Focus on the Leader
Power and Influence
The Home Depot learned the hard way that you must hire a leader that will stay true to the core values. The leader’s ethics and values will play a huge role in determining if the company will succeed or fail. The founders of The Home Depot built a culture on the foundation of respect, integrity, and compassion. The culture and customer service under the influence of the admired founders prospered.
The founders hired a CEO to continue guiding the company on the path towards success but realized too late that they overlooked an important component. The CEO lacked the character and traits needed to positively develop and lead the company and its people. After facing a major decline in customer service and an uptick in employee turnover, The Home Depot realized that it needed to resort back to the basic guiding principles. They must choose a leader that buys into the same vision and philosophy that the company was built upon. The leader must behold the same values that were cherished by the founders and must be willing to invest in nurturing the culture, the associates and customers.
Leadership and Values
The founders of The Home Depot, Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank, set the foundation of their company on eight core values that are transferable to any business. Their tools for success included:
• Give excellent customer service.
• Take care of your people.
• Develop entrepreneurial spirit.
• Respect all people.
• Build strong relationships with associates, customers, vendors and communities.
• Do the right thing, don't just do things right.
• Give back to the community as an integral part of doing business.
• Take care of your shareholders.
(http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/197614#...
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...treet. To further augment his point, Blake created a live call in show, Inbox Live, to provide the platform and opportunity for all of The Home Depot associates to open up and ask anything. The questions were not scripted and Blake answered honestly.
Blake modeled the behavior he sought. He knew the key behavior in creating a satisfied and committed workforce was being honest and acting with integrity. Blake was a role model. He used reward power to highlight and encourage behaviors that were in line with the vision. He rewarded the workforce by bringing back store bonuses and employee awards for great service.
Blake’s leadership traits and behaviors have been essential in harnessing the energy and efforts of The Home Depot workforce. He has been able to motivate and inspire his team to share in the vision, drive towards the vision, and see it succeed.
Overall, a leader’s style influences employees’ perceptions, levels of trust, and behaviors, and sustains a particular culture, which reinforces a distinct style of leadership (Carter, Ulrich & Goldsmith, 2005). In this case, Jeffers would benefit from becoming a more authentic leader. Authentic leaders align their values, convictions, and mission to be similar to those of their fellow managers and followers (Shamir & Eilam, 2005). In the long run, Jeffers should lead from a belief that Fortuga produces superior merchandise, and his employees and artisans are a critical component to achieving their mission.
The CEO needs to create a corporate culture. His culture will determine what people should be doing and what should do not be trying. He can decide who will stay, who will leave, and how the job will get done. Culture starts with the boss. He can decide how he wants people to act and start modeling the behavior publicly. STOPPED HERE…!!!:)
Each organization big or small has its own values, ways of doing things and assumption that it operates in. The principles and ethics that exist in each of these companies are the baseline through which the company operates its affairs. This is what can be called as that organization’s culture. The culture in existence has an impact on the productivity, effectiveness and efficiency (Keyton, 2011). The basis of setting the most appropriate culture of a company is not only to move or increase the profitability but also to make the stakeholders happy and satisfied. One aspect of that is the employee or the human resource the firm who put their expertise in the firm and add a bit of creativity and innovativeness to move the products. Chick-Fil-A operates in a competitive industry thus it requires all the stakeholders.
Leading by example embodies Camden’s focus on results. Camden’s philosophy is to do what it takes to get a job completed. Leaders - especially those in charge of a project - are required to...
Sears Holdings is a company in transition. Now, faced with adversity and the threat of bankruptcy looming its leadership has come under scrutiny. “Great leaders not only have drive; they want to lead. Also important is a high need for power, a preference to be in leadership rather than follower positions. A high power need induces people to attempt to influence others, and sustains interest and satisfaction in the process of leadership. When the power need is exercised in moral and socially constructive ways, rather than to the detriment of others, leaders inspire more trust, respect, and commitment to their vision (Bateman, pp 399, 2007).”
Suddenly, some companies become extremely successful, while rest of them unfortunately remains a failure. There can be off-course a lot of reasons for this failure but one of the main reasons is lack of leadership qualities. There are many s...
...r whole effort into it and they give above and beyond because they want the result to be good for results matter. The leader generates work that meet commitment and generate results that surpass and go above and beyond the normal requirement (Lord & Maher, 1991).
The third Case Study “Home Depot’s Blueprint for Culture Change” studied Mr. Robert Nardelli’s role as the CEO of Home Depot. He approached management in an autocratic style, which was criticized by many. This paper will take a look at how Mr. Nardelli’s style follows Kotter and Cohen’s model of change.
Johnson’s strengths are that she has the experience of military and attended HBS, where both her leader personality and business insight were enabled. She is a “go-getter” and can “instill confidence into the people around her”, according to her colleagues and subordinates. She is also communicative, because she initiated “one-to-one” conversation with every employee, and arranged plant-wide “state of the site” meetings from quarterly to monthly. In addition, Johnson is an insightful person because she mentioned multiple times that she would not sacrifice long term interest for short term growth.
Home Depot was founded in 1978 by Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank in Atlanta, Georgia. With their store, Marcus and Blank revolutionized the do-it-yourself home improvement market in the United States. Home Depot began as a very basic store, operated in a large, no-frills warehouse. Home Depot carries over 35,000 products, with national brand names along with the Home Depot brand. At the start, Home Depot was able to offer exceptional customer service with knowledgeable employees who could guide customers through home renovation projects. Since its opening, Home Depot has experienced incredible growth, and today is North America's second largest retailer, and the largest home improvement retailer. Internationally, Home Depot has expanded into Canada, Mexico, and is beginning to operate stores in China. Home Depot's competition includes Sears, Ace Hardware and Lowes (the main competitor).
As we learn from the case study, the Lincoln Electric Company is the largest global manufacturer of machines for welding, which are used in all kinds of construction projects. This means that the company has a large global presence and many employees, so its culture affects thousands of its workers. Even though it is now 2014, the company still has a large market share and very satisfied employees, so clearly the culture leaves employees satisfied and motivates them to work hard for the company.
In our BA-509 Leadership Development course, we learned about the Transformational Leadership Theory. This theory states that, leaders with a tendency toward transformational leadership, are creative, brave, risk-takers and sophisticated thinkers. They work eagerly and optimistically and become the role models that employees seek to emulate. Additionally, they encourage their employees to be innovative and creative and reward them for doing so. Transformational leaders develop unique relationships with their employees tailored to their various needs and backgrounds in order to help the employee realize their potential. As a result, a spirit of teamwork and commitment in the organization is nurtured. Welch was a transformational leader
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People always talk about how important it is for companies to have a good leader, someone who not only keeps the blue numbers, but also achieves a loyalty from customers, pleasant working environment, successful business partnerships and ahead of the competition.
Leadership is one of the most important facets in organizations. In most cases, leaders act with respect to organizational culture as well as the codes of conduct that determine the manner in which leaders relate with subordinates. Leadership entails the use of effective communication skills to get activities done in the workplace and to ensure that employees shelve their individual interests for the sake of their organizations’ shared targets. It is the role of leaders to ensure that consumers attain high quality products and services by making certain that members of their firms’ workforce are fully motivated to work effectively and utilize resources in an efficient manner (Bass, 22). With the increasingly sophisticated nature of the corporate world, leadership should not be based solely on the desire to control and coordinate affairs within the workplace, but leaders should also exhibit positive examples and continually monitor the changing trends in corporate governance to initiate the most relevant guidelines. Competitiveness can only be attained when leaders are in a position to set the right standards in their firms and coordinate affairs appropriately by understanding consumer and employee needs.