A STUDY OF LEADERSHIP TRAITS OF JACK MA

Ma Yun, who is worldwide known as “Jack Ma”, is one of the richest and successful Chinese
person in the world. Jack Ma is the co-founder and executive chairman of Alibaba Group. He
was listed as one of the world’s powerful person by Forbes in 2015. Besides, in 2017, he was
ranked 2nd in the annual "World's 50 Greatest Leaders" list by Fortune.
Overview on his life
Jack Ma was born on 10th September, 1964 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China. He
belonged to a lower middle-class family. During his school life, Jack Ma had an ambition of
becoming the president of the student association as well as becoming an English tour guide
when he had spare time. After graduation from Hangzhou Normal University in 1988, Jack
Ma worked as an English lecturer in Hangzhou Dianzi University. In this period, Jack Ma had
an opportunity to go to a business trip in the USA where he realized the presence of the
internet for the first time. He knew that this technology would play game-changing role in the
world. Therefore he established one of the first ecommerce companies in China in 1995.
About Alibaba
On 4th April, 1999 Jack and his 17 friends founded Alibaba, called “Eighteen Arhats” by
Chinese people. Alibaba was an e-commerce business having C2C; B2C and B2B business
model initiated to serve Chinese products to the international market. Recently, with the help
of advanced technologies, Alibaba has also launched varieties of business, such as Taobao,
Aliexpress, Tmall, Aliyun etc. Now the Alibaba group has become one of the world’s biggest
retailers. In 2018 Alibaba's market capital stands at US $542 billion.
Objectives of the Study:
Jack Ma is renowned for creating a differentiated business model and his unique
entrepreneurial experience. Besides the economic success, Jack Ma is an exemplary figure
that embodies the persona of a responsive and responsible leader. Thus, his achievements,
actions, and behaviors throughout his career will be analyzed in this essay to captivate the
traits and characteristic he might possess. Similarly, he has different traits which he
demonstrated according to various situations in his life and career. This paper intentionally
analyzes the significance of leadership traits and characteristics of Jack Ma on the growth of
Alibaba group.

1
 LEADERSHIP TRAITS
The reason why Jack Ma has been so successful in doing what he has been doing is because
of his leadership skills. Here are some of his leadership traits that have made him incessantly
efficacious.

1) Passion: According to DuBrin (2013), a leader must strongly possess the quality of being
passionate for the success of any business. Jack Ma, one of the most successful entrepreneurs,
is highly passionate towards his work. Jack Ma was never deterred by the failures he faced in
his life. Instead he always took a lesson from his failures and moved forward with greater
enthusiasm. His speeches showcase the strong sense of passion inside him which has
motivated a lot of people.
His passion is demonstrated by his quote, “Never give up. Today is hard, tomorrow will be
worse, but the day after tomorrow will be sunshine” (Jack Ma’s Quote, 2014). According to
the speech by Ma, passion is one of the excellent qualities of an entrepreneur. Some
businessmen show passion at the start of the business but eventually lose it till the end of their
business tenure. Furthermore, he also argues that people should continue to work with the
passion for their whole life (Zhang, 2008).
Jack Ma’s ambition and passion is exhibited explicitly during the establishment of Alibaba
group in 1999 when people didn’t believe in the model of Alibaba. He set the goal for Alibaba
to compete globally rather than being a domestically website. He also continuously inspired
his team to achieve the goals by working hard with lot of passion and dedication (Alyson,
2014).

2) Risk taker: According to (DuBrin, 2013), under some circumstances, a leader must take
the risk and be willing to work on those risky decisions in order to bring about changes for
benefit of the organization. Jack Ma’s risk-taking attitude can be identified when Alibaba
made an initial public offering (IPO) at the New York Stock Exchange “NYSE” in 2013. Ma
needed to raise about US $20 billion which was a very large offering compared to that of
Facebook that raised $16 billion in 2012. This project was very risky and challenging.
However, it broke record of the largest offering in NYSE. To do it successfully, Ma accepted
the risk of shifting the cost of stock issue from hiring six lead underwriter, 160 banks, more
than 300 sale institutions, and thousands of brokers involved in the deal. During the listing
day, Ma said "what we raised today is not money, it's the trust, it's the responsibilities that we
have” (NYSE, 2014). Jack Ma can prove his clever decision. Now, Alibaba is the largest

2
online merchant in the world, with US $240 billion in goods and shares sold with closed price
$93.89 and it absolutely hit the record of the largest offering at NYSE.
According to Jack Ma, “Giving up is the biggest failure”. He believes that a person learns
mostly from his mistakes, obstacles in life, and the hardships. Jack Ma said about taking
action and risk: “If you don’t do it, nothing is possible. If you do it, at least, you have the hope
that there's a chance” (Jalloh, n.d.).

