Elon Musk Leadership Analysis

This paper will discuss the leadership style of Elon Musk, and make an assessment of the pros and cons of this leadership style.
Introduction
The leader that I will analyze is Elon Musk, who runs a number of different companies. Musk makes an interesting case study for leadership principles in part because of the number of different companies he is trying to lead a the same time, but also because his companies are aiming to be innovation leaders, have tight frameworks for a large amount of work, and generally are subject to Musk’s hard-driving style. Yet, he must maintain the ability for his managers and his investors to buy into his vision, or his companies (most of which aren’t profitable) will have difficulty obtaining the financing that they need.
Foundations of Individual and Group Behavior
This chapter lays the foundation for understanding behavior. Most of leadership is about motivation, and taking charge over group behavior, the components of attitudes, personality types and emotional intelligence. Musk actually strikes as the type of leader who has relatively low emotional intelligence. His reputation is someone who thinks that everybody will work as hard as he does on his projects, which is not all that reasonable since most people don’t have the upside that comes with ownership. Tesla, for example, appears to have fairly high rate of turnover at the high levels – even some of the senior people don’t have the same buy-in that Musk has, which creates significant challenges for the company to grow.
One has to think that juggling several different companies also provides too much for Musk to learn about his employees. He is passionate about his own ideas – probably an INTJ – but that can create problems if he never works with people long enough to get to know their personalities. Or worse, just simply does not care, despite the known fact that different types of people are motivated in different ways. A low level of emotional intelligence does not make one a bad leader inherently, but it definitely does not help. The value of Musk’s ideas seems to be where a lot of his leadership power come from, and without those ideas he might be challenged to extract the same high level of motivation from people that he demands.
Another element of Musk’s leadership style is his orientation towards ethical leadership; Musk is often cited among the ethical leaders of the early 21st century (Marques, 2017). In this, he presents himself as a leader for more than just his companies – someone with a vision of the future that he feels everybody should buy into. One example would be making Tesla technology open source, out of a belief that this technology was important for the world (Muhlberg, 2014). This vision has a different ethical framework than the norm – emphasis on renewable energy and caution against artificial intelligence. He seeks to set the ethical framework for his companies (Paterson, Luthans & Milosevic, 2014), and often does so by taking strong positions on different issues – one almost has to buy into the total package in order to work for his companies.
Work Teams
There are several work teams at Musk’s company. The products are fairly complex, and that requires teams to work closely together. For the most part, these teams are structured as cross-functional problem solving teams. There is always a problem – an objective – something that must be solved, and quickly. But usually for the technical work that Musk’s companies do there are different engineers and other personnel involved. As such, the use of these types of teams is common. Musk will typically set the team objective himself, and then from there the team will assemble and begin to tackle the problem. There are situations where Musk himself take leadership of a team, which is the case now at the Tesla factory to try to solve some of the challenges with respect to ramping up production to meet demand. That hands-on approach leads to a different sort of team dynamic.
His companies are entrepreneurial, and there are specific types of teams that are common in the entrepreneurial context. Musk generally uses the cross-functional team. They may not have that much self-direction, though these do generally have the autonomy to solve problems. When one juxtaposes this against the traits of high performance work teams, it would be expected that Musk’s companies often have high-performance teams. They definitely have some of the elements, such as a clear goal and unified commitment. In most cases, there is also trust, good leadership at different levels, and enough support to succeed. So most of the elements for a high-performing team are in place.
Motivating and Rewarding Employees
This can be tricky for entrepreneurs. Motivation typically requires buying into the vision, but there are instances in Musk’s companies where that buy-in falls by the wayside because lower-level needs are not met. This chapter talks about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, but in some cases people have left Tesla in particular citing overwork. That means that even though that person might have bought into the vision (they probably did) they are not meeting their more basic needs for mental and physical well-being. Musk definitely can be hands on with respect to generating motivation, but at the same time relies heavily on people buying into his vision, or focused on the high lev and unique that they are doing to achieve that vision. As is often the case with entrepreneurs,
As such, Musk’s companies rely heavily on intrinsic motivation. In situations where there are case crunches the company might ask employees to work longer, for substandard pay. Ultimately, that relies entirely on the intrinsic motivation relation to the project. Without that, there would be a lot less reason to overcome some of those challenges. What would be interesting is to think about expectancy theory. There is this expectation that the companies will be successful, and to that end there do need to be little victories along the way. If working at a company is nothing but ceaseless challenge, that creates an issue with respect to motivation – workers expect that they are working towards something great, not a company that will struggle all of the time, putting their hard work in vain.

