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Lisa Haberman

While we know escape rooms to be an adrenaline-boosting experience to enjoy with friends, they are now being used for learning to engage and energize participants.

Fun and Games and Learning Too

Lock In Learning With Escape Rooms

May 2018 - ATD Links

Starbucks was front and center in the news on Thursday April 12, 2018, after two black men were arrested for loitering inside a Philadelphia store. In light of the respect Starbucks garners for exemplifying a servant leadership approach, the news headlines they drew point to how challenging it can be to operationalize servant leadership throughout an organization even under the best circumstances.Whichever side of the controversy you’re on, to his credit as a servant leader, CEO Kevin Johnson quickly, publicly, and personally acknowledged and took ownership for the incident. The challenge Starbucks is facing provides a timely opportunity to take a closer look at a leadership practice that is rooted in 2,000 year-old principles and to examine how Starbucks’s post-incident actions align with servant leadership principles.The term “servant leader” refers to Leo, a character in Journey to the East, a short novel by German author Hermann Hesse published in 1932. The story explored Eastern mysticism and a group’s travels in search of the ultimate truth. Leo, behaving as a servant, always seemed to have what travelers on their journey needed to move forward and, in the end, revealed himself to be the leader of their truth crusade.After reading Journey to the East, it took Robert Greenleaf several years to formulate the ideas that became a worldwide movement with his 1970 essay “The Servant as Leader.” He writes: “The servant-leader is servant first. It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead.”A myriad of researchers and leadership practitioners, including Greenleaf, have explored many aspects of the original ideas to apply them to business leadership—so much so that today the term “servant leadership” returns almost 3 million results in a simple Google search indicating a pervasive interest in this leadership point of view.In The ASTD Management Development Handbook: Innovation for Today’s Manager, Bret Simmons makes a good point about why the idea of a servant leader is hard to grasp. He writes: “People have a hard time understanding how servant leadership might work, mostly because they have rarely personally experienced leadership practiced this way.”So, how do you know you’re working with a servant leader? Ken Blanchard, in Leading at a Higher Level describes barriers to being a servant leader. You’re not a servant leader if you are• motivated by self-interest• driven to collect and protect money, recognition, and power• hierarchical• killing the messenger (when you get authentic feedback)Considering the Starbucks incident, Robert Greenleaf’s description of what it means to be a servant leader is prescient and sets an even higher bar for anyone who serves their employees and customers. To Greenleaf, leadership is nothing less than a calling. The measure of a servant leader is focused on the development of those they lead. Greenleaf asks us to objectively observe the following.“Do those served grow as persons; do they, while being served become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society; will they benefit, or at least will they not be further deprived?”Greenleaf’s ideal for what it takes to be a servant leader is quite an undertaking and in practice, not for the fainthearted. The CEO of Kimpton Hotels and Restaurants offers up a more succinct but still encompassing description of what it takes to be a servant leader describing it as “the ability to both serve and lead and to do so without expecting anything in return.”Even so, selflessness of this kind takes time to prove to followers. It requires consistent evidence of employee and customer centered actions and decisions. Only over time will both learn to trust the leader’s motivations as being for the greater good. As result, one drawback to servant leadership is that it takes a commitment from leaders to persevere to see down-the-road results. But this long-term view may also be what’s required to support our current era of digital disruption.As the workplace continues to evolve towards flatter organizations and leverage collaboration across business functions to pursue innovation and ultimately customer-centricity, the role of leaders will be to get off the stage, clear the aisles, and serve up resources attentively and with deference to the needs and experiences of employee teams.Servant leadership in short or grande supply?As a servant-led organization, how has Starbucks served its employees and customers after the April 12, 2018 Philadelphia incident? Let’s see how Starbucks’ post-incident actions align with servant leader traits as defined by Larry C. Spears.Listening: Maintain a deep commitment to listen intently to others.Starbucks CEO meets personally with men arrested and with Philadelphia city officials to understand what happened.Empathy: Accept & recognize people for their special and unique spirit.“I’d like to have a dialogue with \[the two men\] to show some compassion and empathy for the experience they went through.” Excerpt from Starbuck CEO Statement April 16, 2018.Healing: Help make whole those with whom we come in contact.Starbucks CEO meets personally with men arrested and with community leaders. Starbucks is coordinating unconscious bias training with experts support on May 29, 2018.Awareness: Understand issues of ethics, power, and values.Both the CEO and the Chairman of Starbucks admit that the men did not deserve what happened and that the incident was a management not the store manager’s issue. (Starbucks, 2018)Persuasion: Convince others rather than coerce compliance.Not able to determine whether this was achieved.Conceptualization: Dream great dreams beyond day-to-day realities.The Starbucks CEO released a video as a follow-up to his statement making a commitment to address the circumstances and “be a better company for it.”Foresight: Consider lessons from the past, realities of the present, and consequences of a decision for the future.According to the Washington Post, crisis communication adviser Mike Paul says, “When you have a highly flammable emotional situation like a racial crisis you must match it with a highly emotional solution in the opposite direction,” he said, rather than a legal or branding solution.Stewardship: Hold something in trust for another.Starbucks has been the steward of the Philadelphia incident as well as of its employees by offering racial bias training.Commitment to the growth of people: Believe that people have intrinsic value.Starbucks closed 8,000 stores on May 29 to hold unconscious bias training at estimated cost of $12MBuilding community: Believe that true community can be created.Meetings with 40 Philadelphia clergy by Howard Shultz, executive chairman, and Kevin Johnson, CEO.There are critics and supporters of how Starbucks managed this crisis. Critics point to missteps Starbucks made by not calling the incident a racial issue in its initial communication and instead releasing a legal-sounding Twitter post. Critics also point to the futility of providing unconscious bias training, when the issues of racial profiling are systemic and hundreds of years in the making. Supporters laud Starbucks for its quick response and for going against the tide of legal advice by admitting wrongdoing. If, however, the measure of success is instead how closely Starbucks remained true to the principles of servant leadership, then its leaders seem to have done pretty well.What do you think? Does your company practice servant leadership? Did Starbucks do a good job of displaying servant leadership principles? Share your thoughts in the Comments below.References“Anatomy of a PR response: How Starbucks is handling its Philadelphia, by Jena McGregor, Washington Post.“Character and Servant Leadership: Ten Characteristics of Effective, Caring Leaders,” by Larry C. Spears, Spears Center for Servant Leadership.“Here’s how much it may cost Starbucks to close 8,000 stores for an afternoon,” Market Watch, by Tim Rostan and Max A. Cherney.Leading at a Higher Level, Ken Blanchard, 2010.“New Evidence of Servant Leadership’s Efficacy as a Managerial Approach,” by Bret Simmons, The ASTD Management Development Handbook: Innovation for Today’s Manager, Lisa Haneberg (editor).“The Servant As Leader,” Robert Greenleaf, The Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership.“Servant Leadership: A Worldview Perspective,” by J. Randall Wallace, International Journal of Leadership Studies, 2007."Starbucks and Servant Leadership", Penn State Leaderhip blog.“Why Isn’t ‘Servant Leadership’ More Prevalent?” Jim Heskett, Harvard Business School.© 2018 ATD, Alexandria, VA. All rights reserved.

Lisa Haberman

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