Elon Musk’s Leadership Traits

Elon Musk is passionate about his works, his obsession is his projects and his works. Elon Musk is spending too much time to his works, such as working day and night for long period, he is obsessive even about the insignificant details. Also, he sets the highest goals for himself, his team and his companies. Musk’s visionary and ambitious personality pushed him to do the impossible starts, Elon Musk’s ambitious personality helped him to complete toughest tasks, hardest projects and made him an innovator.

Elon Musk has spent his entire life to prove people wrong, He built a team that believes in his mission, vision and support his every move. Musk was not collapsed by the people against him, despite the constant attempts of his competitors, he continued and continues to fight for his beliefs and projects. Elon Musk’s transparency and funny personality are making his teams one step ahead of his competitors. These are the reasons for what exactly makes him a role model leader. Transparency Leaders who are persistent about what they did and what they said can win the trust of their employees and investors. Elon Musk is a honest person/executive, the world we live has a great lack of honesty.

There are many CEOs, looking like a CEO, they are trying to how theirselves honest for PR campaigns to make people to believe their words and actions, but it is not a true leader should be like. Elon Musk has been unreserved and frank about Tesla since the company established, Musk was unafraid to speak about his thoughts. For instance; Elon Musk said that (2018), we have no interest in satisfying the desires of daily stockbrokers as a company, 'Please sell our stock and don't buy it' and he worked for all nights at Tesla's factory to monitor Model 3 production, he said that it was not easy. He expressed that (2018), he felt stressed and slept on the factory floor to track & monitor Tesla’s car productions at the beginning.

Musk is not only talking about success, money and reputation, as a leader and a CEO. He also expressed his hard times by giving examples about Tesla’s beginnings to express to people, what challenges CEOs are struggling with. Being honest about problems & expressing them to the public and attempts to solve is a great and powerful thing that CEOs/Leaders should do. Humour (His Social and Funny Personality) Using humour is the best way to communicate with employees, investors and followers. For instance; Elon Musk made an April Fool's Day joke about Tesla's financial results, he tweeted that, 'Despite the high efforts to increase the company’s financial results, we are sad to report that Tesla will bankrupt.

The effectiveness of humour can aid leaders to see where they made a mistake, it is a great tool in leadership. Leadership is about establishing an organization that can learn from the market dynamism and past experiences, also humour is one of the most important tools for learning. He takes a hands-on approach  Elon Musk is eliminating any type of hierarchy or separation between him and his employees with eager to work on front lines, this action has a connection with his personality and leadership style. It shows that he is also an employee from the base (production department), Musk teaching his managers that to take an action like this by role modelling them. In once, Musk said that (2018), he put himself the front of the production line to solve problems personally if he can do, “I move myself to wherever the biggest problem has appeared, I believe that one should lead from the front lines”, Musk said. Also, Elon Musk responds to service issue related questions and criticisms from his own social media accounts and the thing that made Elon Musk a successful leader is, his ability to make people believe in his vision.

Musk's Weakness

• not to establish a Strong Organizational Structure.  A former executive of Google and Apple, Kim Scott claims that (2018), Elon Musk is facing an issue that many tech companies faced before;
• lack of strong upper management, he must start to think about who reports to whom and hiring & promoting actions in the company.

Musk is a kind of leader that working with any kind of employee and department, with no matter what the workers rank is, but he must create a structure and hierarchy to observe his employees (including his managers) and productivity of his companies.

References

1. Zameena Mejia (2018), Ex-Google exec: 3 traits that make Elon Musk an exceptional leader — and one major flaw. Article Retrieved From https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/03/ex-google-exec-kim-scott-top-leadership-traits-of-tesla-ceo-elon-musk.html
2. Sunny Bonnell (2016), Every Entrepreneur Can Learn From These 5 Leadership Traits of Elon Musk Article Retrieved From https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/279971

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