Jack Ma is a Chinese entrepreneur and philanthropist who founded Alibaba Group, one of the largest e-commerce companies in the world. Some key lessons from his leadership include perseverance in the face of repeated rejections and failures early in his career, an emphasis on understanding people and focusing on the customer, and an adaptive leadership style that embraced change. Ma also leads with vision and inspiration, motivating employees through an energetic work culture and recognition of their talents. His legacy includes philanthropic initiatives in education and the environment as well as ethical business practices that promote credible small businesses.

1. Lessons learnt
through
leadership :
Jack Ma
Chinese entrepreneur, investor and
philanthropist (Source:Wikipedia.org)
School of Business – Conestoga College, Brantford
MGMT 8330 – Sec 6 – Organizational Leadership
Group Assignment: Leader Profile
Presented to: Presented by:
Donna Needs Bravehearts
D.o.P: 2019/02/05
Source: Google Images

2. Contributions
and summary 2
Chapter Element Presenter Slides #
A. Introduction Jeel Mistry 3 – 8
B. LeadershipTraits &/or Intelligences Aarti 9 – 14
C. Leadership Style and Behavioural
Assessment
Malkeet Singh 15 – 21
D. 2 Contingency theories Jaspreet Kaur Sidhu and
Lokesh Kumar
22 – 29
E. Bibliography Team - Bravehearts 30 – 32

3. 3
- Jeel Mistry

4. Life
 Founder, Alibaba.com
 Birth: October 15, 1964.
Hangzhou, south-eastern
China.
Childhood: Rode
bicycle everyday in
lure of conversing
with strangers
Education: Flunked
examination two
times at university
Employment: Got
rejected by dozens of
employers including
KFC, finally hired as
an English lecturer
4

5. Work
Alibaba.com –
Founded April 4, 1999
in Hangzhou after 4
years of successive
failures in business
ventures.
Funding – Tried to
obtain capital from
SiliconValley,
rejected every time
for running an
unprofitable business
in online marketplace
Present of Alibaba –
one of the largest e-
commerce retailers in
the world with market
cap of US$352.28
billion as of Dec 19,
2018 (Wikipedia.org)
1 2 3
 Inexperienced in
computers and coding.
 Failed in first two ventures
 Opened an apartment
office with $ 60000.00 in
hand along side 17 friends.
5

6. How he
inspires?
Whatsoever is inspirational about
him is also motivationally
aspirational.
6
Attributes of his leadership style:
• Foresightedness in Innovation – opportunities that you cannot
see are the real opportunities, as per his belief.
• Humbleness and Adaptability – admits limitations and seeks
avenues to improve them.
• Positive Attitude – Poised to focus on achieving success in
results.
• Perseverance – Determined to walk for that extra mile to reach
at the top in business and philanthropy
• Resilience – Never whining, always working upon opportunities.
• Passionate apprentice and public speaker – Always
concentrates upon knowing great words to infuse motivation into
his workforce
Leadership oriented working style:
• Understanding people – Apprehends expectations of his people.
• Customer is the King - Values customer’s feedback in high
regard.
• Democratic management model – impartial in nature,
constantly asks for employees’ feedback
• Adaptive to change – willing to push beyond the limits to acquire
change and implement it for organizational success.

7. Awards and
recognition
Trophies, ranks, certificates….
Top 10 Business
Leaders of the year –
China Central TV, 2017
25 Most Powerful
Business people in Asia
– Fortune Magazine,
2018
One of the world’s 100
most influential people
–Time, 2018
Asia’s Hero of
Philanthropy – Forbes
Asia, 2018
30 Most Powerful
persons in the world –
Forbes, 2017
Entrepreneur of the
year – Asian Awards,
2015
7

8. Influential
Legacy
• Philanthropy – does it through the Jack Ma
Foundation that endeavours in pioneering wellness of
education, ecosystem and residential health
(Wikipedia, 2019).
• TunnelledVisionary – 0.3% of total revenue of Alibaba
reserved for the unborn to be spent on addressing
climate change.
• Ethical tradesman – waged a war against greed by
fighting counterfeit production. Brought in “Sesame
Rating System”, AI software that helps identify credible
business owners based on a sellers’ rating.
• Criticism is evolution – Believes failure is inevitable in
journey to success but giving up is not.Tries to think
out of the box all the time.
8
Photo credit: UNclimatechange | Flickr

9. 9
- Aarti

10. Attributes
(to name a
few)… 10
• Openness – to hearing innovative ideas from
employees or ant one else.
• Curious – building employee to employer
relationship.
• Empathetic – respects confidence of his
employees and appreciates their work.
• Enlightened – disagrees that he’s a rich
person and believes not in flaunting his
wealth, instead helps others become capable
enough to start generating their own wealth
and wellness in its pursuits.

