I have been following Yonghao Luo on Weibo, which is called Chinese Twitter, for more than 8 years. He has been engaged in several professional fields and all gained great success. For example, he was a famous English teacher in China from 2001 to 2006, and I can still catch the comments under his weibo that some students even keep his teaching materials till now and spread them to the next generations. Then, he founded Bullog in 2006 and it had become the most famous and fabulous blog site in China. The Bullog site had been fought for three years and was forced to shut down by the government for being advocating the freedom of speech. From 2009 to 2011, he lectured at universities in China and gave students the most inspiring speech. The students admired his ideas and were fans of his opinions, and his books were sold out in a minute. After the lectures, he found that the most important thing for him was to build national confidence. So, Mr Luo built up Smartisan Company in 2012 and started to design smartphone. The Smartisan T1 designed by him is the first Chinese smartphone which has won the Gold Award of IF Product Design Award in Germany.
Here is the link to his social media account in Weibo https://weibo.com/laoluoyonghao?refer_flag=1001030101_
There are two famous ideas of him that inspire me most in my work and daily life.
The first one is that he always quotes the famous words of Isaac Newton “I am just standing on the shoulders of giants” (Gleick & Alexanderson, 2005) when he succeeds or gets compliments. When he was an English teacher, a motherly old teacher listened to one of his class and praised him for his intelligent idea in teaching. Mr Luo said that he could not come out with those teaching methods without the numerous work done by other teachers. No matter being a teacher or the CEO of a company, he always puts others first instead of taking all the credit. Human beings are naturally striving for social recognition and career advancement (Myers & Smith, 2012). Therefore, it is hard for an individual to step back and to put other first when making achievements. Although he is not engaging in teaching, he has been my professional role model for all these years. I have not only applied some of his ideas to my teaching method but also have learnt his attitude towards work.
The second one is his idea about how to keep being logical and ethical rather than losing oneself in the fame. In the Smartisan T1 press event, Mr Luo announced to major media reporters that he could not approve for the ironic saying of him owning countless fans and followers (). He regarded them as individuals who were pursuing some kind of faith, dream, and attitude towards life rather than fans and followers of himself. And he has never disappointed anyone for always being righteous, considerate and sincere. Now Mr Luo’s company has to compete with other peer companies to survive in the market, but he never tries to steal ideas from other organizations or cheats the consumers. It seems that he knows who he is clearly and is always being self-conscious for the whole time. I am trying to act the same way in my work and life. As a teacher, I am getting used to being surrounded by many students even after class. And I keep telling myself that it is my attitude and professional capability recognized and admired by them, not myself. I can show my appreciation to them through the way of being more professional and ethical in my work. This is what I have learnt and motivated from Mr Luo.
Since the followers have already being particularly motivated and inspired by Mr Luo, I would like to suggest him improve his relationship with the publicities. It is extremely helpful for his ideas to circulate widely and would not be distorted in an unfriendly way. According to what happened in the past, some of his opinions were intentionally misrepresented in the newspapers. Without social media at that time, some followers were disappointed in him and stopped trusting him, yet some followers trusted him too much and were misled in a wrong way. In order to better motivate the followers, it is crucial for him to make sure that his ideas are reported precisely and correctly. In addition, the government might not have so much prejudice against him.
Based on my observation of him, Mr Luo has definitely manifested several typical servant leader behaviours (Northouse, 2016). He always puts the followers first; he spares no efforts to help the followers or team members grow and succeed; he behaves ethically and uprightly; he loves to empower the followers to be independent and self-sufficient; he is creating value not only for the community but also for the entire nation. Maybe this is why I like him so much because servant leadership has always been my faith in the professional work. In my opinion, being a competent teacher means being a wonderful servant leader, and this is the requirement I set up for myself. Mr Luo is the man who initially guided me to be a teacher and inspired me to embed servant leadership in my work although I knew nothing about servant leadership several years ago. I would love to explore more in the field of servant leadership and to achieve my standard of being a wonderful servant leader in the way Mr Luo is behaving.
References
Gleick, J., & Alexanderson, G. L. (2005). Isaac Newton. The Mathematical Intelligencer, 27(3), 74-76.
Myers, D. G., & Smith, S. M. (2012). Exploring social psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage publications.