Elon Musk S Leadership at Tesla

Leadership

The business leader that I have chosen is Elon Musk from Tesla. This company is attempting to become a major car manufacturer, using electric technology and with an eye to self-driving cars as well, leapfrogging the traditional gasoline car to become a disruptive technology in the industry. The company has modest earnings and a very high burn rate, and by all accounts Tesla is a demanding place to work as well. All of this implies that the company needs a strong leader in order to lay out a vision and have so many people, both inside and outside of the company, buy into that vision (D'Onofrio, 2015).

Pearce and Robinson (2014) point out that leaders are responsible for setting the organizational culture. The leader essentially sets the tone for the organisation, and the followers take their cues from the leader. Musk does this with Tesla, demanding that employees work long hours for less pay than comparable companies can offer, because of the mission that the company is on (D'Onofrio, 2015). As Pearce and Robinson (2014) point out, the leader's vision is "what the leader sees the company must become to establish and sustain global leadership" and Musk has provided clarity of vision and a sense of purpose to the employees of Tesla.

The leader's vision is just the starting point for the organizational culture. Mission and vision are important elements of a leader's role in shaping the culture. The organization takes after its leader. Musk works hard, and keeps himself in the public eye, always supporting and promoting Tesla. This helps the people at the company continue to believe in the mission, enough that they are willing to make sacrifices to participate in that mission. Musk spends time himself working on major issues like securing the appropriate financing for the company to continue its operations, and conducting high level negotiations over important government policies like being able to build charging stations in China, or about acquiring subsidies for electric vehicles in the United States.

Less known is what the Tesla leadership pipeline looks like. This is a young company and a long way from any sort of succession issue, so in that sense the other leaders at the organization are still behind the scenes. Leadership development is also not the primary objective for the company, which basically exists on a short-term basis. Leadership development is more of a long-run strategy, so has not been at the fore of Tesla's plans to date. It is unclear whether this is a pragmatic policy to get the most efficient use out of the company's funds in the short-run or a flaw in Musk's leadership not to build a leadership pipeline in behind him.