¶ … Leadership
Place answer under each question.
Dynamics of Leadership
Think of a leader that you know. Give examples of how this person influences others using formal authority, expertise, rewards, coercion, and charisma. How do you think people generally respond to these different influence tactics? Explain.
The former Starbucks marketing executive John Moore is a leader who is very interesting to me as he generally works very effectively with the strong personality of Howard Schultz. Moore once said, "Food is something they've been trying to solve for 20 years. The stores are set up as places to brew and serve coffee, and they don't have a back of the house suitable for the prep work and other work that goes into serving high-end pastries like these well." Moore uses his expertise of the retail food industry to exert influence on the trajectory of the company, taking Starbucks in directions that people who work there would never have imagined. Although Moore is not in the foreground in the same manner as Howard Schultz -- who is practically a household name -- he is a charismatic man. He is easy to talk to, quick to praise, and a risk-taker who owns failure rather than looking for someone to blame when his ideas don't pan out the way that he would like.
Moore, who is now COF for marketing consulting firm Brains on Fire, explained that Starbucks had struggled to achieve success with brands, especially prepared food ites or packaged beverages, that were not a Starbucks branded product. Moore championed the idea of Tazo teas, and he was ready to navigate the hazards of promoting a product that would always be a stepsister to Starbucks coffee. Moore saw that Tazo could be marketed to a target market that would be interested in Starbucks Third Place environment, but not necessarily in the coffee. Tazo was an early acquisition that was never culled from the product lineup -- primarily because Moore served as a champion for the product. And he always executed his influence in a gentle, almost organic manner that allowed him to do more than most people to change the face of Starbucks -- mostly because they didn't notice the trajectory until Moore had led them well along the path. Moore said, that Tazo teas "became a $1 billion brand almost in spite of Starbucks."
Perhaps Tazo has survived because it road on the coattails of a number of products exiting and entering the particular niche that is Starbucks. To consumers in a Starbucks store, whether online or bricks and mortar, Tazo was seen as just another product. Tazo had not really achieved status as a brand. Steve Smith, one of the founders of Tazo said that:
"I have the utmost respect for Howard Schultz, who told me when we first started putting our products on their shelves, 'Don't let us get our fingerprints all over your brand...We had to fight to get displayed on the back of an etagere, and sometimes we even got front and center. But there was this constant tension between coffee and tea and merchandise and ready-to-eat, with everyone managing those categories vying to be the next featured item in the store so they could demonstrate that they could grow their business."
Chapter 16 -- Communicating Effectively
2. Describe a communication experience you have had either at work or in a different setting. Using the materials in Chapter 16, describe the elements of the communication process (e.g. sender, receiver, etc.) Discuss any barriers to effective communicate you experienced in this particular process. Identify and explain two or three aspects of the situation that might have improved if the parties involved had followed the text's suggestions for effective communication.
Human resources in the company I work for conducts many approaches for managing and sharing the human resources responsibilities. For instance, the company routinely provides orientation training to newly hired employees as part of the onboarding process. However, the nature of human resources is bureaucratic, and the legal issues make it important to conform to the rigid processes and strategies for dealing with people. This means that communication is not free flowing and it also means that communication can go seriously awry as human resources personnel may be more focused on not saying anything that can spin out of control, rather than really getting to the heart of the matter. There are almost always...
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