Starbucks Barista’s: Self Leadership and the holiday season

The phone rang very late last night. It was my sister concerned about a high powered friend of hers that she could not track down. She was concerned that she may have lost her job. She said almost everyone she talks to is very nervous about their jobs and the best thing she knows to do is to support them by checking on them.

I love that about her. She has mastered the skills of caring and connecting with those she loves.

Well, this morning, I was at my local Starbucks drive through and they were featuring a new holiday drink. I asked what was in it and they offered me a sample. It was some gingerbread something or the other.  I thought I would get a tiny, tiny taster cup but I did not. Instead, I got a whole espresso sized cup of the drink as its base was espresso. Well, I am not a coffee drinker: I went for chai tea but, if I were, I would have loved that drink. The server at the window told me the name of the barista who prepared my drink and pointed her out to me. I asked them to write her name down and I went to their website and of course, I have not figured out how to give her a great recommendation but I will.

Starbucks may not call it that but they allow their employees to practice self-leadership by giving them the power to make such decisions. It is truly a great innovative company in many ways.

As I did that, I thought, wow, I am hopefully adding to her job security as I do this and yes, that is the type of cheerful, out of the box, customer service focused individual that I would like to put my energy into supporting.

Fast forward to Twitter. I love this social networking tool. I have met some of the most wonderful people on Twitter. I find so many juicy tidbits as we all love to share on twitter. So someone tweeted ( oops, twitterspeak – twitter language) Jeremiah Owyang’s blog and for the first time, I understood the excitement around a tweetup. More twitterspeak. It is where people in the same area that have connected on twitter meet up and get to know each other. Jeremiah put together this tweetup and his authenticity shines through the entire post as it became a way for prospective employers in Silicon Valley connected with those looking for jobs.

This is leadership at its very best so I know he has developed strong self-leadership traits.

What can you do to support those around you that are going through job uncertainty and economic issues? Let us expand the mindset of helping others by giving gifts this holiday season and be creative so that we are helping others in ways that are more meaningful to them?

Gift giving is wonderful and perfect. I am not knocking it. We are all doing it this Holiday season.

However, with others being so concerned about the economy, how do we help them increase their happiness.

I want to know how creative we can all be in supporting others?