Leadership Theories

This report explores leadership theories and focuses on the leadership style of Elon Musk, including his transformational leadership style and key traits. It also discusses his leadership qualities, such as leading by example, setting high standards, and promoting teamwork. Additionally, the report delves into the concept of ethical leadership, highlighting its advantages and disadvantages. Overall, it provides insights into the importance of leadership in organizations and the impact of ethical leadership.

RUNNING HEAD: LEADERSHIP THEORIES
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Leadership Theories
Report
Student Name
4/1/2019

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Table of Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................2
Task 1: Leadership Style of Elon Musk.........................................................................................................2
Task 2: Leadership Qualities........................................................................................................................4
Task 3: Ethical Leadership............................................................................................................................6
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................................8
References...................................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction
A leader is an individual who encourages his supporters or followers to achieve the objective on
time for mutual benefits. Leader is a person with a vision and initiates his followers so that it
turns into their vision as being the common goals for both. A leader executes some of the
imperative tasks as an organizational representative; thus, the fact is tacit that a leader is
necessitated at each and every aspect of the organization (Mabey & Knights, 2018). The purpose
of this report is to comprehend the leadership style of the Elon Musk in respect of leadership
theories. Elon Musk is founder of SpaceX, Tesla and Neuralink and ranked 21st in The World’s
Most Powerful People by Forbes. Tesla holds an upright management and leadership style under
the Elon Musk it is one of the prime factors contributing to the company’s success. The case
study analysed about several theories that are related to the leadership skills of Elon Musk.
Lastly, the report will highlight all the behavioural and characteristic of a great leader and the
ethical leadership and its advantage and disadvantage in present scenario. A leader has skills to
elevate the organizational performance and to uphold the vision & mission of the organization.
Task 1: Leadership Style of Elon Musk
Elon Musk founder of Tesla has transformational leadership style. The Musk always focus on
taking the risk and be courageous and pushes their employees towards excellence and hard work
(Blazek, 2018). As a transformational leader, Elon Musk leads the Tesla with extraordinary
vision, big dreams, dedication and courageous decisions. The leadership style can be understood
with kink to trait theory by knowing the traits of Elon Musk as a transformational leader.
The transformation leader inspires the employees to implement change and to be creative in
order to be successful for the longer span of time. Elon Musk creates an example in front of
employees by leading the Tesla towards success and profitable company with his strong vision
and dedication.
Some of the key traits of Transformational leader are:
 Influence and motivate others to take risk and adapt the change quickly.
 Encourage an ethical work environment with clear values, priorities and standards.

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 Leader builds relation with employees in order to encourage them to move towards
common goal.
 Set higher and exceptional target for the employees for improving and developing their
skills.
 Ensure authenticity, cooperation and open communication amongst all level for
promoting innovation and creativeness
 The main trait is to take change decisions or transformational changes that make an
organization stay ahead in this competitive environment or scenario.
Leadership theories helps in understanding the characteristics of a leader and the way and
behavior that people can adopt to improve their own leadership abilities in the different
circumstances. Each individual has their own personality traits that make them a good or
successful leader or a bad leader (Northouse, 2015). Elon Musk possesses certain quality traits
that make him a successful leader in the industry. The trait of individual can be understood
through trait theory and the leadership style that a leader used is defined using contingency
theory and relationship theory. Relationship theory also called transformational theory that
define the leaders as a person who motivate, guide and influence people to improve and develop
their skills to deliver best to its ability in the organization (Ghasabeh, et al., 2015). Elon musk
follows transformational style and believes in setting of high ethical and moral standard.
Elon Musk is a transformational leader who always believes in setting up big vision and putting
more efforts to achieve them. He is not afraid of failures and that make him successful as a
businessman. Musk is viewed as one of the innovatory and visionary entrepreneurs of his
generation.

