Individual Report

a) Provide a description of the leader’s background, roles, skills, achievement, etc.

Robin Li Yan Hong is a Chinese Internet entrepreneur. He was born in the city of
Yangquan in Shanxi Province, China on 17 November 1968. His parents were factory
workers (Berman.N, 2017). Robin Li was the fourth of five children, and he is the only boy in
the family. He is the co-founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) for the Baidu,
China’s top search engine and one of the world’s most popular websites since January 2004.
Robin Li studied information management course at Peking University and graduated as a
Bachelor of Science degree. After that, he went to the University of New York, Buffalo to
continue study for computer science course and he earned Master in Computer Science
degree in 1994. Robin Li worked as Vice Chairman of the Internet Society of China (ISC)
and also is a visiting professor at Wuhan University. On 10 October 1995, he is get married
with Dongmin Ma in New Jersey and now they have four children and live in Beijing, China.
Now she is the special assistant in Baidu
Robin Li as a CEO of Baidu, he has the responsibility to take care of the company and
make sure company earn profit. Robin also plan for the company what should do and which
direction to go in future. For example, Robin realised that a lot of people use his Baidu’s
platform but he can’t earn any profit. That’s means there is a problem of business model. So,
Robin should do something in improving search services. Robin Li observed that consumer
use smartphone more than computer, so he decided to install Baidu become an application in
phone, this can let more people use it. In 2015, Robin change the application to become more
effective, it can come out many types of results when people search for the keywords. This
can earn more profits too.
The most talent skill of Robin Li is positive thinking skill. Even though he comes from
very humble beginnings, but he is not given up on study in a lower standard lifestyle. Robin
Li’s mother encouraged his education and give him some motivation to ensure he studied
hard. Even though he came from a poor family, but he never loses hope and finally success
enrolled university without a back door and completed his Master’s degree in the United
States (Author, M.S.K.E. (2012). Moreover, Robin Li also has training skill. He willing
spends most of his time to train his employees for his company, Baidu’s growing work force.
As Robin Li said: “a company must have a specific routine that is used to train and educate
employees”. So, Robin Li willing to sacrifice his time to train the employees and make sure
his employees getting better in working.
There are many achievements and honours of Robin Li. He was named one of the
“Chinese Top 10 Innovative Pioneers” in 2001; he was continuously named one of “IT Ten
Famous Persons” in 2002 and 2003; he was named of “Chinese Software Ten Outstanding
Young Persons” in April 2004; he was named of “ASEAN Youth Award on 23 August 2005;
he was named one of the “CCTV 2005 Chinses Economic Figures of The Year” in 2005; he
was also named “World’s Best Business Leader” by the American Business Weekly in 2006.
Baidu successfully became the first Chinese company to be included in the NASDAQ-100
Index in 2007 (Crunchbase, 2010). Robin Li develop Baidu into the United States, Russia and
South Korea. He is enrolled the 8th richest man in China with $10.07 billion.

b) Identify and describe the leadership traits that the leader possesses supported with
relevant examples.
Leadership traits of a leader can bring some benefits in working. For example, can
improved productivity of the workforce, improved ability to succeed under pressure and etc.
These can let the leader become success in working. There are some leadership traits of
Robin Li. One of the leadership traits of Robin Li is gentleman-style leadership. In ancient
China, “gentleman” is only used to describe someone’s moral perspective. The gentleman-
style leadership referred here means that Robin Li’s leadership is base on the face that
human’s nature is good. Robin Li has tried his best to treat every employee like his own
family and friends, he will not always strict to them and scold them without reason. For
example, Robin Li will always open office’s door, unless he has an important meeting or
conversation. This is to let all his staff know that they can enter the office and meet him
anytime when he is in office. Not only that, Robin Li will let his employee take a break in
anytime when he is giving a speech. He also let them to questioned and express their views
during the speech.
Besides, he has also the leadership traits of visionary. From the beginning, Robin Li has
been a visionary in identifying the issue, opportunities and needs. His strategic thinking led to
the development of online edition of “Wall Street Journal” in IDD (taipeitimes, 2005). While
he worked at IDD in 1996, he developed the Rankdex site-scoring algorithm for search
engine ranking. After that, he used the site-scoring algorithm in creating his company, Baidu
in 2000. With the advancements in the technology, Robin Li has added some voice and image
search option to Baidu. This can easier to user when they use it. Not only that, this option can
made Baidu to become a top search engine in China. His visionary finally led to the
development of Baidu which is very strong competitor to Google. Baidu can become more
massive than Google in years because Robin Li make Baidu become not only connecting
information but also connecting services.
Last but not least, he has also the leadership traits of innovation. Robin Li takes every
opportunity for create something new. He can create something during his two years as a
research assistant with Sargur Srihari. He will write some research reports and attends some
meeting to present his research and his work. Robin Li is quite innovation and always thinks
outside the box. At the same time, Google does not exist, and Robin Li is ready ahead of the
game and writes a paper about search engines. For him, innovation is more important than
profit. He is ready to create something new for his company’s future success. For example,
Robin Li is planning to invest in a product that have part of the trend market, such as mobile
web apps.

