Jack Ma and His Two Essential Leadership Traits Essay Example

Introduction

For this assignment, I chose Jack Ma, the owner of Alibaba. One of the leadership traits that characterizes Jack Ma is empathy. The term empathy can be described as the ability of an individual to walk in another person's shoes (Chang, Decker, & Scott, 2016; George, 2015; Sperry & Sperry, 2015). To be an empathetic leader, one requires to be humble and to be capable of engaging people from diverse cultures at a personal level. Jack Ma has been described as being a humble billionaire (Kaiman, 2014).

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Ma's humility is depicted through his willingness to empower the SMEs, the small companies, and the little people (2014). Empathy is a critical leadership trait because of its crucial role in building rapport and creating long-term relationships with others. Through empathy, leaders are capable of realizing a high level of engagement from followers as well as colleagues from diverse cultures thus empowering them to attain exceptional performance. Jack Ma's empathy is also manifested through his willingness to share the wealth, both literally and figuratively (Jankowski, 2014).

The second important trait manifested by Ma is curiosity. Curiosity can be described as an individual's passion for diverse experiences and a willingness to learn from others (Erford, 2016; Henson, 2016). Jack Ma's curiosity is manifested in diverse ways. Jack Ma's self-curiosity dated back several years ago. At only 13 years old, Ma would regularly wake up at 5 am and go to a hotel in his neighborhood to chat with international tourists and take them sightseeing (Seng, 2018). Through his curiosity, he learnt the English language (Seng, 2018).

Description of Two Strengths and Two Limitations of Trait Theory

The traits theory has strengths and weaknesses. One of the strengths of the theory is that it is based on an active research effort (Cervone & Pervin, 2015). According to Cervone and Pervin (2015), the development of this theory is based on active research focused on understanding the personality of different people. Through research, researchers who are attributed to the development of trait theory were able to identify the trait dimensions needed to describe observed personal differences across the population and whether these traits change over time. Also, through active research effort, trait theory has been able to address how people's social behavior is related to their differences in social behavior. The second strength of the trait theory is that it has potential links to biology (Cervone & Pervin, 2015). That is, the theory is capable of moving from a psychological perspective to a biological one.

The trait theory has also been reported to have some limitations. One of these limitations of this theory concerns the measurement of communicator traits (Jensen, Craig, Pooley, & Rothenbuhler, 2016). That is because self-report questionnaires are utilized in the assessment of communicator traits; there might be issues of reliability and validity of the questionnaires (Jensen et al., 2016). The second limitation of the trait theory is that there are disagreements on the traits that are needed to be an effective leader (Christiana, 2018). This may be because of the subjective nature in which the effectiveness of a leader is judged by people.

The Usefulness of Trait Theory in Assessing the Effectiveness of Jack Ma

Trait theory of leadership is aimed at identifying the critical personality attributes that distinguish non-leaders from leaders (Wirba, 2017). The theory is based on the argument that leadership is an inborn capability and cannot be made. That is, leadership is innate and that a person's leadership cannot be developed through learning. The theory is focused on the attributes that are associated with successful leadership across diverse situations. The theory strives to show that leadership in a variety of situations is entirely linked to innate traits. According to this theory, individuals in leadership positions display more leadership traits than those found in subordinate positions.

Based on this theory, good leadership traits are characterized by honesty, forward-looking, ability to inspire, and competence. That is, they show much effort, are ambitious, have high levels of energy and initiative. They are also charismatic, creative, self-confident, intelligent, sociable, determined, and flexible (Cherry, 2018).

I believe the Trait Theory is useful in assessing the effectiveness of Jack Ma's leadership. The Trait Theory of Leadership emphasizes being forward-looking. I believe that Jack Ma possess this attribute having grown his company from scratch to a global giant in e-business. Secondly, the Trait Theory explains that a leader should show ambition. Jack Ma's ambition can be readily seen since he was young. At only 13 years old, Ma would regularly wake up at 5 am and go to a hotel to chat with international tourists (Seng, 2018). This was partly driven by his strong ambition to understand others and to learn their way of life. Through this, Ma learnt the English language (Seng, 2018). Other Ma's attributes that show that Trait Theory is useful in assessing leadership is determination and self-confidence. Consequently, Trait Theory is useful in assessing the effectiveness of Jack Ma.

References

Cervone, D., & Pervin, L. A. (2015). Personality, binder ready version: theory and research. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Chang, V. N., Decker, C. L., & Scott, S. T. (2016). Developing helping skills: a step-by-step approach to competency. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.

Christiana, M. B. V. (2018). Organizational behaviour. New Delhi, India: Educreation Publishing.

Erford, B. (2016). An advanced lifespan odyssey for counseling professionals. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.

George, B. (2015). Jack Ma: lessons on global leadership. Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/10/jack-ma-lessons-on-global-leadership/

Henson, R. (2016). Successful global leadership: frameworks for cross-cultural managers and organizations. New York, NY: Springer.

Jankowski, P. (2014). What the core values of Alibaba can teach us. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/pauljankowski/2014/09/30/what-the-core-values-of-alibaba-can-teach-us/

Jensen, K. B., Craig, R. T., Pooley, J. D., & Rothenbuhler, E. W. (2016). The international encyclopedia of communication theory and philosophy, 4 volume set. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Kaiman, J. (2014). Jack Ma profile - Alibaba's powerful but humble billionaire. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/sep/19/jack-ma-profile-alibaba-powerful-humble-billionaire

Seng, T. (2018). Curiosity doesn't kill the cat: What Jack Ma and Steve Jobs can teach us about competitive advantage. Retrieved, from https://blogs.ntu.edu.sg/hey/2018/12/05/curiosity-does-not-kill-the-cat-what-can-jack-ma-and-steve-jobs-teach-us-about-competitive-advantage/

Sperry, L., & Sperry, J. (2015). Cognitive behavior therapy of dsm-5 personality disorders: assessment, case conceptualization, and treatment. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

Wirba, D. A. V. (2017). Leadership from an Islamic and western perspective. Oxford, UK: Chartridge Books Oxford.