11. A
passionate
leader with
GQ a.k.a
Global
Intelligence
11
GQ
Adaptability
Awareness
Curiosity
EmpathyAlignment
Collaboration
Integration

12. Instances to
support the
GQ theory
12
1. When he decided to make alibaba.com website, he had 24
members in his team and only one member agreed with his
idea and remaining 23 members disagreed with him.
However such hurdles did not stop him and he successfully
made the site and gained popularity.
2. When he heard about the internet for the first time from
America back in 1995, he made a decision to do the a
business associated with the internet, even though he lacked
knowledge in computers.
3. His childhood full of hardships and immense experience with
failure has made him more humble and empathetic towards
the society in general and employees in particular. E.g. his
endeavours are defined in helping the people out by
providing them with an e-platform to conduct business
through automated interface. On the founding day of
Alibaba, he gave generous stock option packages to the first
staff (George B, 2015).

13. Instances
continued
13
4. Ma anxiously reiterates that China has lost
its spiritually driven values in its DNA when
Mao Zedong put an end to the existence of
Confucianism and other practices. His vision
is to infuse a culture of values, sense of
purpose and thoughtfulness in belongingness
into the coming generations.

14. Instances
continued
14
5. Every person on earth who has ever met him can
clearly sense lucidity in his thoughts and
enlightenment in his mind on what he aspires to
achieve and inspires to follow. He is an affable
person and authentically open to innovation,
creation and new experiences. E.g. When he started
his company back in 1999, he envisioned it making
to theWall Street and when he did, when his
company’s Initial Public Offering (IPO) went out in
history as one of the largest in United States at its
time.
Also, it was revealed that before his company came
to be known worldwide, the secondary students
employed by the company received honorary shares
from the man himself (Lu, 2018).

15. 15
- Malkeet Singh

16. Composition
of Leadership
style 16

17. 17
Transformational Leadership style
 Sporting, inspiring and humorous person.
 Employees feel comfortable while working in Alibaba, since
he has created an energetic and happy environment in the
company.
 His employees admire him as a authentic leader.
 The annual talent show calledAlifest is organized as a cultural
gala to bring out the best in employees.On its 10th
completing year, Jack dotted a casual Rock & Roll enthusiast
get up to do a karaoke of his favourite songs.

18. 18
Visionary leadership style
 Jack Ma has a very strong belief that artificial intelligence
will change the entire world in the forthcoming days .
 He possesses crystal clear vision about E- commerce , and
artificial intelligence.

19. 19
Jack Ma interaction modes
Twitter
• Jack Ma with his followers via one of the most popular websites of social media
Twitter
• Tweets near about 482
• Flowers 72.2k
• Flowing only 319
Facebook
• He has made a Facebook official page named Jack Ma @ AlibabaJack
• 142496 people like this page
• 148404 people follow it

20. 20
Motives of Jack MA
 He has an aspiration to turn the world towards artificial technology.
 He wants to run small scale business under the banner of Alibaba in order to
generates more jobs around the world
 He always inspires his flowers ,mates and employees .

21. Where
could he
stand apart
by
improving?
21
 One grey area or weakness that he does possess is being
too friendly or over-emotional. Sometimes it comes in
the way of taking result-oriented strict decisions which if
not done could hamper your potential prospects of
success (Chowdhury, n.d.).
 Also, over-reliance on his subordinates might lessen his
influence and ultimately, respect for his ethical ways of
doing business (Chowdhury, n.d.).
Bold suggestions –
 He must be able to deduce the timing of when to
empathize. Otherwise, he might be robbed of his own
magnanimity
 He must maintain a fine distance from his followers for a
couple of times in order to legitimize authorization of
power and influence.

22. 22
 Leader – Member ExchangeTheory
(LMX)
 Fiedler’s Contingency Model +
Situational Leadership
- Jaspreet Kaur Sidhu and Lokesh Kumar

23. Part 1:
LMX
Theory 23
• Dyadic : Mutual exchange occurring in a
leader and his follower
• Influential in follower’s responsibility,
decisions, work ethics and performance.
• Accessibility to resources of the leader and
the follower wins over his trust.
• Beneficial in promoting a positive
environment to the subordinates and impart
overall organizational effectiveness.

24. 24• Based on Dulebohn et al.
• Source - Wikipedia

25. 25
Jack Ma’s Approach to LMX
He believes your words should add weight to what you’re trying to
communicate exactly to your subordinates, followers or employees. And he
rewards his employees with equities, shares and promotions.
He believes in hiring right fit for the job. E.g. once he was interviewed on
distinction between a leader and a follower. His response was that one must
recruit employees in superiority of expertise than oneself.
A simple rule he embodies in his vision is unity in diversity. He believes in
mobilizing people for the right cause under a unique goal at the right place
and the right time. Giving up is a failure in itself, as he says.
He hosts Alifest every year to unearth unique talents in his employees and
how they could cater to a variety of alternate solutions to problem solving.

