What Makes a Great Leader? (Elon Musk)

Makes a Great Leader? (ELON
MUSK)

INTRODUCTION
Great leaders possess a clear vision, courageous and have honesty, humility, integrity and clear
concentration. Moreover, the great leaders assist individuals in reaching its objectives and are not
afraid to recruit persons which could be better than them as well as undertakes pride into
attainment of those they assist along the way (Kolenda, 2021). Leadership is a concept of
stimulating and motivating the individuals to strive harder for the acquisition and
accomplishment of the goals as well as objectives in a timely and proficient manner. The value
and necessity of leadership theories can be derived from the potential idea that it assists in
inspiring and assisting individuals for the achievement of a specific desired outcome (Northouse,
2021). For completion of this report, Elon Musk is chosen which is known to be a great business
leader as well as who is founder and CEO of SpaceX and early investor and CEO of Tesla. He
was born in year 1971. He had a rough childhood wherein he was bullied by his classmates. He
was even beaten up by his class fellows on a regular basis. Although, his school life was very
traumatizing but his passion for technology and books kept him going through the same. Elon’s
first start up named Zip2 was a successful venture which was in partnership with his brother.
Post that, he worked upon several concepts and ventures and then acquired phenomenal and
ground shattering success through his two of the most successful business units i.e. SpaceX and
Tesla Motors. Despite his controversial statements and the media image in the public, he still
continues one of the most influential leader worldwide (Who is Elon Musk, and what made him
big?2020). The topics which are going to be covered in this report are reason behind selection of
great leader according to their achievements. The leadership theories and models such as trait
theory, transformational theory, situational theory, and great man theory are applied to the
chosen leader in order to analyse the leadership quality and competencies of the same. Critical
evaluation of leadership traits and styles along with its positive and negative points. Moreover,
the analyses and critical assessment about the strategies of leadership with appropriate examples
of how the leader has led the change in business performance or lives of the people are also
explained. Apart from this, plan for the leadership of change of an appropriate level of
complexity is also developed in this report.
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MAIN BODY
An effective leader is the one who is responsible to maintain their each and every activity in an
appropriate manner and also pay more attention on their team members so that leader can
improve the performance of their staff members. There are various global leaders are present
who are performing their business activities in an effective way and Elon Musk from one of them
who is performing a prominent role in order to improve the effectiveness of their employees.
Elon Musk is considered as the famous entrepreneur, businessman and a great leader who is
founder of SpaceX and CEO of Tesla. The main motive to consider this leader is their specific
qualities like work ethic, risk taker, problem solver, ambitious, obsessive. There are various kind
of achievements of Elon Musk are given which can provide the appropriate impact on their
leadership. There are various factors are identified which are demonstrating the effectiveness of
this global leader such as it is identified that Elon Musk has been transforming the IT industry,
Musk took appropriate steps in order to save the environment, Elon Musk had the option to
pursue a successful career in video game production after graduating from university. Elon musk
is a global leader and Musk is mainly famous for their innovativeness and ambition.
Elon Musk is a famous and global leader who are mainly popular for their work ethic and their
innovativeness. Elon musk is the founder of the Tesla and it is considered as his great
achievement. Elon Musk supervises various activities like industrial design, development and
also global manufacturing for the Tesla's electric automobiles, collection of cells & solar energy
products as a co-founder and CEO. As a CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk mainly focused about their
business activities and pay more attention on the expansion of the renewable energy and other
activities since Tesla foundation in the year 2003. There are various activities are performed by
the Elon Musk in order to maintain Tesla performance.
It is analyzed that Elon Musk has been vocal about his specific opposition to fossil energy &
there is no surprise that Elon Musk founded established his own vehicle electric production plan
in the year 2003. Elon Musk has long aspired to transform the way the world thinks about energy
and prepare electric automobiles affordable for average person (Alonso‐Almeida and et.
al.,2017). It is identified that initially his automobiles were only attainable to elite class, with
lowest pricing starting at $80,000. This is also a great achievement for the Elon Musk because he
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combined greenhouse gas savings of 90,000 Tesla cars sold US is around the 33 million pounds.
It is generalized that each Tesla car saves around 650 pounds of greenhouse gas for all those who
drive them in the United States.
Giga factories are also considered as the big achievement for the Elon Musk. His gig factories
are another endeavour that can helpful to push the international firm to go for the direction of the
sustainability energy (Kelly and MacDonald, 2019). It can be determined through the same that
Elon Musk tend to follows situational leadership theory wherein he changes the approach of
leading and managing the work as per a concerned specific situation or consideration. His
leadership style alters on the basis of his operations within a given venture. In order to lead a
venture which is mainly focused upon the elevation and enhancement of the sustainability, it is
necessary for the leader to combat and respond to numerous unexpected and abrupt obstacles in a
potential manner. Therefore, Elon Musk opts of situation leadership in order to overcome the
unpredictable complexities proficiently and productively (4 things Elon Musk can teach us about
effective leadership, 2019). It is analyzed that, these factories are planned to be completely self-
sufficient, using wind and also solar to power them. The goal of these factories is to mass-
produce lithium ion batteries for Tesla's similarly energy-efficient automobiles (Koo and Park,
2018). While the first giga factory was built in Nevada, there is already another in operations in
New York, with ambitions to build more around the globe. The design of these plants resulted in
a 30 percent reduction in the cost of assembly for Tesla batteries. The advantage of mass-
producing these battery packs is that it aids in the mass-production of Tesla vehicles (Lonati,
2020). This lowers the costs & makes them more accessible to a wider range of individuals,
which benefits the environment.
In 2002, Elon Musk founded SpaceX which is famous, an aerospace manufacturer and also space
transport services organisation. This is also containing as his main achievement. There are few
things are involved regarding this achievement which are as follows - It is determined that, the
prospect of the global warming looming, Musk set out specific designs as a backup plan in case
to approach a point of major disaster. SpaceX was founded in 2002 with the specific objective of
assisting mankind in their quest to become a multi-planet civilization (Mwesigwa, Tusiime and
Ssekiziyivu, 2020). One of Musk's greatest ambitions has always been to be able to send humans
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