Schunk: The leadership road less traveled

"It is, after all, the responsibility of the expert to operate the familiar and that of the leader to transcend it."

Henry Kissinger's quote recalls the overarching charge of a leader, but not the recipe to achieve it.

Many forward-thinking philosophies in the rubber industry exist. For some, leadership is about taking responsibility, akin to what Dwight Eisenhower called "unquestionable integrity," or perhaps what author John Updike called "taking on the woes of others."

For others, leadership is about setting an example: consider safety on the manufacturing floor, transparency in the board room or fairness on a sales visit.

Some leaders believe in "powering down," a function of diligent hiring and the precise training of team members, enabling them to make critical decisions in the absence of top-down approval.

Still others believe that humility and kindness in executive roles—the anti-MacArthur tack, if you will—go a long way toward true leadership.

But more than anything else, leadership stories like Erick Sharp's journey that earned him the title of Rubber News' 2024 Executive of the Year, are lessons of both the heart and the head.

They are essential human stories, less about meteoric rises to the top and more about organic growth and vision, with all the risk, fear and leaps of faith that come with entrepreneurship.

"Did I feel like I was jumping off a cliff and building the airplane on the way down? Yes, it felt like that several times," Sharp said. "But I am always of the mindset that we can accomplish bigger things by working together."

It is not difficult to root for someone whose story began in what central Ohioans call "God's country," where towns like New Philadelphia, Gnadenhutten and Cambridge follow Interstate 77 south to West Virginia.

In deliberate steps, with pivotal moments along the way, Sharp brought the concept of Ace Products and Consulting to fruition in 2014, growing the firm from an office in his garage into the cutting-edge materials testing company it is today.

In the beginning, he had the unwavering support of his wife, April, and the financial backing of a few good friends and mentors who believed in him.

Now he has the unabated support of an additional 21 team members at Ace Laboratories, all of whom would have bet on their president and CEO from the beginning.

It may seem self-evident, but Ace is crafted in Sharp's likeness, a company that values diversity, humility and kindness as much as a keen business sense.

Employees appreciate Sharp's humanity and his intellect, while colleagues praise his community outreach and advocacy of industry best practices through groups like the ACS Rubber Division.

And taken in aggregate, that is precisely what leadership looks like.

Schunk is a reporter for Rubber News. Reach him at [email protected].