Elon Musk’s Leadership Style
Elon Musk’s Leadership Style Free Essay
Elon Musk is considered one of the most influential leaders in the contemporary world. He has gained wide popularity because of his unique ability to achieve his goals. Elon Musk is a young and prosperous leader who has his leadership style. His methods are applied by young businessmen who are eager to have a prosperous future. Consequently, Elon’s leadership style requires deep analysis, and it is important to examine it in every aspect.
One of the most important issues to cover is the orientation of Elon Musk’s style. He is a task-oriented leader. The only issue that he counts is the result. Elon Musk tries to complete a task without paying attention to the process of doing it. Moreover, he even does not concentrate on people who work on a particular object. Elon Musk is a person who never pays attention to others. He has a goal and achieves it. Elon Musk is quite a determined person. He will find any way to solve the problem even when there is none. That is why Elon Musk is the right person to follow if one wants to become a successful leader. However, he did not have such determination and success when he was a child. His childhood was full of mishaps and obstacles. Furthermore, Elon Musk was always bullied at school (Robinson, 2014). Once he was even seriously injured. Nevertheless, he managed to overcome severe childhood and become one of the most successful leaders in the world.
Elon Musk’s determination was a key tool to both accomplishments and failures. A bright example may be his companies PayPal, SpaceX, and Tesla Motors (Saptu Ray Follow, 2015). Today, these businesses are booming, but there were some periods when they were at the end of the collapse. A bright example may be Tesla Motor. For more than a decade it remained unprofitable and only incurred losses. However, Elon Musk was sure that it was only for some time. The belief in his forces is a leading supportive tool in this leader’s life. He always believes that his projects are successful. That is why Elon Musk’s leadership style is task-oriented, and he is prosperous because of this approach.
Another important issue of the analysis is the cooperation between leaders and followers. Elon Musk has an inner ability to persuade people. He makes them believe in his projects, and they do so. The key aspect of Elon Musk’s success is the fact that he is obsessed with what he does. Work is indeed like air for him. Moreover, he is a fussy worker. Elon Musk is obsessed with the smallest part of his job. Everything should be ideal and perfect for him. He is one of those leaders who seem quite unreasonable as well as not easy to be understood. It means that Elon Musk has great ideas, and he tries to accomplish them. He may tear things apart and start over again, but he never stops. Consequently, such a hectic pace of life does not always appeal to other people. Some workers cannot but find common ground with Elon Musk. The problem is that he has a flexible mood. He may ask the worker to do one thing all the week, and in the end, he may conclude that there is no reason for doing it. That is why Elon Musk searches for people who are as flexible as he is. He cooperates with individuals who have the same passion to work. Everything depends on leadership behavior. Elon Musk follows achievement-oriented leadership. The basic target is a result. That is why he pays more attention to the outcome rather than to the process of getting it. Consequently, he always finds time to motivate workers to encourage them to achieve the set goal. The biggest incentive is that Elon Musk works as well as all his personnel. By working together with employees, he shows respect, and it influences the workers. Nevertheless, taking into consideration the mentioned information, Elon Musk’s leadership can be treated as transformational. This leader is a person to follow. He is a bright example of a successful businessman. That is why he is a stimulus for workers.
One should also mention a leader’s power. Elon Musk is an influential person. He may persuade anyone easily and effectively. There are many reasons for this kind of influence. The first one is money. On the one hand, Elon Musk has personal wealth, and he does not waste his money but invests it into the development of the business as well as into individuals. He hires talented and creative workers who may bring prosperity to his company and helps them to develop. On the other hand, he has engaged many investors including NASA, who support his business as well. The second reason is connections. Due to his influential power, Elon Musk can persuade governments. A bright example is a fact that he convinced the US government to change the perception of space travel (Robinson, 2014).
Elon Musk uses their method that helps to persuade people. It is called “expert power” (Bonnell, 2016). He has knowledge in engineering, business, and social intersection which greatly helps him. Apart from that Elon Musk uses inspiration appeals. It is a kind of tactic applied to motivate engineers and investors. Moreover, this leader has balanced his personalized and socialized power, because he is working to improve mankind. Nevertheless, Elon Musk’s leadership style is far from the ideal one. He cannot relinquish control over the worker, so he was compared to Steve Jobs who had the same problem. Nevertheless, Elon Musk tries to find solutions to the problem. He encourages workers, provides comfortable working conditions, and motivates them as well. That is why one may admit that this leader follows rules of legitimate power (Thought Wire, 2015). He spreads the influence through demands and requests emphasizing the importance of his position. Nevertheless, Elon Musk also tries to motivate workers by his example. It helps to evoke encouragement and desire among the employees to work harder.
The last but not the least issue is Elon Musk’s influence tactics. Analyzing his cooperation with workers, one may state that he uses soft tactics. The only fact that he usually rolls his sleeves and works with other employees says for itself. Elon Musk is never afraid to have dirty hands and spend hours working at the factory. It makes the workers more confident, because they may communicate with him. They do not feel the difference between them. Nevertheless, when Elon Musk does not see someone’s passion to work, he will not cooperate with that person anymore. However, he is quite a supportive leader. On the one hand, he easily finds useful as well as motivating words to encourage his workers. Nevertheless, on the other hand, he uses pressure to make people work. Dolly Singh, former head of talent acquisition for SpaceX, said that Elon Musk made them work hard. He asked employees to do their best and worked with them respectively (Saptu Ray Follow, 2015). This leader usually says that he will never give up, and it is his main slogan in life.
Elon Musk is profound in this work. He knows everything even in detail. This creates a certain level of respect among employees. They realize that their leader is not only a boss but also a skillful worker, so such an attitude towards the former brings its result. All the employees try to complete their work properly and correctly. Elon Musk wants to control everything but does not always manage to d it. He may control the working process but he never pays attention to the working atmosphere. The reason is that his leadership style is oriented toward a task, not a process.
In conclusion, Elon Musk is considered one of the most popular and respectful leaders today. He is a talented, creative, and hard-working person. Their difficult childhood made an enormous impact on his success. He became more stress-resistant and he easily overcomes any obstacles. That is why Elon Musk has received enormous results. His leadership style is oriented toward completing the tasks. He works to achieve the goal no matter the method. The only thing that is counted is the result. Elon Musk is obsessed with his work, and it is the root of his success. The ability to be profound in his work is his key to prosperity.