MGT3LWM Leadership: What matters?
MGT3LWM Essay Plan
Introduction:
Every individual are born with specific personality traits that have a major influence on the individual’s mindset, behavior, working style and future growth. The success of many prominent personalities we know today can rightly be associated with their inborn traits (leadership). Being a successful leader is also based on ingrained exclusive leadership traits of the leader. Many top business companies on globe today are the product of their leader’s inborn leadership skills and mindset.
In the following essay to further understand the influence of personality traits on the mindset, behavior and performance style we will consider the example of Jack Ma Yun, founder and chairman of Ali Baba Group.
Jack Ma Yun, born in a Chinese lower class family now stands among the top 50 of the most successful business leaders. Having limited facilities and exposure of the outside world it was the leadership traits like enthusiasm, self-confidence, creativity and decision making, which enabled Jack Ma to attain a prominent position among the top business leaders. Jack taking advantage of the internet technology used the same platform to develop his ideas into one of the most successful business at present.
During the early years Jack Ma due to language barrier and poor proficiency in mathematics faced multiple failures like twice failing in university’s entry test and multiple job rejections, however his determined attitude leaded him to ultimate success.
Jack Ma’s perceiving attitude, employees motivation and maneuvering his company in the right direction reflects his transformational and visionary style of leadership. As stated by Nwabueze (2011) that the transformational leaders adopting excellent communication skills trigger more energy among the employees, sharing his ideas and plans entertains exchange of information among all the stakeholders, Jack Ma’s physical participation in many of his company’s events and communication with the employees and partners is the portrayal of his transformational leadership style.
Jack Ma Yun:
Jack is a true reflection of ‘Rags to Riches’. Born in lower middle class family in China in an era when China was least exposed to the western regions, and having least facilities Jack had no particular growth opportunities. Jack was an ordinary child, not good in academics, fond of odd games like collecting crickets to make them fight, and fighting with class mates, however his visionary attitude, being unafraid of risks and readiness to take challenges made him unique among the other children.
Moreover, his abilities to recognize the opportunities and taking advantage of the same proved to be his major aid in establishing himself as a global renowned business leader. According to Ihlenfeldt (2011) that main base of a visionary leader is his quality of establishing a plan and then following the plan with full devotion, Jack identified his poor competency in English language as his biggest obstacle. To overcome the same lacking, Jack took advantage of the visiting tourists, he regularly visited city’s main hotel offering service as a guide so that he could enhance his English language skills.
Acknowledging education as the only means to achieve his dreams, Jack never felt disheartened of his failures, when he couldn’t pass the college entry test twice he attempted for the third time and succeeded. Even when rejected from various jobs, he succeeded in getting a teaching job just for $12 monthly.
A thoughtful creative planning and timely execution of the same in accordance with the available technology might result as the life changing factor (Kishor, Majumdar, Kiran 2012). Jack during an official visit to America learned about the extensive uses of internet, his visionary skills made him recognize the absence of Chinese products on internet. This was the turning point of Jack’s life, it was the start of his ultimate successful career. He developed a Chinese site but failed, few years later getting financial support from his friends re-designed and launched a site ‘Alibaba’, promoting and selling Chinese products. The site attracting many international online buyers and exporters became a success.
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Leadership Style
As it is the behavior, mindset, and working style of a leader that prescribes his leadership style influenced by the ingrain specific traits, every individual leader by his managerial style, communication and employees motivation approaches portrays a distinctive leadership style. Going through the entire life and achievements of Jack Ma, his visionary and transformational leadership style is quite obvious.
Transformational leadership theory postulates that a range of follower attitudinal and performance outcomes are at least partially explained by a leader’s ability to influence followers’ values to support organizational change (Groves 2016, p. 1). One of the main evidence of Jack’s transformational leadership style is his act of convincing his friends for financial support to launch AliBaba. Also, as Jack was not a computer genius and haven’t sold anything before AliBaba appeared online, it was his convincing and motivation skills which enabled him to acquire his friend’s and few IT expert’s support.
A leader’s personal involvement in any campaign or celebration not only enhances the employee’s motivation level but also their loyalty with the company. Transformational leaders influence their followers by developing and communicating a collective vision and inspiring them to look beyond self-interests for the good of the team and organization (Groves 2013, p. 228).
Jack Ma actively participated in the company’s multiple campaigns and celebrations, which not only makes him unified among other prominent business leaders but also quite inspiring and motivating for the huge workforce of AliBaba Group. In 2009, for 6th anniversary of ‘Alibaba’, Jack performed on stage in Punk Rock star getup, in 2013 during company’s 10th anniversary he took the appeared on stage as a Rock Star, above all for 18th anniversary he performed on stage imitating Michael Jackson wearing similar getup of the famous rock star.
Jack Ma during his visit to America while searching for Chinese ‘beer’, pinpointed non-existence of Chinese products on internet. His decision for developing a website to promote Chinese products reflects his foresightedness and visionary leadership style. As stated by Day (2014) that illustrating perceived image of the future to the subordinates or followers through actions or verbally persuading them to contribute in achieving the future image can be termed as Visionary leadership.
