Comparative Analysis of Leadership Styles: Jobs vs. Musk

This report provides a comparative analysis of the leadership styles and management practices of two prominent figures in the technology industry: Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. The report begins with an introduction that highlights the importance of leadership and management in achieving business success. The main body of the report delves into a detailed comparison of Jobs' and Musk's leadership practices, including their approaches to innovation, employee empowerment, strategic thinking, and decision-making. The report contrasts Jobs' autocratic style, focus on perfection, and delegation with trust, with Musk's transformational approach, emphasis on learning from failures, and employee involvement. The report also examines the leadership styles adopted by each leader, highlighting Jobs' autocratic style and Musk's transformational approach. The conclusion summarizes the key differences and similarities between the two leaders and their impact on their respective companies. The report is supported by references to books, journals, and online resources, offering a comprehensive overview of the subject matter.

Report

Contents
Contents...........................................................................................................................................2
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................1
Debates about two 2 managers from the technology industry and comparison of their
leadership practices and leadership styles...................................................................................1
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................4

INTRODUCTION
In success of a company, leader shows path to followers while manager coordinate along
with guide people to perform efficiently. Leadership and management are key components of
business as they direct resources to attain goals and enhance efficacy. Present report is prepared
on Steve Jobs and Elon Musk which are successful managers from technology industry. The
report includes debates in form of comparison of role of management and leadership.
MAIN BODY
Debates about two 2 managers from the technology industry and comparison of their leadership
practices and leadership styles
Leadership practices refer to the actions taken by leaders to offer organization and direction
to their subordinate groups. Different leaders adopt different leadership practices to support
management, organization and implementation of day to day business activities. The technology
business leaders utilize various leadership practices for supervising the workforce and ensuing
that innovation and employee empowerment is facilities and reliable results are delivered to
every stakeholder.
Elon Musk is the founder of multinational auto-mobile company Tesla. In addition to this,
Elon Musk is also the founding member of various other successful enterprises such as Space X,
PayPal and X,.com (Khan, 2021). Steve Jobs was the founding member of Apple which is one
the most profitable technology companies.
Elon musk and Steve Jobs are considered ground-breaking and visionary leaders in the
technology industry because they were able to achieve success and ushered new era of growth.
Despite their important role in the field of leadership, Steve Jobs and Elon Musk used opposing
leadership practices to ensure that their vision comes to life. Steve Jobs was a detailed oriented
leader who focused on actively promoting change as part of his leadership practices. Challenging
conventional ideas and processes is a common leadership practice because it helps maintain
continuous growth and driver innovation.
On the other hand, Elon Musk is strategic leaders and takes the mantle of creating
organizational culture where learning is prioritized so that continuous development emerges
from continuous improvement instead of completely focusing on changing and challenging
everything. Developing clear strategies is an advantageous leadership practice because it
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supports the entire organization in achieving goals in a timely manner (Archwell and Mason,
2021).
Inspiring trust in others and creating an environment of trust where the essential business
tasks can be delegated with full trust it subordinates is an effective leadership practice because it
helps create a united team which is accountable for its action. Steve Jobs adopted this practice to
ensure that the skilled employees of Apple are able trust in the innovative and convention
challenging ideas and remain committed to the future vision of the company.
In contrast to Steve Jobs, Elon Musk focuses on achieving vision through consultation and
support from subordinates. Involving employees in decision making is an effective leadership
practices because it improved employee relationship and ensures that their complete commitment
will be directed to the project at hand. In this way Elon Musk is able to unite employees in
achieving organizational vision and increase their participation. This is major difference between
