Leadership Qualities and Styles: Lessons from Darwin Smith

From your understanding of Darwin Smith, in the case study, brief his qualities as a leader?

What is a leadership? Each one of us might give an answer to what a good leader should be like in his or her definition. If we ask a room of 10 people what a leader should be like. We will possibly have few different answers; hence there is not one ‘correct’ definition for leadership.  

For some of us we might think motivational individual as a leader, some might first think for followership in quantitative aspect. Other might view visionaries as leaders in business or societies.

Some text books and business journal put a definition of leadership, we will look at the below:  

Leadership is the influencing process of leaders and followers to achieve organizational objectives through change. Lussier R., Achua C. (2009), P.6.

And another definition would be Leadership is the art of motivating a group of people to act towards achieving a common goal. In a business setting, this can mean directing workers and colleagues with a strategy to meet the company's needs. thebalancesmb.com (2018).

Leadership quality does not necessary go hand in hand with a person’s job title.  That means, not every senior executive or a director of a company who have happened to reach a certain grade does not automatically qualify for leadership status. This person can be a very good manager or a very good director in their role, but not necessary a good leader. It does not necessarily come with title. You can be a good leader in workplace, with your coworkers, or even the family at home.

Leaders are born / Leaders are made.  Justify your understanding from your analysis of the personality of Darwin Smith.

Many leaders have been born through the ages, but one such great leader to make a significant change in the lives of the people he became associated with and the world around was Darwin Smith, who became the chief executive of Kimberly-Clark in 1971 and nothing was same again.

Darwin Smith took charge of Kimberly-Clark, an old paper company that was already deep down the stock market index and through the twenty years that it was functioning before Smith joined the company had suffered losses and eventually was 36 percent behind the market. Before taking the charge, Smith was the in-house lawyer who was not only very mild but also the least attention seeking. Yet when he was chosen to become the CEO, he proved to be the best choice ever and continued to be so for twenty years (Collins, 2001).

But also, Leaders are made, to some extent.

What in your understanding is the nature of the leadership style exhibited by Darwin Smith?

Smith was a daring leader with a combination of leadership and generosity, He knew how to fill up the lack of the company, and revised and reformed the new goals for it, His decisions were bold, and the success is only for the leader who can take risks. The company has been transformed by him from almost failure to a great success through effective communication, classification of vision, and his skills. He was generous in the manner that he gave all the credit of his success to his peers and thus kept himself aloof from getting famous and glory. He stuck to his decisions and made sure that they turn right. Smith enhanced the company's conventions. His unique commitment and his willingness to learn made him get to know the secret of success till the very end of his life.

What are the types of skills that will be required of a person to be a leader, if one has to be in the genre of Darwin Smith?

Foremost, it is crucially that you understand the importance of leadership skills. Being an efficient leader is a hard row to hoe, but the prize it yields is worth the trouble. It is not the position of power but your leadership skills that assist you think in a unique and out-of-box ways.

To emerge as a real leader, you should mastery over your niche on skills and knowledge. Simultaneously, you need to view specific important leadership skills.

These skills help you establish an encouraging and productive work environment such as command love, respect, and devotion from the team members and scale success heights which seemed impossible earlier.

They help a leader take initiatives, work in a creative and pro-active way to meet the business ROIs and foster a healthy work environment.

If you want to understand the essence of the type of leader who turns good into great, just keep in mind Darwin Smith. He is a real unique leader, one of the greatest CEOs of the last forty years. Smith is a true manifestation of how a good leader should be, he led companies from good to great using were tough benchmarks are relatively unknown, he set these benchmarks for all his people that how actual leader must work.

Smith had a great influence on the reforms of Kimberly Clark, He is a leader of great quality, He developed the company he was working for from a small company to one of the best companies in the industry.

Smith had a combination of professional will and humility which helped him to practice leadership to its best core. He described his style of management eccentric style. This shows that Smith had a unique way of driving, where he appeared to be self-driven, frank, and intelligent. He broke boundaries,  challenged the status quo, and was innovative and emotionally. As a leader bold and saw the risks whenever someone tried to make. He bred success and knew exactly what was expected of him. This drew his followers close to him.

At the beginning he was surrounded by a lot of doubts about his leadership qualities, but his determination and strong insistence has proved that these doubts are always wrong and emerged as the best leader all the times and developed a winning culture and imparted it to his employees.

After Darwin Smith came from a modest background, he learnt to give more credit, instead of taking everything for himself. He acknowledged the good things that happened to his followers and gave positive compliments.

Smith knew how to motivate and praising his employees after doing a good job, he used to cover his employees from the front in times of danger. He also helped the company cross a bridge during bad times.

When leadership is viewed as both a process and a trait, it shows the real character of a person, especially in difficult situations.

Is it possible in today’s context to have leadership qualities possessed by Darwin E. Smith?

We live in rapidly changing times, especially for businesses. Consider that, in a single generation, businesses have had to adapt to entirely new marketing channels (web and social), decide how to invest in and utilize new technologies, and compete on a global stage — things that were barely imaginable to our parents’ and grandparents’ generations.

One side effect of these rapid changes and growth is that no single CEO — or any employee, for that matter — can be an expert in everything. This was, perhaps, always true, but it has never been more apparent.