Executive Summary:

This report discusses Darwin E. Smith as an example for a successful leader. He was the CEO for
Kimberly-Clark for 20 years. During this period, Kimberly-Clark was recognized one of eleven
companies on the Fortune 500. He has many personal features that assist in creating his personality
as a leader, which will be explained briefly in the report.

Since his childhood and he has the primary keys to be a leader, which strengthen more during his
grew up. He showed iron will during his childhood and during his whole life. This iron will highly
represented two months after he became a CEO, when the doctors told him that he was suffering
from cancer in nose and throat. Then he said that he has no plans to die and continue his working
life and go forward encountering many people until achieve his targets and goals.

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Table of Contents
Executive Summary: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Introduction ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2
Subject ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 3
Conclusion-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6
References ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7
Introduction

What is leadership? A simple definition is that 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.

This report will show an excellent example for the leader explaining the qualities in his personality
leads to that success. In addition, the personal conditions in childhood play a big role in building
his leadership personality.

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Subject

The main qualities for Darwin Smith as a leader are as follow:

1) Confident and decision maker: reflected in his emphasis on research and development of
consumer products, and finally, he got the desired goal.
2) Appreciative and supportive: He was the type of leaders who gave credit for success to
the employees, the managers and the customers.
3) Courageous, initiative and vision: All these qualities represented in his decision to sell
his mills even after the media described this move by stupid action.
4) Fair and honest: He was able to get the right person on the bus and the wrong person off
the bus and creating a culture of discipline.
5) Flexible: To keep up changes, he increased the geographical diversification of Kimberly-
Clark’s facilities.
6) Loyalty: He remained 20 years as CEO in his company.
7) Professional knowledge: He graduated from Harvard Law School.

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From my point of view, the personal conditions in childhood play a big role in building the
leadership personality. This is clearly represented in Darwin Smith case. Not only he grew up in a
farm culture, but also he took the responsibility to work day shift to be able to join the school at
Indiana University. All these challenges creates a strong boy able to face any difficulties such as
losing his finger. In addition, academic education and continuous improvements assist in creating
the leader.

The nature of the leadership style exhibited by Darwin Smith is the transformational leadership.
His charisma provides vision and raised corporate goals which strength the overall performance.
Leaders that follow the transformational style of leading challenge and inspire their followers with
a sense of purpose and excitement. Schultz and Schultz identify three characteristics of a
transformational leader, which typically found in Darwin Smith:

 Charismatic leadership has a broad field of knowledge, has a self-promoting personality,

high/great energy level, and willing to take risk and use irregular strategies in order to stimulate
their followers to think independently.
 Individualized consideration.
 Intellectual stimulation.

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The skills that will be required of a person to be a leader are as follow:

1- Communication: As a leader, you need to be able to clearly and succinctly explain

to your employees everything from organizational goals to specific tasks. Leaders
must master all forms of communication, including one-on-one, departmental, and
full-staff conversations.
2- Motivation: Leaders need to inspire their workers to go the extra mile for their
organizations; just paying a fair salary to employees is typically not enough
inspiration (although it is important too). There are a number of ways
to motivate your workers: you may build employee self-esteem through recognition
and rewards, or by giving employees new responsibilities to increase their
investment in the company.
3- Trustworthiness: Employees need to be able to feel comfortable coming to their
manager or leader with questions and concerns. It is important for you to
demonstrate your integrity – employees will only trust leaders they respect. By
being open and honest, you will encourage the same sort of honesty in your
employees.
4- Creativity: As a leader, you have to make a number of decisions that do not have
a clear answer; you therefore need to be able to think outside of the box.
5- Responsibility: A leader is responsible for both the successes and failures of his or
her team. Therefore, you need to be willing to accept blame when something does
not go correctly.

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Conclusion

Leadership is a matter of intelligence, trustworthiness, humaneness, courage, and discipline ...

Reliance on intelligence alone results in rebelliousness. Exercise of humaneness alone results in
weakness. Fixation on trust results in folly. Dependence on the strength of courage results in
violence. Excessive discipline and sternness in command result in cruelty. When one has all five
virtues together, each appropriate to its function, and then one can be a leader. — Sun Tzu.

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References

Ward, S. (2018). What Is Leadership? And Can You Learn to Be a Good Leader?. [online] The Balance
Small Business. Available at: https://www.thebalancesmb.com/leadership-definition-2948275 [Accessed
23 Nov. 2018].

En.wikipedia.org. (2018). Leadership. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadership

[Accessed 23 Nov. 2018].

En.wikipedia.org. (2018). Leadership style. [online] Available at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadership_style#cite_note-Schultz&Schultz1998-11 [Accessed 6 Dec.
2018].