Elon Musk's Leadership Style Essay

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Total Length: 1660 words ( 6 double-spaced pages)

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Question 1

Elon Musk is the CEO of Tesla and has been leading the company for the past decade. Musk has been credited with leading Tesla out of the niche electric vehicle (EV) market and into the mainstream global market, with plans to expand in China. Touted as the only wholly-American-made car, Tesla is admired by a great many fans who view the EV as the next revolution in auto engineering. Musk is hailed by admirers as being a visionary (Yauney, 2018) and a charismatic personality who connects with fans and consumers and “gets” what they are thinking and wanting. I have selected Elon Musk because as a leader I admire his ability to capture people’s attention, build a brand, and create enthusiasm for the company. However, I also see several problems with Musk’s leadership style, such as poor impulse control (Wolverton, 2018) and over-promising and under-delivering (DeBord, 2018), and I would like to analyze those more closely to better understand some of these inherent risks.

Question 2

Musk has been described as “(1) a proactive learner, (2) a hard worker, (3) a bold visionary, and (4) an unwavering optimist” (Yauney, 2018). He has been hailed for corporate social responsibility and focus on sustainability to help ensure that future generations can enjoy the planet: “Musk actively works on addressing the heavy toll we have thus far taken on our environment and on finding a solution for our ever-growing human population” (Marques, 2017). Musk is praised for responding to the needs of today’s society by engaging minds with an innovative leadership style, which allows leaders to find creative solutions to problems that have to be addressed (Sen & Eren, 2012). Through value-added innovation, which focuses on adding onto ideas and solutions that already exist (Hong, Hou, Zhu & Marinova, 2018), Elon Musk has been able to provide value-added innovation leadership. His method was to enhance the auto industry by introducing the luxury EV, something that had yet been provided in the market.

As an innovative leader, Musk has helped to create a new market for the EV in the U.S. Before Tesla, the EV market was nothing special, but Musk has helped to make this market the next big thing for auto engineers. One of the big problems that Musk is facing, however, is that the infrastructure for EVs is lacking and the technology is not as efficient as he hoped (DeBord, 2018).

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Musk had promoted Tesla not just for its cars but for the fact that it was going to revolutionize the factory process using state of the art robot technology—and yet after years of failing to meet quotas, Musk finally admitted that he was relying too heavily on machines and not using people enough in the process. This is one example of where Musk failed in leadership because he relied too heavily on innovative theory and did not put enough research into the practical aspects of leading a tech-car firm. Instead of relying too much on technological solutions to create a new working environment, Musk should have been focusing on learning the actual practical steps of how to make a traditional factory and building on these by adding value to them as he did with the luxury EV. Instead, Musk really went overboard with the innovation in factory design and did not comprehend that just because one has new robots does not mean one can build a better car (DeBord, 2018). Thus, Musk has had to build a separate tent factory to help get the production line moving and the tent factory does not resemble a state of the art anything but is rather more primitive than innovative. The reality is, however, that this tent factory was a step in the right direction because for Musk his leadership needed a bit more reality and a little less creativity.

Musk has also excelled as a charismatic leader: his ability to sell an idea and vision to the public—namely, sustainability—by integrating the concept with style, luxury and affordability (the Model 3) has helped his company to become one of the most sought after companies among investors and consumers. Using charm and persuasiveness, Musk has taken Tesla from a $10 stock to a $340 stock, thanks to his deft use of Twitter, other social media, interviews, and his ability to craft a celebrity-like status for himself as a kind of real-life Tony Stark genius billionaire, who wants to save the planet and make a nice car for people at the same time.

The problem with the charismatic concept of leadership is that it depends too much on one person leading and….....

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