Steve Jobs and Elon Musk’s leadership as Elon Musk is dependent on active participation and
strategic thinking, Steve Jobs is dependent on delegating activities with trust and challenging
current convention.
Steve Jobs focused on the idea of achieving perfection and adopted the leadership practice
of relentless action and efforts to achieve the perfect vision (Nargunde, 2021). Leaders who are
focused on achieving perfection never settle for anything which is less then best which makes
their company distinguished in their industry. On the other hand, Elon Musk used the leadership
practice of learning from failures and looking at failure optimistically to achieve the perfect
vision and accomplish company objectives.
Leadership style could be termed as characteristic behavior of a leader that is adopted at a
time of directing, motivating, guiding along with managing individuals or group of people. In a
company, great leaders have potential to inspire social change and workplace movements. For
example, transformational leadership style adopted by Elon Musk in Tesla emphasized on
innovation along with attaining large scale goals. With this leadership style, Elon achieved
success in providing most innovative products to target customers (Leadership lessons from Elon
Musk, 2022). Whereas, autocratic leadership style opted buy Steve Jobs resulted in driving force
in success of Apple (Steve Jobs’s Revolutionary Leadership Style and What We Can Learn from
It. 2022). Steve had ‘my highways’ approach to leadership with belief for being solely
responsible for decision making along with directions of the team of the company.
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Elon Musk with transformational practices focused more on development of technical skills
of personnel which resulted in better performance of the company and establishment of
competitive environment for competitors. Despite of sitting around as well as philosophizing
about ways to change the globe, Elon with transformational style has outline and implemented
strategy which makes the vision of the leader a reality. In contrary, autocratic leadership style,
Steve performs workings concerned with setting high standards for employees and is popular for
being ruthless at bets. For achieving excel in Apple, Steve is aware that organizational people
required to excel. In this context, Steve wasn’t willing to compromise on own expectations for
success of Apple. With the autocratic style, the leader made its subordinate working for long
hours, scrap creative ideas in response to negative feedback as well as tolerate huge harsh
criticism (Kao, 2018).
Leadership style of Elon helps the leader to believe that there are better ways for performing
all the things and setting insights on improvements that are constant in nature. Big ideas and
desire for uniting the team for outrageous vision and objectives makes Elon Musk a great leader
at international market (Allal-Chérif and Et. Al., 2021). Nonetheless, to achieve success in the
competitive environment, Steve performed managerial functions in order to align working with
natural motivations. Despite of being assertive or having brash attitude and rigid expectations,
Steve was inspiring. The passion of working of the manager is contagious and people that work
beneath the leader often describe Steve as defining moments in careers.
CONCLUSION
From the report, it is concluded that managers of different companies perform differently to
achieve business success. Working with transformational leadership style makes a leader
idealised influencer, intellectual simulator and inspirational motivator. Whereas, a leader with
autocratic style works with ultimate authority as well as power over others.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals:
Allal-Chérif, O. & Et. Al. (2021). Being an ethical leader during the apocalypse: Lessons from
the walking dead to face the COVID-19 crisis. Journal of Business Research, 133. pp.354-364.
Archwell, D. & Mason, J. (2021). EVALUATING CORPORATE LEADERSHIP IN THE
UNITED STATES: A REVIEW OF ELON MUSK LEADERSHIP. African Journal of
Emerging Issues, 3(2). pp.1-10.
Kao, R. (2018). Disruptive leadership: Apple and the technology of caring deeply—Nine keys to
organizational excellence and global impact. Productivity Press.
Khan, M. (2021). A critical analysis of Elon Musk’s leadership in Tesla motors. Journal of
Global Entrepreneurship Research, pp.1-10.
Nargunde, A. S. (2021). STEVE JOBS AND NARENDRA MODI-INTERESTING
SIMILARITIES AND LEADERSHIP LESSONS. International Journal of
Management (IJM), 12(11).
Online:
Leadership lessons from Elon Musk. 2022. [Online]. Available through:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2022/07/27/5-leadership-lessons-from-elon-musk/?
sh=8decde732aa2>
Steve Jobs’s Revolutionary Leadership Style and What We Can Learn From It. 2022. [Online].
Available through: < https://ideadrop.co/customer-success/steve-jobs-leadership-style-
what-we-can-learn/#:~:text='Steve%20Jobs'%20leadership%20style%20was,'&text=His
%20creative%20awareness%2C%20his%20'meticulous,driving%20force%20in
%20Apple's%20success.>
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