Leadership and Trust
Leadership comes in many different styles. The chapter on leadership outlines a number of them. Musk appears to have charismatic leadership. He has a lot of vision, but he also has the charisma to get people to buy into these visions. Further, he is able to make things happen, sometimes by sheer force of his charisma. People trust in his vision, and they trust that he will get things done. Another element here is governance. An analysis of Tesla’s governance structures shows that they have evolved over time to meet the needs of the shareholders and the markets – a constant evolution that demonstrates trust to all stakeholders, but also is indicative of an organization built to have self-reflection (Larcker & Tayan, 2011).
Communication
All the vision in the world does not matter much if someone lacks communication skills. These go beyond the charisma needed to get initial buy-in on something, and focus on details and execution. Communication is being able to convey an idea so that the recipient of that idea understands it as you do – that is effective communication. So for a good leader, there is a need not to just communicate a concept but the motivation behind it as well.
To that extent, Musk does appear to be a good communicator. He has an honesty and authenticity that helps him to get his points across, despite a likely paucity of emotional intelligence but in that respect he seems likeable, if hard-driving. He communications effectively to the external world, and if he communicates that effectively internally then that would explain the successes that his companies have had to date.
Conclusions
Elon Musk appears to be a strong leader, albeit with a few flaws. His major strengths lie in his authenticity and his vision. Put together, this means that he has an exception vision, and is likeable enough to help get people to buy into that vision. One assumes decent communication skills contribute to this as well, allowing Musk to set up teams to work towards solutions, and then not worrying about the solution, just knowing that it will occur.
That is not to say that Musk is a flawless leader. His companies often have high turnover, in particular among senior managers. This speaks to Musk creating a culture where he expected everybody to buy in as deeply as he has. Further, this speaks to maybe not having great emotional intelligence in the sense that there are times when the fundamental needs of people are not being met, and unless those basic needs are being met, having a job that is largely focused on intrinsic motivation is simply not enough for many.
All the same, on the list of leaders, Musk stands out because he is charismatic, and people want to get involved in his projects. He checks a lot of boxes for the modern leader – able to motivate, has a lot of vision, and can juggle a number of different teams and projects all at once, important for someone who wants to head three or four different companies all doing innovative work.
So overall, Elon Musk is a very good leader. There are definitely things on which he can improve, in terms of working to understand the needs of his employees better, and then ensuring that he does what he needs to do to minimize turnover and built better internal leadership pipelines in his companies.




References
Larcker, D. & Tayan, B. (2011) Tesla Motors: The evolution of governance from inception to IPO. Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University No. CGRP-15.
Marques, J. (2017) A mindful moral compass for twenty-first century leadership: The noble eightfold path. The Journal of Values-Based Leadership Vol. 10 (1) 1-19.
Muhlberg, Elon Musk and patent soul-searching: Intellectual property. Without Prejudice Vol. 14 (7) 28-29.
Paterson, T., Luthans, F. & Milosevic, I. (2014) A proposed orthogonal relationship between psychological capital and ethical leadership. Advances in Authentic and Ethical Leadership. Information Age Publishing: Charlotte, NC.
Robbins, S. & DeCenzo, D. (2008) Fundamentals of Management: Essential Concepts and Applications. Prentice Hall: Upper Saddle River, NJ