Critical Assessment of Tim Smith’s Leadership Style

Smit is a versatile leader. Though he studied Anthropology and Archeology, working in Heligen has given him opportunity to extend a passion for garden. He used his academic and non academic skill in the development of Eden Project. Accordingly, his leadership quality starts rebelling in Heligen and reached at outmost level in Eden Project. Smit is very optimistic and positive for making people think differently. According to him negative thinking should be killed. Cost minimization and maximum utilization of resources are followed by Smit, for example, he designed a roof based on mathematical rules in whichmaximum number of seeds, spines or leaves were accommodated into possible area.

Smit mainly focuses on teamwork for achieving his vision and organizational success in Eden Project. Smit is innovative leader as he has used his innovative idea to get the success in Eden Project. According to Patrick Dawson and Costas Andriopoulos (2017 p. 48) “Innovation involves the utilization of ideas in solving problems, developing process and improving the way we do things in creating new products, services and organizations”. The social innovations has different meaning as Ellis (2010) in Patrick Dawson and Costas Andriopoulos (2017 p. 52) defines social innovations as “These refers to innovations that aim to improve welfare of groups and communities through initiatives that enhance the well being of people in society”. Basically social innovations are not for commercial profit although Saul (2011) observes that commercial sustainability is required for sustainable solutions to social problems. Smit’s innovations and motivations to his team members in the Eden Project are primarily for non-profit nature, however, his profit making objective is for commercial sustainability of the project.

This section critically discusses about Smit’s leadership style in light of appropriate theories of leadership and management to find out the strengths of his leadership style for the success in Eden Project and also to find the weakness of his leadership style that may be hinders of the organizational success.

Due to taking huge risk, motivation, change, problem solving capacity, enormous knowledge, and multidimensional activities to create as series of global garden though teamwork, Smit is recognized as transformational leader.Transformational leader renovate the values, desires and beliefs of the followers (Kuhnert & Lewis, 1987). Transformational leader motivate the group members to sacrifice their own self-interests for the betterment of the team and organization (Avolio & Bass, 2004). The behaviors of this kind of leader promote respect and admiration in their followers (Bass, 1985). Motivating the followers and emphasizing on their awareness with the vision they create to achieve goals of the organization are the prime objectives of transformational leader (Antonakis et al. 2003; Avolio & Bass, 2004; Den Hartog et al. 1997). They inspire the logical skills of followers by encouraging them to connect with innovative and creative thinking and problem solving (Dionne, Yammarino, Atwater, & Spangler, 2004). In case of Smit, his focus is “on love and awe rather than guilt and fear” (Eden Project 2007-8, p. 3). He is very successful in building team. Causes of his success in teamwork are that he brought people from different discipline and skill, and get them to brainstorm and collaborate. Finally, he comes up with the extra ordinary result and success. Team members have huge job satisfactions. He also attracts many people and creates fascinate belief and team spreads. All team members own the project and they considers it highly effective socially, financially and environmentally.