Introduction
The characteristics of a person that make them a good leader are referred to as leadership attributes. Many moral role models display a variety of moral qualities in the world. One such person would be Elon Musk, an entrepreneur with citizenship in the United States, South Africa, and Canada, who was born in South Africa. After selling some of his start-up companies, Zip2 and PayPal, he became a multimillionaire in his 20s (Khan, 2021).
Due to Musk’s ingenuity, his rocket delivered the first commercial vehicle to the orbiting observatory. In the beginning stages of the Donald Trump administration, he also served as an advisor on infrastructure. He founded Tesla Motors, which is recognized for its mass-market electric vehicles, solar roofing materials, and battery solutions. He also serves as the organization’s CEO and Product Architect. The organization’s creation of products, approach, and engineering are under his direction. Musk and his cousins bought Solar-City in August to boost the development of environmentally friendly energy sources and goods. Later, he founded The Boring Company, which constructs and bores trenches to lessen street traffic.
Analyzing Leadership Principles
One’s leadership style may be inferred from how they steer themselves and the group. Even if a leader has characteristics of every leadership style, one style is typically more evident than the others (Griffin, 2018). Elon Musk, a transformative leader, has changed the game in organizations due to his focus on the great picture and his commitment to keep trying new things. High levels of critical thinking, analysis, strategy implementation, issue resolution, and planning characterize this leadership style. So transformative leaders do not relax and wait for the world to change before taking the right action; instead, they devise a plan and rally the troops to back it.
Musk shows how to lead by setting an example and talking and walking the walk. His high expectations for them—and his high standards for himself—serve as his primary source of motivation for his staff. Before asking the staff to make similar commitments, Musk made more significant efforts to secure the company’s success (Muwara & Uddin, 2020). His continued commitment had a good effect on the development of many organizations, providing an example of the proper way for the staff. Thus, they put in much effort, uphold the essential principles, and gain consistency. Musk is very visionary since he fully matches the description of someone who knows where they are and where they want to go. His most determined strategy is to build a greenhouse in large numbers and then commit suicide there.
Second, he wants to improve the human condition in the world. He has several ongoing initiatives to help him realize these two ideals. He first participated in online banking, where he invested more in advancing sustainable energy, space exploration, and self-driving cars. He has taken more than ten years trying to address the problem of global warming. His journey demonstrates the power of visionary reasoning, resilience, and perseverance (Farmer, 2022). Musk is one of the world’s finest investors thanks to his imaginative personality, which also helps him accomplish great things.
From the point of view of leadership, it is difficult not to be motivated by a person who alters the globe and does it for roughly 15 hours every day, regardless of whether this burden is healthy or not. Elon Musk gives his teams intimidatingly significant goals, and every day, they genuinely alter the world (Brooks & McColl, 2022). Elon Musk also leads the way and encourages others to follow him. It addresses the kind of team members who openly wish to have long-lasting impressions and become a portion of something unique and are confident they may succeed due to their boss. The staff of Musk is willing to support him in achieving his objectives and is prepared to get above and beyond because he does.
Elon Musk’s ability to not just tolerate failure while encouraging others to gain knowledge from it rather than demand loss from his staff is another characteristic of his leadership. To alter the world, he attempts to carry out previously unheard-of actions. It is not easy to succeed continuously along the road for that to function. Imagine attempting to build a spacecraft or connect the brains of humans with computers after Edison made 10,000 efforts to make the lightbulb (Rimmer, 2018). He requires the group to be courageous and attempt new things that will fail every day to figure out what will genuinely work since the team is pushing the limits of humanity. If he penalized failure, his employees would be unable to push the envelope because nobody would be motivated to attempt such impossible, game-changing aims.
Elon Musk is enthusiastic, never loses hope, and fully commits to his work. After selling his enterprises like PayPal and Zip2, he made investments in other businesses rather than continuing to live a comfortable life. After urging investors to do so, he feels he must invest money (Rimmer, 2018). He has borrowed millions of dollars personally to fund his business endeavors. Due to his devotion, he has made costly mistakes, including taking out loans to pay his rent.
His businesses have seen setbacks; Tesla Motors has been a nonprofit for over ten years, while SpaceX’s failed launching of an experimental rocket made headlines. The motor company also faced profound skepticism from the automobile industry, production delays, and financial difficulties (Rao, 2022). Despite his unpleasant experiences with charitable organizations and unsuccessful rocket launches, his steadfast convictions and optimism have earned him the general population’s and investors’ backing.
Communication Skills
An organization’s internal and external activities are significantly impacted by how a business executive communicates. Elon Musk highlights being straightforward and objective in his interactions while being involved in many different types of enterprises (Alyammahi et al., 2020). Everywhere people interact with one another—in business, hospitals, government, communities, military groups, schools, and homes—communication is crucial. It is hard to think of any interpersonal action that does not rely on contact (Griffin, 2018).
