Team building Elon Musk

Elon Musk
Elon Musk has frequently been lauded for his leadership skills, in particular due to the fact that his businesses are generally successful despite operating in incredibly challenging industries where the odds of failure substantially outweigh the odds of success. This paper will examine some of the traits of Musk as a leader, and how he has built successful organizations, in particular through policies, communications and training.
Communications appear to be Musk's strongest leadership attribute. Mejia (2018) notes that transparency and humor are two of his strongest traits. The transparency aspect is what allows Musk to have his employees believe in him and his mission – being honest about both the good and the bad establishes a high degree of trust between the leader and the followers. Followers feel respected, and are therefore more willing to buy into other aspects of the leader once this respect and trust have been established.
Musk actively encourages negative feedback, in order to create a feedback loop that allows him to learn and improve, and for the members of his team to learn and improve. That degree of openness, especially about things that are not working, also serves to create a higher level of trust within leadership team (Schwantes, 2018).
Musk's communication style portrays him as energetic and engaged, two other traits that can help to motivate a team. That he has multiple businesses and seems to be engaged with all of them, at least if his Twitter feed is anything to go by, is generally seen as a positive. Moreover, his energy is conveyed when he communicates to the world things like sleeping on the roof of the Tesla factory, as this helps showcase his level of engagement, and that he is not going to ask his people to put in energy that he himself is unwilling to put into the company (Korosec, 2017).
Exploration is another element of Musk's communication style that serves him well. The example of his love of feedback loops, especially when they contain negative feedback, highlights how Musk uses communication to explore the views of his subordinates, and to learn about their areas of knowledge. Beyond building trust, this approach to communication helps gain buy-in from the other leaders in the company, because it shows his level of engagement in their work, and that they are also making contributions; while he is the face of the company, he is others can feel engaged about their roles as well.
Where Musk struggles a little bit is that he is not an expert planner, and this lack of organization has been one of the critiques of his leadership style (Mejia, 2018). At SpaceX, he can overcome this by interviewing all candidates himself, which ensures that hire align with his vision, but this is not something possible at Tesla (Orton-Jones, 2018). In a larger company, Musk must be the communicator of the organizational culture at the highest level, but then must empower other managers to promote the culture throughout the rest of the organization. Having an engaged CEO, however, helps make this process easier, because he is always able to provide some guidance.
Team-building is also a key element of Musk's leadership style. This starts with messaging. Musk advocates that people, when they join the company, must understand and buy into what the company is doing. This means not only understanding the product, but believing that the product will be a success, that it is worth that person's time to work there on this product and trying to make it a success (Musk, 2013).
He also makes a point to ensure that his approach to doing business is something that his leaders have bought into. For example, he believes that reducing noise in people's work, removing obstacles to their success. Leaders are instructed to take this approach, which in turn allows the employees to do their best work (Umoh, 2017). Musk works with his leadership team to directly to ensure this.
Ultimately, Musk succeeds because of his communication skills. These are what creates the buy-in needed throughout his organizations. With that high-level buy-in, Musk is able to create motivation. When the people who work for him notice that their bosses are working to reduce friction in their jobs, that also creates trust. Transparency and seeking out negative feedback increase both trust and engagement, and when those things are increased, an organization is likely to get more from its employees.
Musk relies on his senior leaders, and interviews them personally. Further, he has open lines of communication with them, so that he can communicate his values and tactics with them, and they can give him feedback as well. This creates a feedback loop and a team-wide commitment to improving.
Musk does not rely on traditional resources such as training to build teams – interpersonal action and attaining buy-in by having a strong corporate culture such that buy-in is typically a given when any applicant are approaches that Musk utilizes to build teams. So formal training, programs and projects are not used by Musk in his companies, and in fact he tends to view such things as stifling of creativity and innovation.
All told, Musk's approach is heavily reliant on communication, but is otherwise unorthodox. The strong organizational cultures that he has built tend to support team-building in ways that other companies have trouble matching. This in turn allows Musk to eschew many of the team-building tactics that those companies use, because the team and organizational cultures are already strong.

References

Korosec, K. (2017). Why Tesla CEO Elon Musk is among the world's great leaders. Fortune. Retrieved August 9, 2018 from http://fortune.com/2017/03/24/tesla-elon-musk-worlds-greatest-leaders/

Mejia, Z. (2018) Ex-Google exec: 3 traits that make Elon Musk an exceptional leader – and one major flaw. CNBC. Retrieved August 9, 2018 from https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/03/ex-google-exec-kim-scott-top-leadership-traits-of-tesla-ceo-elon-musk.html

Musk, E. (2013) Elon Musk: On team building, Warren Buffett and Mars (transcript). Fresh Dialogues. Retrieved August 9, 2018 from http://www.freshdialogues.com/2013/02/09/transcript-of-elon-musk-interview-with-alison-van-diggelen-on-team-building-warren-buffett-and-mars/

Orton-Jones, C. (2018). Hire like Elon Musk…and 14 other ways to attract future leaders. Managers.org. Retrieved August 9, 2018 from https://www.managers.org.uk/insights/news/2018/may/hire-like-elon-musk-and-14-other-ways-to-attract-future-leaders

Schwantes, M. (2018). Elon Musk shows how to be a great leader with what he calls his single best piece of advice. Inc Magazine. Retrieved August 9, 2018 from https://www.inc.com/marcel-schwantes/elon-musk-shows-how-to-be-a-great-leader-with-what-he-calls-his-single-best-piece-of-advice.html

Umoh, R. (2017). The tactics self-made billionaire Elon Musk uses to motivate his teams. CNBC. Retrieved August 9, 2018 from https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/05/2-major-ways-executives-like-elon-musk-are-trying-to-stop-you-from-quitting.html