Leadership Context: Examining Leadership of Jack Ma and Erdogan

This essay provides a comparative analysis of the leadership styles of Jack Ma, the co-founder of Alibaba, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the President of Turkey. It explores Jack Ma's transformational leadership, highlighting his emphasis on attitude, passion, and employee involvement, as well as his resilience in the face of challenges. The analysis contrasts Ma's approach with Erdogan's authoritarian style, which is characterized by a concentration of power, restrictions on freedoms, and controversial policies. The essay examines Erdogan's initial economic reforms and his subsequent shift towards a more polarizing and self-serving leadership. Ultimately, the essay concludes that effective leadership involves not only vision and innovation but also a genuine concern for the well-being and empowerment of others, contrasting Ma's inclusive approach with Erdogan's more divisive and controlling methods. Desklib offers a wide range of academic resources, including essays and solved assignments, to support students in their studies.

Running head: LEADERSHIP
1
Leadership
Name
Institution

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A leader is an individual with the ability to influence or guide followers . A leader is someone
with responsibilities that one's with the leadership position. These responsibilities may involve
having the ability to make sound and turf decisions and should be a visionary individual. Being
able to establish achievable goals and provide the required knowledge and tools to their
followers, which is a requirement in the achievements of these goals.
Jack Ma, an icon co-founder of Chinese tech. giant Alibaba is one of the world’s famous
leaders with several reasons behind his success including his transformational leadership that he
built in the organization (Owen, 2013). According to Jack Ma, a leader should be able to
appreciate attitude and passion and to give it an important value because these two qualities are
much more important than the theoretical skills. Ma undersrood how impossible it is to convince
his work mates and staff to follow his footsteps, believe and trust in what he believes in. He
came up with a brilliant idea of uniting them towards a common goal. (Kumbaracibasi, 2009).
A leader should be visionary, creative and innovative to be able to forsee risks and be flexible
to changes that might take place. Ma’s success came from working with qualified personnel.
Personels whose skills are superior. To him failure and giving up are the same thing. Jack
believed in the leadership that gets its employees involved in the decision making and taking
their decisions and suggestions into consideration.
Jack Ma faced a lot of challenges when growing up. For instances he was not a good student,
this was evident when he almost failedhis middle school test, when he failed to pass his primary
school test twice and the middle school test three times ( Kuru & Stepan, 2012). He almost
failed to get into college when he failed an entrance test twice, but still did not give up and
every time he failed he tried again and again until he got it right. Ma got turned down for 30 jobs

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and even tried applying for a job as a police officer and was rejected with three simple words,
‘you’re no good’.
When time came for him to stand on his own, Jack Ma failed to convince the Silicon Valley
to invest in Alibaba. Even after Alibaba was on and running, at one piont it was almost bankrupt
and just had 18 months of running. In The 7 Rules of Jack Ma, Ma defines failure and giving up
are one thing, and every time he tripped he never gave up. He possesses tremendous leadership
qualities, skills and styles, for instance, his strong sense of character makes him an authentic
leader. He unites his people under a comon goal; he was aware that it is impossible to unite all
his employees, investors and business partners through their trust for him, he accepted this and
looked for a better way of bringing all these groups together and came up with the brilliant ideas
of uniting them under a common goal rather than uniting them under his supervision (Siegel,
2015).
A good leader, according to Ma, is that leader is that leader who makes sure that his
subordinates are much more better than him and through this, your aucess will be evident. Ma
had no room for and to him giving up was failure. According to Ma, if you go out and fail to
achieve, th that you did not give up on the way is a success. Ma’s lessons are mostly learnt from
hardship and obstacles (Bethel, 2009). Jacks Ma leadership styles is inspirational. He is also an
individual with the influential characteristics. His humble beginning as an English translator to a
job rejection at KFC has contributed a lot to who he is.
Reviving China's culture and purpose is Man's main agenda. His employees have also
benefited from Alibaba. This is evident in his generous equity share towards his employees.
Jack Ma is also a risk taker which is a business quality that most business aspiring individuals
should possess (Andrew, 2018). He dared to execute his ideas and this is what opened ways for