26. Part 2:
Fiedler’s
Contingenc
y Model +
Situational
Leadership
Model 26
• Instantaneously, Fiedler’s Contingency Model and
Situational Leadership is applicable to Jack Ma in a
variety of situations.
• As we all know he’s a people’s person, he helps them
out in identifying their own fit. E.g. he offered a
platform on Alibaba for people to start their own
search for customers for a way to lead their business
by themselves.
• He told once publicly that he believes that your
competition teaches and not standardization.
Instead of oversimplification through
methodologies, innovation through imagination
should run the creative horses in our minds
(Chowdhury, n.d.). This reflects on his creative
intelligence demonstrating presence of mind.

27. Least
Preferred
Co- Worker
Scale
Analysis
27
• High-LPC leader
Task
People
High-LPC Motivational
Hierarchy (from classroom
lecture)
• As discussed already, he is a people
oriented person. He inspires them to
find their own calling and suitability to
the roles they want to fit in.
• He finds the right people for the job and
then works towards completing tasks
successfully. End results is usually a
streak of successes for him.

28. Situational
Favourability
28
• As per textbook figure, it can be said that Ma might possess low
authority over his followers but practical instances are quite
contrary to what it is being suggested here.
• Three sub-elements in situation favorability to his advantage:
Leader-member relations – cooperative
Task structure – assigns right fit depending upon situational
demands
Position power – yes, he does as he is highly respected for his
ethical tradesman ship and concern for empowering lives

29. Instances of
situational
leadership
29
 Way back in 2003, China was suffering from the SARS
(Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome). Jack told his
employees to operate from home in order to prevent
them from contracting the disease (Alibabagroup.com,
2019). Behaviour wise, it can be said that he was not
ready to put the lives of his employees in danger just for
running his business profitably. But simultaneously, while
other businesses were suffering, Alibaba operated at
ease and earned money like normal days of business.
 He is highly capable of adaptability to change. Initially,
he wanted to start selling directly to the consumer as an
e-commerce firm in Alibaba. But fast paced environment
meant that he knew it already that his company wouldn’t
be what envisioned for initially. So he changed the model
in empowering small business owners to sell directly to
their potential customers by providing them a platform
through automation or technology.This is how the
journey of Alibaba began.

30. 30
Alibabagroup.com, (2015). Alibaba Group. Retrieved: 29 January 2019. Available at:
https://www.alibabagroup.com/en/about/history?year=2013
Basicmahiti.com, (2018). Jack Ma - Inspirational to many young dynamic and ambitious. Retrieved: 29
January 2019 from: http://www.basicmahiti.com/2018/06/jack-ma.html
Chowdhury, F. (n.d.). Background of Jack Ma. Retrieved: 29 January 2019. Available at:
https://www.academia.edu/8339253/Background_of_Jack_Ma
George, B. (2015). Jack Ma: lessons on global leadership. Retrieved: 29 January 2019. Available at:
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/10/jack-ma-lessons-on-global-leadership/
Diarystore, (n.d.). Jack Ma Alibaba Founder Success Story | Amazing Quotations. Retrieved: 29 January 2019
from: https://www.diarystore.com/inspire/jack-ma-alibaba-founder-success-story-amazing-quotations
Husain, H. (2018). 10 Leadership Secrets of Jack Ma that Shaped Alibaba’s Roaring Success. Retrieved: 29
January 2019. Available at:
https://blog.taskque.com/leadership-secrets-jack-ma-alibabas/

31. 31
Kataria, P. (2016). Jack Ma: Founder of Alibaba.com. Retrieved on 29 January, 2019 from:
https://www.slideshare.net/PratikKataria/jackma-64202123
Leader-Member ExchangeTheory. Retrieved on 29 January 2019 from Wikipedia.Available at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leader%E2%80%93member_exchange_theory
Meah, A. (n.d.). 40 Inspirational Jack Ma Quotes on Success. Retrieved on 4 February, 2019 from:
https://awakenthegreatnesswithin.com/40-inspirational-jack-ma-quotes-on-success/
National University, n.d. Jack Ma – Final. Uploaded by National University, course: LAW 304 on
Coursehero. Retrieved: 4 February, 2019 from:
https://www.coursehero.com/file/11992054/Jack-Ma-Final/
Shultis, J. (n.d.). 30 Life Lessons From Chinese Billionaire Jack Ma. Retrieved: 29 January 2019 from:
https://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/30-life-lessons-from-chinese-billionaire-jack.html
Social Media profile feed from:
https://www.facebook.com/AliBabaJack/
https://twitter.com/plaid_jackma?lang=en

32. 32
Wikipedia.org, (n.d.). Jack Ma. Retrieved on 29 January 2019 fromWikipedia.Available at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Ma
Yizhen, L. (2018). Lessons From ‘Crazy Jack’: An Extraordinary Leader In Style And Beliefs. Retrieved: 29 January
2019. Available at:
https://leaderonomics.com/business/5-leadership-lessons-from-jack-ma

33. Merci
beaucoup!
Des Questions?