c) Evaluate the effectiveness of the leader/leadership style.

In 2014, Baidu successful to achieve one of the company’s goals. Baidu is
successfully transitioned from a PC-centric, web browsers to become a mobile device
platform or we called it as mobile application (Tenebruso.J, 2015). This is easier for user
when they are using Baidu. More and more user are using internet apps on their mobile
devices. For Baidu, it is not only about connecting information but also connecting
services. Robin Li is successful made Baidu become more effectiveness. For example,
user can open Baidu and input “dining”, it will tell user which restaurants are nearby the
user, cam guide you and provide you the map to go to the destination, the menu of the
 restaurant, the operation hours, and even let you book a seat. A whole series of actions
can all be done from within Baidu. Google hasn’t done this kind of thing. If user want to
know the weather tomorrow, user can ask Baidu and it will answer you directly. Not only
that, we also can search something new, such as online recipe. So that we do not need to
waste money to buy physical book recipe. This can also easier for user because we can
refer on video recipe too. Besides, user can keep follow up of the latest news. User does
not need to buy newspaper and also switch on television to watch news. This also can
bring some convenience to user.
Moreover, Baidu future plan is launch Baidu into internationally. Even though
Baidu already can use in other country, such as Japan, Thailand and Egypt, but for the
translation other language, it’s still evolving very quickly (Wan,S, 2020). Robin Li wants
make Baidu become can edit from Chinese language to other language, such as Hindi or
English as well. This is easier to users from other countries can use Baidu too. In the
future, user will not be able to distinguish between search and feed, or search and
recommendation. Search can give user the best and the right answer, but
recommendation will let you consume a lot more content and let you learn a lot more
knowledge.

d) Conclude with your opinion/lessons learned from the leader.

In conclusion, there are many lessons that I can learned from Robin Li. One of the lessons
is open myself to new ideas, I learned this lesson from his “gentlemen-style” (Eduazaurus,
2019). From this, I realised that I should listen to others when they give me advice and
opinions. Listening also important in close relationships. Not only that, their advice and
opinion can improve our knowledge. We can’t be overbearing and not give chance to others
when they want close to us. We should be open-minded to help us to learn and grow,
strengthening the belief in ourselves.
Moreover, I learned to be brave and positive thinking when faced some obstacles and
challenges. We should never give up even though the challenges are hard to be solved. As
people said: “success is what happens after you have survived all of your disappointments”.
From this quote we can know, all the efforts that we put in to overcome challenges won’t let
us down. There must a good result is waiting for us at the destination. Just like Robin Li, he
still can earn profits after he faced many frustrations when overcome the challenges. But
Robin Li still not give up and keep positive thinking because he believes himself that he can
do it. Finally, he success promote Baidu to become a famous search engine in the world.
Last but not least, I learned that always prioritise others more than ownself. I learned this
lesson from Robin Lee when he makes some changes in his company. He decides to reduce
meeting hours and creates some stricter rules for his employees. This is because Robin Li
wants his employees become more dedicated and focused in order to ready of “Baidu’s
second take off”. This also can ensure his staffs work as efficiently as possible. Robin Li
willing sacrifice himself and make sure his employees are become better in working. In my
opinion, we can’t be selfish, but should selfless to ensure everyone will not defy to work
together for us. If we always think about others, they will also repay us a kindness. So, all of
us will become more successful.

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