Opinion | Why a good teacher is a great leader – and their students’ best cheerleader

Joseph Tsai says teachers matter not only in the school but also in business. A great teacher communicates well, cares about their students’ development and has the generosity of spirit to want to see students exceed their own achievements

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Good teachers are good communicators. Through communication, they connect with students, not only enrich their minds but also touch their hearts. Photo: K. Y. Cheng

Published: 11:33am, 17 Nov 2018Updated: 11:33am, 17 Nov 2018

Nineteen years ago, I walked into a modest second-floor apartment in Hangzhou, China, and that visit changed my life. I met a great teacher by the name of Jack Ma. I met not just him, but also his disciples – his students from university who followed him to start Alibaba. And, later, these students became great teachers in their own right.

Alibaba is a story of teachers. It is a story of teachers who became leaders. It is a story of leaders who begot more leaders.

You must be curious about how this happened, so here it is.

We went from humble beginnings in 1999 to being one of the largest technology companies in the world today. As our business became more complex, as we scaled our operations from hundreds to thousands to tens of thousands of people, we began to realise that we couldn't just add more people to handle all of that growth. We must train them.

So who was going to do that? All of that training and mentoring. The tendency was to delegate this work to our human resources department. But then we realised that people development was the job of the business leader, not the HR person. That was when we started to appreciate that the qualities of a teacher are common to sound leadership in business. That is, we began to realise that good teachers make great business leaders.

You say, “Oh, yes, I get it. Big bosses always evaluate their people, ranking them from best to worst, and as a teacher this is what I do to my students as well.” Well, leadership is a lot more than grading and ranking your people.