3) Visionary Leader: A visionary leader is the one who can communicate the future picture
of his/her aim intentionally to convince others to assist and contribute it becomes a reality
(Knippenberg & Stam 2014). There is no doubt that Jack Ma’s far-sightedness contributed to
the prosperity of Alibaba. He has been ranked no. 3 in global tech innovation visionary survey
by KPMG. Some instances of the visionary trait of Jack Ma are described below:
In 2003, ‘Taobao’, which belonged to Alibaba, became one of the top e-commerce websites in
China. It grabbed the attention of ‘e-bay’, which was keen on acquiring the company.
However, Jack Ma demonstrated his visionary leadership by strongly remaining uninterested
in entering any kind of acquisitions. He insisted to continue seeking co-investing partner
instead. In the end, they got US $1 billion investment from “Yahoo” in exchange for about a
40% stake in Alibaba.
In 2017 Alibaba Investor Day, he said that a ten years’ plan of the company should be
discussed during every year strategy meeting. Meanwhile, his team always considered about
the future of every activity as well as every investment, what was going to happen in the next
five years, even in 10 years. He also mentioned that Alibaba is committed to becoming a
global company, which would achieve the goal of serving 2 billion consumers, providing 100
million job opportunities for people all over the world by 2036. (Sharma, 2017).
During the interview with Davos, he said: “We want to build up an Electronic World Trade
Platform (eWTP) to support young people, small business, through mobile phones, internet
they can sell, buy, across the board.” (Davos, 2017). This eWTP will help SMEs to grow and
expand their trading capabilities. The businesses can create hubs for e-commerce with the
governmental support, such that government can create virtual free trade zones for small
businesses. This vision will help to reduce the customs, import duties barriers and improve
access to logistics. Though there are some challenges to this vision, this is just an illustration
of Jack Ma’s vision to help and grow SMEs into a new level at a minimum investment cost.

3
4) Innovative Leader: To be an effective leader, one must use innovative approach according
to the demand of the situations. Sometimes they apply the approach to constructing
unconventional strategies to achieve their goals. Such a leader is willing to take risks to
achieve their idea, doing new things and challenging opportunities, (Carlass, Wearing &
Mann 2000). The examples of this trait are listed below:
According to Jack Ma, “Being innovative means you look at today from a viewpoint of
tomorrow;we need to look at today's China from a viewpoint of the world and look ourselves
from the viewpoint of those outside this industry; when you think this way, you will do things
in a different way”(Chinaplus, 2017) .

Another example is the innovative products of Alibaba, the Alibaba cloud computing service
(AliCloud). Ma claimed that this product will influence China’s digitization in near future.
Jack Ma also argued that the new world era will be an era of the information and technology,
it will be ruled by innovation and individualization (Stanford University, 2013).

5) Charismatic leader: This kind of leader is perceived as trustworthy, highly competent and
worthy of respect (Avolio & Bass, 1990). The followers are deeply motivated by the
charismatic leader, and they will demonstrate high performance in order to support the
company goal (Carlass, Wearing & Mann 2000). Apparently, Jack Ma is a charming and
trustworthy leader, who demonstrates his personal charisma to his employee and business
partners. The examples of this trait are as follows:
Jack Ma started Alibaba along with 17 other co-founders. Most of them are still following
him even though they have failed many times in the beginning. Meanwhile, many talents had
been attracted by Jack Ma and worked for him. According to Jack Ma’s biography, Joe Tsai,
Alibaba’s vice president, gave up the well-paid job to join Alibaba because of Jack Ma’s
personal charisma.
Moreover, some of his executives refused the offer from Alibaba’s competitor which had
provided them three times more salary. After Jack Ma knew it, he said by joking “three times
is not enough, but you can consider if they pay 5 times.” ( Science and technology circle
2018)
He also constructed a fun and comfortable working environment for his employees. He
organized company events frequently. For example, he arranged annual activity “Alifest”
every year in a stadium, and he even sang songs and dressed like a female rock star during
Alibaba’s tenth anniversary.

4
6) Influencer: Influencing is the ability to affect the behavior of others in a particular
direction (DuBrin, 2013). Implicit influence leadership theories are personal assumptions
about traits and abilities that characterize an ideal organizational leader (DuBrin, 2013). The
examples of this trait are listed below:
Jack Ma is a powerful person and a worldwide influencer. He was recognized one of the
world’s most influential person by Time Magazine in 2009, “Business Person of the Year” in
2007 by Businessweek, Asia’s Heroes of Philanthropy in 2010 by Forbes Asia, one of 30
world’s best CEOs by Barron’s in 2008 and in 2001.
People are affected by his speech and his actions. To encourage people to take their
responsibilities, Jack Ma always had rational persuasion behind his speech and quote. For
example, Jack Ma said, “If Alibaba doesn’t get bigger and more successful than Walmart or
Microsoft; I will regret it for the rest of my life. Our predecessors invested in us; therefore, it
is our (this generation’s) responsibilities to do better than them”. For this example, Jack Ma
combined his logical argument and Chinese traditional belief in a family to strongly influence
the people.
Jack Ma’s exerts his influence not only in his business but he also uses his leadership to
change people’s attitudes and behaviors. Jack Ma is a strong advocate for women’s fair
treatment and advancement in business. In his company, nearly 47% of the employees are
women, and 33% of senior management is women. According to Jack Ma, "We have many
women CEOs, CFOs, directors and so on."

