At its core, I believe leadership is about instilling confidence in others.

I've traveled around the world, and what's so revealing is that, despite the differences in culture, politics, language, how people dress, there is a universal feeling that we all want the same thing. We deeply want to be respected and appreciated for our differences.

It's one thing to dream, but when the moment is right, you've got to be willing to leave what's familiar and go out to find your own sound.

One of the fundamental aspects of leadership, I realized more and more, is the ability to instill confidence in others when you yourself are feeling insecure

In life, you can blame a lot of people and you can wallow in self-pity or you can pick yourself up and say listen, I have to be responsible for myself.

When I returned as CEO in 2008, Starbucks had forgotten that meaningful innovations balance an organization's heritage with modern-day relevance and market differentiation, so we had to reorient. In one brainstorming session, we visited and observed great retailers, then asked ourselves, 'If Starbucks did not exist, what type of coffee experience would we create?

In anything we do, any endeavor, it's not what you do; it's why you do it