Elon Musk Leadership Style 

Introduction

Elon Musk one of the most successful business people in the world, best known for inventing SpaceX and Tesla Motors. SpaceX is a company that aims at lowering the cost of building rockets, while Tesla produces electric cars (Biography.com 2018). Elon Must is a visionary leader, who is determined to advance technology in various areas including sustainable energy and space research. His net worth was estimated at $ 11.5 billion by the end of 2016, which demonstrates his success in business and leadership. According to Khan (2021) Elon’s success is attributed to his personality and unique leadership style. They maintain that he has a wit for detecting talent, inspiring, motivating, influencing, and working closely with his teams in an effort to transform the world. Comparably, Khan (2021) describe Elon as a business leader and strategist who is mostly concerned with solving problems, acquiring results through people, and taking accountability. Based on these viewpoints, Elon Musk uses transformational leadership style, which inspires, encourages, and motivates teams to work together, be innovative, and drive the change needed to shape their future success, and that of the company.

Elon’s Personality

One of the things that have defined Elon Musk’s career journey is his ability to challenge the status quo and following the unconventional path. He is a business mastermind who is not afraid of thinking big, and paying attention to what customers, observers, critics, and followers have to say about his inventions (Gayathri & Kumari, 2019). As a result, he has been highly successful in all his inventions. For instance, he is the mastermind behind Paypal challenging the banking system, his Space X company breaking barriers and challenging the entire space industry, and Tesla Motors revolutionizing the entire car industry. Through this personality, Musk has been able to intellectually stimulates, inspires, motivates, and inspires his followers to explore new ideas and opportunities, which are all aspects of transformational leadership. For instance, Khan (2021) maintains that Musk and his team were working 120 hours every day during the production on Tesla Model 3 vehicle. To this end, it is evident that Musk did not only challenge the status quo, he encouraged and motivated his team to work with full passion and commitment in an effort to transform the car industry.

Transformational leaders motivate and influence their followers without micromanaging them. These leaders trust that their employees are trained and are competent enough to make the right decisions and complete their tasks effectively (Hamed, 2021). Some leadership characteristics observed by Elon Musk that exhibit transformational leadership in this way include his ability to listen and gain feedback from his team. According to Khan (2021), Elon is always keen to listen to what is articulated by his team for constant improvement. He encourages his team to constantly share their ideas and feedback in order to increase their creativity, and find new solutions to key problems. Furthermore, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal in 2015, Elon described himself as a nano-manager as opposed to a micromanager (Gayathri & Kumari, 2019). He explained that diamonds are made under pressure, thus he pushes his employees to work hard in order to fully attain their potential, as well as exceed their expectations. Unlike micromanagement style, which involves closely observing and controlling employees, Musk’s style involves motivating, encouraging, and challenging his team to achieve goals they did not think were achievable.

Underpinning Theory

Elon Musk has not directly maintained that he uses one specific leadership theory, but his leadership style as described above is participative and supportive, which exhibit the path-goal theory of leadership. According to Amalia, (2020) path-goal theory of leadership is founded on the premise that the behavior of a leader impacts the motivation, behavior, satisfaction, and performance of followers.  Besides, the theory is based on expectancy theory, which asserts that an individual acts in a particular way based on their expectation of a positive outcome. As such, path- goal theory presumes that a leader should complement their followers and make up for their shortcomings (Amalia, 2020). Based on this description, Elon Musk utilizes goal-path theory because he shares his vision with them, sets a clear path for them to follow in order to achieve both personal and organizational goals, he motivates, encourages, and challenges them, and he eliminates any obstacles and pitfalls from their path to ensure they succeed.

Conclusion

Elon Musk utilizes transformational leadership style because he inspires, encourages, and motivates his followers to work together, be innovative, and drive the change needed to shape their future success, and that of the company. His personality, which is characterized by his ability to think big and challenge the status quo, and his ability to listen and gain feedback from his team fortifies this leadership style. This paper has also identified that Musk has not directly maintained that he uses one specific leadership theory, but the path-goal theory best describes his leadership because he impacts the motivation, behavior, satisfaction, and performance of his followers through his actions and behavior.

Get a brand-new guide on essay writing

Everything you need to get A+ this semester!

Get it

By continuing, you agree to the Terms And conditions and Privacy policy

The download will start within seconds. Good luck!

Download