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Task 2: Leadership Qualities
Elon musk believes that “If an individual founded a company they have to do all kinds of tasks
they might not want to do, and if they don’t do their chores, the company won’t succeed, no task
is too menial”. Leaders have some qualities that make them different and that qualities inspire
others to do their work effectively and efficiently (Yauney, 2018).
Leadership Qualities of Elon Musk are:
1. Lead by Example: Hard work and dedication of the person is necessary to achieve the
target and it is same with Elon Musk, he work higher than normal by putting in 100 hour
work weeks. He believes that one thing that a person can control is its efforts and all this
efforts bring the result so he set an example to motivate others.
2. Lead with purpose: He is determined and dedicated towards achieving the higher
standard and goals and to be the leading player in the industry. He done innovation such
as Space X for making his mark on the world, Leaders should have ability to set higher
goals and work until they attained it or reach the destination (French, 2017).
3. Creativity and Innovation: He motivates employees to be creative and don’t bind them in
any stringent process or structure to follow. Elon Musk believes that a systematic process
or rules bind the employees to be in the line which never encourages innovation to take
place and also believes that failure is an opportunity to learn and implement successful
innovation. In many situations, formal structure proves to be a barrier because it denies
creativity.
4. Work in Teams: Elon Musk promotes teamwork in the company and experienced that
teamwork is a necessity for any company to succeed. He leads by doing more than telling
and always set an example to their team members.
5. Decisive: A leader has to take decision quickly and logically for better and steady results.
Elon Musk said “Unless a person commit to act in the present, the change they look for
will never happen in future”. He focuses on what he wants and then takes action on his
ideas. Decisive leaders have courage to take risk and to implement their decision for
better outcome and performance of the business.

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6. Comfortable with Change: Successful leaders have ability to accept the change and never
resist it. Elon Musk always promotes change implementation in teams and in employee
behavior and pushes them towards achieving their team goals that leads to teams to
leverage their strengths to find solutions and innovate.
7. Right People in the Right Role: Leader should have skills to better understand the
strengths of their team members and then assign them their roles accordingly. Elon Musk
has quality to put their team members in best fit role to get the most out of the team and
make their employees happy and energetic that is the key to company to succeed.
8. Setting High Standard: The main quality of Elon Musk is Big vision, Big results. He set
the standard for the organization exceptionally higher and then work to attain them. he is
an example of the power of big vision in success of the company to make revolutionary
changes. That is the trait that brings innovation and set Tesla apart from its competitors in
the market.
All this traits or qualities of Elon Musk are the reason behind the success of Tesla and SpaceX.
Leader has potential to drive the organization in right direction with long term vision that was
done by Musk as he converted his vision or goals in realistic manner and its outcome is Tesla
Motors and SpaceX (Dobbs, 2016).

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Task 3: Ethical Leadership
Elon Musk personality reflects the traits of ethical leader that also contributed in the success of
business. Ethics are the values or morals that an individual has that leads to success and harmony
in the organization. The ethical behavior of Elon Musk is best understood with the examples on
how he looks after his teams and employees (McManus, 2018).
Elon Musk sent an e-mail to his employee in which he had wrote “No words can express how
much I care about your safety and wellbeing. It breaks my heart when someone injured building
cars and trying their best to make Tesla successful” (Mejia, 2017). His words showed the
gratitude and respect towards the employees. He ensures the safety and security measures in the
company or premises on their own and care for their workers safety to the greater extent. He said
that in Tesla the managers lead from front line not from their comfort zone. Mangers all the time
focus on their team safety more than their own at Tesla. This mail showed that Musk was
efficient, organized, reliable, ethical and conscientious person.
Some people are born as leaders and some are to take ethical decisions. Elon Musk is one of
them who has good leadership qualities and at the same time follow ethical decisions. Successful
ethical leadership takes place with time, persistence and by respecting the values and work of
each employee.
Advantage of Ethical Leadership
 Ethical leadership ensures the implementation of laws in an organization for the safest
possible work environment.
 It gives the positivity amongst the employees and creates a healthier environment for
teams and employees. The implementation of ethical leadership helps in nurturing,
influencing, and building relationships between the workers and executives.
 Ethical leaders are conscientious and take decisions carefully with keeping in mind the
goals and objectives that benefit the whole organization.
 The ethical leadership style is broader in term and includes encouraging opinion of
others, accepting the diverse workforce and making stronger team by respecting the
different cultures and identities (Neider & Schriesheim , 2014).

