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...

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…