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him and his ability to be visionary which led to the transformation of how business is carried out
in China which drove him to come up with Alibaba, which revolutionized e-commerce and
placed the chines market at the global level. The ability to take personal responsibility for his
mistakes is the secret to Man's resilience. when he dailed, he concentrated more on learning
from his failure and took it as a chance for improvement. (Yildirim, 2016). This drove hm to
continue being focused and explore new opportunities instead of argonising on his past mistakes.
Every good leader has a unique quality that makes them stand out.His good communication
skills are some of the qualities that made Ma stand out He is known for his great and
inspirational communication with bold goals. Through his communication skills, Ma is able to
reveal his views and ideas in great detail for his audience to assimilate (Singh & Useem, 2016).
Ma is so full of life and he even say that, he wants his story to change history by him doing
something important in his life and use it to influence others just like he had done with millions
of small business in Alibaba.
Then they love and respect you because you made their life important’. In his biography, it is
evident that Ma only hires people with superior skills: this has made his company successful.
When asked what separates a leader from an employee he said, “Your employees should have
superior technical skills than you. If he doesn’t it means you have hired the wrong person”. He
was a democratic leader since he gives importance of his employees’ ideas. One of his regrets is
when he told his business partners that they could not raise hire than the managerial position and
this affected him greatly and he learned from this (Sykes, 2014).
President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a man who believes in a leader that fights for
what he or she believes in, for instance, he is the only leader who has stood up for Muslims and
not just for his race and country. Though when he got into power, he gave leadership a

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completely new definition, to begin with, he is a leader with no or very little respect for women
and views them as lesser beings compared to men. Turkey is under dictatorship and its president
has gradually drifted into becoming more and more authoritarian and corrupt. His regime is
bluntly discriminatory especially to non-Sunni, non-Turkish citizens. Erdogan Tayyip is a leader
who cares more about himself than those under him he takes advantage of his position for self-
benefit. To begin with he got busted while saving huge amounts of illegal money at his house.
Erdogan has taken away a lot of freedom from all kind of people.
The right to obtain truthful information has been restricted, the right to peaceful
demonstration, right to assemble and freedom of expression (Tabaar, 2018). Erdogan has
attempted and succeeded in infiltrating the judiciary arm and is now controlling all three
branches of the Turkish government. Recep Erdogan can also not control his hate for other races.
He has a disliking for Armenians, Georgians and Jews. He once said that,’…. they call me
Georgian, even worse they call me Armenian…’ Erdogan initial reforms on economy and
bureaucracy made him popular. Instead he uses his popularity to slowly erode the country around
himself by his growingly unstable regime.
Erdogan quality of leadership is the poorest for instance he borrowed almost 400 billion
dollars from abroad and spend it building highways and high building that don’t create any
revenue. Turkey’s economy has virtually stopped to produce anything (Collins, 2014). Erdogan
is a very smart man. He is a good speaker, very charismatic and can easily blame other parties in
various reasons in various scenarios. He was kind of a u uniting power of all the religions,
conservative, traditional lower middle class workers, middle class and upper-middle class
people. Though Erdogan has some positive aspects, his negative characters outweigh his
positives (Gujral, 2012). For instance, he is a polarizing character.

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Erdogan has also contributed positively to the Turkeys’ economy for instance, he pushed
through liberal reforms, through his he managed to sideline a military which had undermined
Turkish democracy for over six decades in a series of coups. His party, AKP, provided financial
support for young couples who married early and couples who had more than three children
would be supported financially. Through this the lives of this families were improved, the new
legislation that restricted abortion also help in the saving lives that would rather have boon lost.
This portrayed him as a leader who cares more about the well-being of others.
In conclusion, it is evident that leadership is a combination of a lot of things. For one to be a
great leader you must not just care for others but make sure that they are where they are
supposed to be through your actions. As a leader your visions, creativity and innovativeness
speaks a lot about you. Looking at Jack ma, we can that leadership does not come with giving up
and giving up is failure. A leader is someone who works his weary through thick and thin, till he
or she gets to where they want to be.

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References
Andrew, P. (2018). 7 Leadership Qualities Of Great Leaders: What Makes A Great
Leader. Success Publishing.
Bethel, S. M. (2009). A New Breed of Leader: 8 Leadership Qualities that Matter Most in
the Real World: What Works, what Doesn't, and why. London, England: Penguin.
Collins, J. (2014). Leadership Qualities: Qualities of a Good Leader. Scotts Valley, CA:
CreateSpace.
Gujral, G. S. (2012). Leadership Qualities for Effective Leaders. Vij Books India Pvt.
Kumbaracibasi, A. C. (2009). Turkish Politics and the Rise of the AKP: Dilemmas of
Institutionalization and Leadership Strategy. London, England: Routledge.
Kuru, A. T., & Stepan, A. (2012). Democracy, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey. New
York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Owen, R. (2013). State, Power and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East.
London, England: Routledge.
Siegel, D. (2015). Leaders in the Shadows: The Leadership Qualities of Municipal Chief
Administrative Officers. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

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Singh, H., & Useem, M. (2016). The Strategic Leader's Roadmap: 6 Steps for Integrating
Leadership and Strategy. Wharton Digital Press.
Sykes, M. (2014). Doing the Right Thing for Children: Eight Qualities of Leadership.
Redleaf Press.
Tabaar, M. A. (2018). Religious Statecraft: The Politics of Islam in Iran. New York, NY:
Columbia University Press.
Yildirim, A. K. (2016). Muslim Democratic Parties in the Middle East: Economy and
Politics of Islamist Moderation. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.