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 Ethical leadership brings the issues of ethics in front of top management and helps in
solving it quickly to maintain harmony in the organization.
 Leaders who follow ethical leadership style take the responsibility and their duties in
serious manner. This leadership style implies higher standard and more outcomes.
Disadvantage of Ethical Leadership
 To be ethical require greater efforts by the executive team and if any unethical things
happened it might be difficult to stop and it resultant in unethical outcomes.
 Ethical leadership seems as a costly style to implement in organization as more ethics and
rules are recognized consistently according to the mission and vision of the organization.
 Ethics for each leader or individual may be differ it become difficult to implement all
ethical polices in an organization with diverse workforce because a thing that I ethical for
some people may be unethical for others due to their belief or faith.
 In this style, leaders have to be influential in order to motivate others because
implementation of ethics or values is not an easy task that would be followed by all the
employees so it is dependent on the leaders how they influence their team to be ethical.
 Ethical leadership always demands clarity of action, more people more misconceptions.
Communication is the key for ethical leaders to make other believes on their action and
decisions (Bachmann, 2017).

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Conclusion
Leaders are the person who have ability to motivate and influence others in light of this
statement it is concluded that Elon Musk follows transformational leadership style and each
individual possess some traits that identifies a leader according to the leadership theories. Trait
theory states the trait of a leader and all this traits are seen in Elon Musk leadership style. There
are many qualities that differentiate a leader from others that are big vision, creativeness,
decisiveness, influencing ability and encouraging others that are the characteristics of a leader
and also shown in Elon Musk who is an inventor, engineer and founder of Tesla and SpaceX.
Ethical leadership is defined as following of rules and ethics by respecting each individual
opinion by the leader in order to lead an organization. Under the Elon Musk leadership the
employees feel respected and cared. There are various advantages of ethical leadership which
includes implementation of ethics or code of conduct in proper manner, stronger relationship
amongst employees and executives. This style also has some disadvantage that includes
dependence on leader, costly implementation, inconsistency in acceptance of ethics and may
harm the organization. From the above analysis it can be concluded that leadership theories and
styles are followed by individual differ according to their characteristics and it was best
understood with leadership of Elon Musk.

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References
Bachmann, B., 2017. Ethical Leadership in Organizations: Concepts and Implementation. Switzerland:
Springer International Publishing .
Bertocci, D. I., 2009. Leadership in Organizations: There is a Difference Between Leaders and Managers.
US: University Press of America.
Blazek, K., 2018. The tranformational leadership style of Elon Musk. [Online]
Available at: https://www.truscore.com/360-feedback-resources/leadership-style-of-elon-musk/
[Accessed 5 April 2019].
Dobbs, M. E., 2016. Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future. Journal of Applied Management
and Entrepreneurship, 21(1), pp. 83-85.
French, S., 2017. The many failures of Elon Musk, captured in one giant infographic. [Online]
Available at: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-many-failures-of-elon-musk-captured-in-one-
giant-infographic-2017-05-24
[Accessed 6 April 2019].
Ghasabeh, M. S., Soosay, C. & Reaiche, C., 2015. The emerging role of transformational leadership. The
Journal of Developing Areas, 49(6), pp. 459-467.
Mabey, C. & Knights, D., 2018. Leadership Matters: Finding Voice, Connection and Meaning in the 21st
Century. New York: Routledge.
McManus, R. M., 2018. Ethical Leadership. UK: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited.
Mejia, Z., 2017. This email by Elon Musk highlights one of the most important traits for a CEO. [Online]
Available at: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/20/this-email-by-elon-musk-highlights-one-of-the-most-
important-traits-for-a-ceo.html
[Accessed 6 April 2019].
Neider, L. L. & Schriesheim , C. A., 2014. Advances in Authentic and Ethical Leadership. US: Information
Age Publishing.
Northouse, P. G., 2015. Leadership: Theory and Practice. UK: Sage Publications.
Yauney, R. H., 2018. Leadership Development: A Study of Elon Musk. Marriott Student Review, 2(2), p. 4.

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