Leadership Styles

Leadership Styles

Leadership style is important factor in the growth of the organization because it affects culture and productivity in the workplace. In most instances, good leaders will align their leadership skills to fit the employee and provide the necessary resources to fulfill the company's set objectives (Northouse, 2019). For instance, interaction with the employees and delegation of work is one of the factors that help boost employee morale. In this, the focus will be on Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla and CEO of SpaceX, who has been a successful leader for decades now. Today, people globally know Elon Musk as a unique individual with outrageous ideas and drive those ideas to make them come true in life. Looking at how Musk has been successful, leadership styles and delegation of duties significantly enhance employee performance and attainment of corporate objectives and goals (Miller, 2022). It is clear that Elon Musk does not follow one leadership style because he believes in personal transformation and hard work. But considering Musk's leadership qualities, it can be concluded that he is a transformational leader. Therefore, this paper aims to discuss the leadership characteristics of Elon Musk by providing background on his traits and behaviors exhibited.

It is fundamental that Elon leads with genius ability, something that has enabled him to detect talent and total commitment. Elon's leadership style was focused on problem-solving and taking responsibility to get the results through people. As one of the influential leaders globally, Elon has embraced different characteristics in his leadership style, such as being charismatic. Charismatic is one of the vital factors in leadership because it can inspire leaders because it makes leaders have specific traits such as dominance and ardent desire to influence others. Being a transformation leader alone has embraced charisma as part of his leadership style to make his employees work effectively to achieve the set goals and objectives. As a transformational leader, Elon ensured that rather than hiring people to complete monotonous tasks, he surrounded himself with people who shared their vision of changing the world. One of the interesting characteristics of Elon's leadership style analysis is that he does not shy away from following unconventional paths and challenging the status quo. It is clear that the leadership style used by Elon Musk is awe-inspiring but can be verge on being borderline toxic. For instance, Steve Jobs, one of the most respected genius in the current world, has successfully run his business to the next level in the current competitive world. But of all these successful leadership characteristics, Elon is still a notoriously difficult CEO to work with. This is because of the factor that he also shows some signs of autocratic and transactional leadership. Although he has some of the mentioned leadership characteristics, Elon is a task-oriented dictator obsessed with delivering excellent results (Says, 2022). What seems to be more important about Elon is that even though he practiced autocratic and transactional leadership at some point, he was right 90 percent most of the time. The three leadership styles Elon used were meant to produce significant results and not make friends. As a competitive leader, he demands excellence because it is what drives transformational.

In addition, Elon Musk portrayed the trait of thinking big in his leadership, which ensured that he thinks big and sets audacious stretch goals that made the team focused on the big picture. As a leader, he ensures that he inspires and motivates his team so that they remain focused on achieving the set goals and objectives of the organization. The ability to inspire others as a leader is a significant that separates successful leaders from others (Miller, 2022). This leadership trait enables Elon to be a more successful leader in the current era. Dolly Singh, the head of HR at SpaceX, showed that Elon Musk's uncanny ability has made people believe in his vision (Says, 2022). Also, the level of passion and enthusiasm for his work has helped him keep the team united around his goals and visions. Elon also clearly focused on solving the world's most significant problems as a transformational leader. His unique way of thinking has contributed to his capability to solve the world problem by Elon Musk. It has been indicated that Elon became a master at problem-solving because he looks at problems from different perspectives than most people do (Miller, 2022). He has determined how to approach issues and create innovative solutions using his problem-solving ability.

In conclusion, the leadership style of Elon Musk, in my view, has been able to make Tesla one of the most innovative companies in the globe because the company has been able to incorporate and come up with new products for the betterment of society. Furthermore, the success of Elon has been contributed by his trait of giving the employees to incorporate new techniques and strategies that increase the organization's value. It is significant that both leadership that included transactional and transformational has contributed to the success of Elon in the world today. Therefore, as evaluated, transactional and transformational executed by Elon had both positive impacts on the performance of employees and the organization. 

References

Northouse, P. G. (2019). Introduction to leadership: Concepts and practice. Sage Publications.

Says:, A. (2022, March 6). Elon Musk leadership style: 13 strategies for excellence. About Leaders. Retrieved May 19, 2022, from https://aboutleaders.com/elon-musk-leadership-style-13-strategies-for-excellence

 Miller, H. L. (2022, May 17). 4 ways to apply Elon Musk's leadership style. Leaders.com. Retrieved May 19, 2022, from https://leaders.com/articles/leadership/elon-musk-leadership-style