Leaders: Leadership and Chief Executive Officer Essay

Submitted By ecjackson2003
Words: 1282
Pages: 6

At the age of seven, a young boy and his family were forced out of their home. The boy had to work to support his family. At the age of nine, his mother passed away. When he grew up, the young man was keen to go to law school, but had no education. At 22, he lost his job as a store clerk. At 23, he ran for state legislature and lost. The same year, he went into business. It failed, leaving him with a debt that took him 17 years to repay. At 27, he had a nervous breakdown. Two years later, he tried for the post of speaker in his state legislature. He lost. At 31, he was defeated in his attempt to become an elector. By 35, he had been defeated twice while running for Congress. Finally, he did manage to secure a brief term in Congress, but at 39 he lost his re-election bid.
At 41, his four-year-old son died. At 42, he was rejected as a prospective land officer. At 45, he ran for the ran for Senate and lost again.
At 51, he was elected the President of the United States of America. The man in question: Abraham Lincoln." – Author Unknown
Senate and lost. Two years later, he lost the vice presidential nomination. At 49, he Leadership Styles

DHL international is a global company with many branches and offices all over the world. It deals in import and export freight logistics. Leadership is a social process of influence where a person can employ the support and assistance of other people in achieving the objective of a common problem or task at hand. Leadership involves the organization of a group of people to attain a common objective, many theories of leadership have emerged involving character traits, situational and personal interaction, objective, values, power and other functions.
The search of personal characteristics and traits has been continuing for ages. Greatest writers of history from Plato’s book “ Republic” and Plutarch “Lives” all have tried answering the question “What qualities and characters distinguishes a person as a leader”. Underlying the method of this search was the recognition that of its importance to leadership and that leadership is deeply related to characteristics certain people have. It is an idea known as “trait leadership theory”.
The trait leadership theory also led to other forms of alternative leadership theories. In subsequent studies it was revealed that the overall nature of traits in leadership suggested that persons leading in certain sectors may not be good in other sectors hence leadership is not based on individual traits alone but also based on situational approach.
Significant and personal relationship exists between the individual traits such as intelligence, experience and extraversion of leadership. While the trait theory is popular it has not been matched with increase in related conceptual and significant framework.

A leadership style is a leader’s way of initiating and providing direction, motivating staff and implementing ideas and plans, there are different kinds of leadership depending on the size and type of company and the service it is providing.
DHL, a company, is a task oriented and leadership company. The chief executive officer delegates his powers to different site managers based in different parts of the world. They are given powers to implement the decisions made by the head office and tasked to achieve the target given in a certain period of time. Task-oriented leadership style is one where the team leader is well focused on the major tasks that are required to be performed to achieve a certain set production target. There are other leadership styles and all depend on the circumstances of each particular trade and industry the company is engaged in.
In Laissez-faire or free-reign style, a person in leadership does not give any direction or leadership and leaves the group to work out everything on their own. They create their own policies and methods of management. They are motivated to be more creative and very innovative.