LEARNING POINTS
At some point in Jack Ma's life, he faced extra stressful times and, great challenge or that
shook his core values and competencies. However, he broke through it and grew from that
time. His incidents have not only shaped him but also shown us some special lessons that we
could consider acknowledge bolstering our leadership skills.

(1) Never give up attitude: Jack Ma experienced many failures in his early life, he failed
university entrance exam for three times, he was rejected 30 times while applying for a job
and also failed 10 times while applying to Harvard. Moreover, no investors had interest in
Alibaba (Jack Ma’s biography). Although many people had doubt about Jack Ma’s ability due
to Jack Ma’s appearance or other reasons, Jack Ma didn’t surrender and grew from his failure.
One of the key important leadership is a strong passion that built his never give up attitude

5
and another point is an internal locus of control that is an intrinsic motivation which in
himself and a reason of his belief is a good outcome.

(2) Inspiring followers to chase their dreams: When Jack Ma started Alibaba in 1999, he
asked 17 friends to gather in his second-floor apartment at the Lakeside Gardens in
Hangzhou. He gave a long talk about his ambitions and how much China needed a great start-
up like Alibaba, (The New York Times, 2014). He inspired his teams with the precious dream
of the Alibaba, named from the story of Alibaba, a young man who is willing to help others.
He wished that Alibaba will be a door for every small business to seek overseas customer.
Until now, his dream is still vivid as he said in World Economic Forum, “Not because of the
amount of money made and how powerful we are but because of the inclusive technology that
every small company can use, that is my dream” (World Economic Forum, 2017).

(3) Hard time-taking risk: Between 2000 and 2002, Dot-Com bubble occurred, and Alibaba
was beset with a crisis since its establishment. During that period, Jack Ma engaged in a
global expansion which finally caused the financial problem for the company. What’s worse
was that the fund in the company was barely sufficient for a half year. In order to cut cost,
Jack MA made a prompt and wrenching decision. At the risk of making his supporters losing
faith in him, he had to close almost all the overseas offices as well as fire these talented
employees. Finally, Alibaba survived the crisis because of Jack Ma’s risky decision,
(Computer history museum, 2018).

FINAL QUESTION: WAS JACK MA SUCCESSFUL LEADER?

How to define a successful leader? Was Jack Ma a successful leader? According to our
findings, Jack Ma is a successful leader.
Based on his leadership traits, Jack Ma is a successful influencer because he always uses
tactful influence skill to inspire employee and intellectually stimulate them to achieve the
goal. For example, he prefers to hire top talents and share his dream with them, the most
important is that he makes these top talents involved in his dream, as one unit to chase it.
His passion and charisma attracted the followers and investors working together with him. He
gained admiration and trust of his employees and partners. Under Jack Ma’s inspiration and
motivation, they were satisfied to work with Jack Ma as well as performed to be committed to
the company.

6
That is no doubt that Jack Ma is a leader who has the vision and strong foresight of
innovation. He uses his visionary leadership influences Alibaba’s future and contributes to
Alibaba’s prosperity. Under Jack Ma’s visionary and innovative leadership, Alibaba’s income
revenue increased every year, during the year of 2018, Alibaba’s full-year revenue grew
58.0%.
Overall, Jack Ma strongly possessed many leadership traits and characteristics that caused
him to be an effective leader. These traits and characteristics were adaptable in different kind
of situations, which helped him become one of the most successful businessmen in the world.

Conclusion
We can learn a lot from his leadership qualities. He is a unique and talented leader whose
journey, not only, has been a roller-coaster ride, but also has rich experiences in business. He
knows how to lead in the good and bad terms and knows what to do and not to do. It is
because of his charismatic and mix of several effective leadership traits he assassinates him to
be one of the most influencing leaders of the generation. As a result from his traits, Alibaba is
recognized as the top rank of a successful company from many sources. For instance, 88th
from Top Regarded Companies, 2018 by Forbes and 462nd of Fortune Global 500 list, 2017.
It is all because of the effective and successful traits of Jack Ma, Alibaba has reached millions
of users.
Jack ma would not have been an effective leader, had he did not faced failures and rejection.
However, he was never discouraged, and he always believed in himself. He was confident in
his personal traits and skills that made him realize opportunities in the future. There is no best
way to lead. Jack Ma used his leadership traits and abilities depending upon the situation. He
had an inspiring ability when he was pitching his business idea to his friends. He presented
his charismatic traits when he had to motivate his employees towards work achievements.

7
8