Leadership Style of Elon Musk

Running head: LEADERSHIP
Leadership Style of Elon Musk
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Table of Contents
Introduction:....................................................................................................................................2
Evaluation of leadership characteristics, skills and knowledge of Musk:.......................................2
Adherence to the mission and vision of the company:................................................................2
Goal oriented:..............................................................................................................................3
Standard setter:............................................................................................................................3
Stakeholders’ benefit:..................................................................................................................4
Influence of past failures on leadership style of Musk:...................................................................5
Time and method of Musk developing his skills and characteristics:.............................................5
Leadership methods, approaches or concepts employed by Musk:.................................................6
Conclusion:......................................................................................................................................7
References:......................................................................................................................................8

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Introduction:
Business leaders play the significant role making decisions while leading business
organisations they command. The appropriate decisions which business leaders take play
significant roles in attributing the organisations with high market positions. Certain attributes,
skills and knowledge which the leaders possess enable them to take decisions and lead
organisations under their command especially during challenging or risky market conditions. The
leaders often experience challenges which have great influence on their leadership styles. These
leaders follow certain approaches or models which enable them to lead their subordinates
efficiently (DuBrin, 2016). The aim of the report would be exploring the aspects of leadership of
a chosen business leader namely, Elon Reeve Musk, the co-founder, product architect and the
chief executive officer at Tesla Inc which an American automotive and energy marketing
company.
Evaluation of leadership characteristics, skills and knowledge of Musk:
An evaluation of the leadership characteristics, skills and knowledge of Elon Reeve Musk
would reveal the following facts:
Adherence to the mission and vision of the company:
Musk emphasises on the fact that the business leaders should align their respective
leadership styles with the missions and visions of the companies concerned. Musk encourages
his subordinates to follow the organisational mission and vision while carrying out their
operations. Musk in fact encourages his subordinates to follow their own missions during the
course of their respective professional career (Swisher, 2018). This is evident from the fact that
Musk after holding leadership positions in Zip2 and Paypal, went on to pursue his vision of

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launching space related project, SpaceX. It was a project which aimed to transfer a greenhouse to
the Mars on experimental basis. It can be pointed out that Musk perceived that intercontinental
ballistic missiles could transfer the greenhouse to the Martian surface and visited Russia in
order to obtain the same. However, he did not receive sufficient respect and returned
unsuccessful. Musk visited Russia for the second time but was unable to acquire a rocket since it
was very expensive. These two failures which Musk experienced in obtaining missiles motivated
him to launch a company called SpacX which could manufacture affordable rockets. Thus, it is
clear from the analysis that adhering to visions is one of the most driving features of leadership
style of Musk (Schoemaker, Heaton & Teece, 2018).
Goal oriented:
One of the most notable leadership aspects and skills which Mars exhibits throughout his
career as a business leader is his goal oriented nature. Musk is a goal oriented leader, an attribute
which enables him to take tough decisions when he faces challenges. This characteristic of Musk
was revealed when he was removed by the shareholders of Paypal from the position of the CEO.
The reason of his eviction was that he wanted to convert the operating system of PayPal to the
global leader Microsoft which the shareholders dissented. eBay acquired PayPal in 2002 and
Musk received an amount of $ 165 million. Musk purchased the online financial service
providing platform domain X.com from PayPal. An analysis of this decision of Musk shows that
he is a goal oriented leader. This is reflected from the fact that he wanted to convert the operating
system of PayPal into Microsoft’s OS in to ensure smoother operations. He accepted to resign
from the post of the CEO but adhered to his goal of bringing about technological advancement of
PayPal and ultimately purchased the financial platform of PayPal namely, domain X.com (Bower
& Paine, 2017).