Leadership Theories

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

Leadership Theories
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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

Leadership Theories
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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.