college (Boardroom insiders, 2018).
Schultz joined Starbucks in 1982 with several years of coffee product selling experiences in Xerox and Hammarplast (Boardroom insiders, 2018). His vision of building a personalised coffee shop or brand, which could become the “third place” for individuals between home and works was aroused during his business trip to Italy, after being the Director of Marketing for Starbucks. However, his vision did not accepted by the board of Starbucks and thus he chose to build his own coffee brand, II Gionale (Schultz and Gordon, 2011). Schultz then decided to accept fund from investors and brought Starbucks for $3.8 million in 1987 so as to implement his vision.
As time flies, Schultz has become leader position in Starbucks until 2000, he dropped out the position of CEO to become Chairman, in charge of global business. However, he returned back to the position of CEO in 2008 till now. Starbucks now owns more than 20 thousand stores and 200 thousand employees all over the world (George, 2015).
Transformational Leadership Howard Schultz holds
Howard Schultz has held various leadership position within Starbucks over the years, like the Director of Marketing, CEO and even the Chairman of the whole corporation. It could be easily found that the “people” principle never changed, which means Schultz is a employee-oriented leader who emphasise on the feeling, development and relationships of employees. For example, Starbucks was the first corporation introduced not only healthcare scheme, but also stock options and maximum working hours for part-time workers (Coulson, 2016). Northouse (2016) explained that the relationship between Schultz and his father heavily impacted these employee-focused policies. He wishes to attract candidates who have similar values with the company by providing these incentives that his father never received (Gallo, 2013; George, 2015). In this case, Schultz is considerate and caring for his employees (partners), therefore it is obvious that he contains the individual consideration component in transformational leadership (Nelson and Quick, 2006), giving empathy and support according to followers’ concerns and needs (Bass et al., 2009). Moreover, his communication skills allow him to translate and promote the vision of Starbucks to his employees, giving meaning to their action and build emotional connection with his followers (Gallo, 2006).