LEADERSHIP UNDER MERILE KEY GUERTIN

LEADERSHIP UNDER MERILE KEY GUERTIN

Introduction

Leadership is an excellent phenomenon in human life. Human beings have had the culture of organizing themselves into various units that required some of them to regulate and harmonize the activities of the group for the welfare of the others. Different individuals will have different levels of performance during leadership. The reason is that there are no defined standards that define leadership. This paper focuses on analyzing and discussing the leadership role of M. K. Guertin.

Biographical Background of Guertin

Merile Key Guertin was born in the year 1891 on the month of January 18^th in Liberty, Texas. He was born from a sleepy river community that existed in the northeastern or Houston (Johnson, 2016). Merile was son to Louis Gedeon Guertin.  Merile Guertin’s mother, Cecilia Key, was a direct descendant Francis Scott Key. Francis Key was the author behind the American national anthem. Merile Key was the father of Letha Ernestine.  He died in the year 1970 after living seventy-nine years of success. During his early life, Merile Guertin worked on the family farm. In other roles, Merile worked in the printing industry, where he acquired printing knowledge through apprehension. Merile Guertin was married to Esther Maurine Hester. Esther Hester was born in the year 1902 (Johnson, 2016). One stunning fact about Merile Guertin is that he had very little educational background. The reason for this is that Guertin had very little schooling. One of Guertin’s early jobs was that he first became a stenographer. Guertin profession was mainly business-oriented in the sense that he despite learning about printing and practising stenography, Guertin engaged business activities at an early age of 23 years.

Personality Profile of Merile Key Guertin

Different leaders will most definitely exhibit different personality traits. Even where some individual demonstrate similar personality traits in their leadership, they will also demonstrate the personality traits at different levels of magnitude. The success of Merile Guertin provides enough need to discuss his personality profile. According to various sources, Merile Key Guertin was a man that related cordially with other people (Johnson, 2016). Merile was open with everybody because he could listen to his employees and managers with considerable attention. It was one of the many personality traits that contributed to the success of Merile in his hospitality business. The trait of being open to everyone provided Merile Guertin with an opportunity to borrow new ideas and management styles from different people. This placed him at a better position to make business decisions because he combined reasoning and styles from various perspectives so that he had a hybrid style of decision making. Other than being open, Merile is remembered because of his agreeableness. As stated above, Merile listened to everyone. He was a simple man who had no trouble with agreeing with anybody who proved to make sense to him. However, this does not mean that Merile Key agreed with everything that was said to him. When he was convinced that an idea from a different person does not add up to his satisfaction, he could disagree, but when he did so, he carefully gave his reasons for disagreeing. The two personality traits discussed above prove that Merile Key was a social person. Listen to people and agreeing with their reasoning form part of Merile Key’s extraversion (Johnson, 2016). In other words, Merile Key was a social being who spent most part of his time with other people. Merile Key ran thousands of business. This means that he had a lot of employees under his leadership. The ability that Merile demonstrated when handling the lots of employees’ shows that he was a social person. It is the reason that Merile’s Life was full of joy. Merile Key was always positive. He had a style to give hope to his juniors even when the situation was difficult. Another thing with Merile Key was that he had a way of winning trust from his employees. Due to this reason, he had no worries about his business activities because he believed that he delegated then to an able team of employees. In other words, this is to mean that Merile Key was not a neurotic person. His social life was so busy that he had no opportunity of being lonely. Merile was also characterized by positivity and inspiration for others. His employees enjoyed working with him because they could always learn something new whenever they interacted with Merile key Guertin.

Leadership style of Merile Key Guertin

Guertin had a hefty passion for business. In simple, it is right to say that he was a gifted entrepreneur and leader. Guertin had no permanent style of leadership during his work. The reason for this is because he was a person that valued listening and learning new ideas from different people (Johnson, 2016). Another reason is that Merile Key was a business person in the field of hospitality. The industry is characterized by competition and frequent changes due to shifts in consumer tastes and preferences for comfort and luxury. However, his leadership was dominated value for quality and cleanliness. The trait was quite influential in the industry because it was the central focus of all consumers in the industry. Merile quit his job from his employer because he was disturbed by the poor quality control procedures that were put in place by the company. For this reason, Merile Key was forced to quit his position, and he indulged in entrepreneurship to start his own business so that he could put in place his personal quality control procedures. He was a leader who respected democracy of opinions because he paved the way for his junior employees to channel their opinions about the management and decision making in the business. Merile believed that everyone could have a unique contribution to his leadership. He believed that there is no single person that is exclusive of reasoning. In that case, Merile’s style of leadership was based on a hybrid system that involved different ideas from different people.

The Start of Merile Key Guertin Leadership

The start of Merile Key Guertin was in the year 1923. By this time, Merile Key had an experience of a total of 23 years in the industry of hospitality. Merile moved from his home state of Texas to California. It is in California that he engaged in hospitality activities from the first time in his career life. His first role involved managing the advertisement activities for some three Long Beach hotels (Johnson, 2016). Merile’s sister was the owner of the three Long Beaches.  Two years later in 1925, Merile founded the first association for motels in the country. In the year 1933, Merile Guertin had saved about $20000. He used the money to purchase a lodge by the name Cherry Court Motor Lodge. It was his biggest step into the industry. Merile had a burning passion for changing the face of the hospitality industry in the United States. This was followed by his second purchase of the Beach Motel in the year 1938. The second purchase introduced his best chance to build and grow his brand with the conception of the highway system of the United States between the years the 1940s and 1950s. Merile was keen to note and analyze all the motels that appeared within a tank of gas of one another. It was this idea that led him to establish some kind of a guide that could take tourists and visitors along the drive with ease and efficiency. The guide could be referenced as the mother of modern GPS.

The Company of Merile Guertin

Merile Key focused so much on the quality of services provided by motels. He was also interested in the levels of hygiene within the motels. For those two reasons, Merile Key Guertin talked to the concerned motels’ owners to address the two core issues of quality control and hygiene in the motels (Johnson, 2016). They also addressed the aspects of respectability and services. The move was quite instrumental to the success of Merile Key because referrals from one motel to the other became much more efficient than before. The contribution of Merile Key in the business is remembered till today. The Western Members to the association remain true to their historical profile. Like any other business person, Merile’s path of success was not smooth. He had his strengths, weaknesses, challenges and other factors that affected his leadership. His biggest achievement was founding the first association for motels in the United States. He is also remembered for creating a guide system that facilitated the movement of tourists and visitors along with various motels as they appeared from one point to the other.

References

Richard L. Johnson. (2016). “Hospitality Industry Hall of Honor to Induct Best Western Founder, M.K. Guertin and Houston Restaurant Family, the Pappas Brothers”. Hotel-online.com.