Home Depot

Robert L. Nardelli took over as CEO of the home retailer Home Depot in 2000. The commence of Nardelli brought discipline to Home Depot. Many employees did not digest the sudden resignation of the laid-back co-founder of Home Depot. Nardelli's style of leadership was driven by metrics. He wanted to benchmark individual store's sales, gross margins, and profits. He was successful at what is planned to achieve. However, Nardelli came under fire and extreme criticism due to gargantuan salary package relative to the stock's weak performance, slowing profits and a regulatory probe about its options practices, and his management style (Out At Home Depot, 2007). Because of this, he had to step down and exited the organization in January of 2007. However, Nardelli had displayed his leadership style while appointed at the top position of Home Depot.

Nardelli's leadership style can be described as task oriented, directive autonomous, and autocratic. Immediately after Home Depot appointed Nardelli as CEO, he put strategies to centralize control. He called a "Super Saturday" meeting and restructured the purchasing organization. Nardelli was about goals, objectives, and accomplishments because of which he neglected the feelings of the employees, enthusiasm of people, and the care of his shareholders. Since he believed that facts are friendly, he wanted to virtually measure everything in the company and hold top executives accountable for meeting the numbers. He invested $1B in technology to install auto checkout lanes (Out At Home Depot, 2007).

According to Bloomberg (Out At Home Depot, 2007), Nardelli was not greeted with open arms when appointed as a CEO of Home Depot. In the beginning, he was not liked by many employees. Baack (2012) mentioned that the assumption of the trait theory is that leadership cannot be taught, it consists of inherent abilities. Nardelli had personal traits and personality traits. He owns intellect, great judgment, and capacity for...