Elon Musk has a remarkable ability to communicate. By overcoming all communication hurdles, including language, perception, distance, ego, hierarchy, and motive, he became close to the community. According to who he was speaking to, Elon Musk alternates between different languages. He makes sure many people hear his words through periodicals in local languages. Elon Musk’s messages often included profound questions and persuasive responses. The businesses owned by Elon Musk are renowned for their inventive and risk-taking strategy for product creation. Musk can maintain his position at the vanguard of innovation by establishing a culture that values experimentation, teamwork, and measured risk-taking.
Teamwork Approach
Employees who are happier at work are generally less inclined to leave, which helps employers preserve money and retain top talent. Employers strive hard to keep the business owner pleased. Elon Musk tries to encourage his staff members to succeed and prevent staff turnover by making them feel like they are part of a larger team. His strategies make financial sense since employing new personnel costs organizations a lot. He encourages his upper management to look for methods of motivating and inspiring his staff members by being unselfish.
Transformative leaders trust their employees and allow them to own their jobs rather than control them. Elon Musk is renowned for promoting an innovative and risk-taking culture within his organizations (Shields & Hesbol, 2020). He works with the best people and gives them the flexibility to make their own choices, which promotes a feeling of responsibility and ownership. Empower team members to experiment with measured risks and contribute their ideas by fostering an autonomous culture. They should be given the tools and assistance they need to succeed in their positions.
Leadership Philosophy
Elon Musk’s leadership philosophy is “I don’t create companies for the sake of creating companies, but to get things done.” Leadership like Elon Musk’s has the potential to improve the planet radically (Scott & Freeman, 2021). This type of leader places a premium on getting things done. Instead of worrying about improving the world, they put their ideas into action. For instance, Tesla’s management ethos prioritizes fulfilling the company’s goals. Leaders place a premium on deliverables since team members’ efforts are essential to the company’s survival, growth, and achieving Musk’s vision. It is the same with his other enterprises. Musk’s businesses are built on the foundation of dedicated labor toward a specific goal.
Decision-Making
Elon Musk is an expert problem-solver who employs various strategies to create original answers to complex problems. He dissects issues into their core realities using principles of reasoning and then proceeds to reason (Panpatte & Takale, 2019). He employs lateral thinking to create new solutions by considering issues from several angles. He uses systems thinking to comprehend the relationships between and influences on challenges. He utilizes design thinking to understand people, describe issues, develop ideas for fixes, create prototypes, and test them.
Musk promotes ethical leadership in several ways, and his characteristics support one’s financial growth and enable one to reach new heights. First, his qualities of justice and fairness aid in keeping highly skilled and seasoned workers who contribute to a company’s ascent to the top. Second, Musk’s leadership qualities allowed him to succeed wildly in business. He went out as a youngster with a strong dedication, sense of direction, resolve, and vision to move to America and establish himself as an entrepreneur. One may achieve an improved future with an organized plan and strong hope. Also, his ethical leadership qualities contribute to developing a dependable, inclusive, and healthy environment at work. Rules, regulations, and laws do not seem to impede, and employees are respected and listened to when expressing their thoughts.
Conclusion
Elon Musk’s ethical leadership traits are discussed in the paper, along with his actions, choices, and leadership style. Elon possesses great ethical leadership qualities, demonstrated in how he manages his enterprises, interacts with his workers, engages in charitable activity, and makes decisions. His leadership presents several difficulties, particularly in improving the conditions of low-income people, advancing education, funding the medical industry, and contributing to environmental preservation.
We are also inspired by the fact that he rose from a modest background in his 20s to become one of the wealthiest leaders in the world. One must imitate all his moral leadership qualities, including humility, courage, setting a good example, and possessing vision and humanity to improve the world. The living conditions of residents and the world’s inhabitants are improved when ethical leadership is practiced.
References
Alyammahi, A., Alshurideh, M., Kurdi, B. A., & Salloum, S. A. (2020). The impacts of communication ethics on workplace decision making and productivity. In International conference on advanced intelligent systems and informatics (pp. 488-500). Cham: Springer International Publishing. Web.
Brooks, J., & McColl, E. (2022). Top tips for leading a team in primary care dentistry. British Dental Journal, 233(12), 986-987. Web.
Farmer, Y. (2022). Prudence, Ethics and Anticipation in Visionary Leaders. The Journal of Values-Based Leadership, 15(1), 9. Web.
Griffin, R. W. (2018). Fundamentals of Management (9thed.)
Khan, M. R. (2021). A critical analysis of Elon Musk’s leadership in Tesla Motors. Journal of Global Entrepreneurship Research, 11(1), 213-222. Web.
Muwara, D., & Uddin, K. (2020). A Critical review on Leadership: A Case Study on Elon Musk’s Leadership Style. Web.
Panpatte, S., & Takale, V. D. (2019). To study the decision making process in an organization for its effectiveness. The International Journal of Business Management and Technology, 3(1), 73-78. Web.
Rao, M. S. (2022). Innovative leadership: tools and techniques to acquire innovative and inspiring ideas. Innovative Leadership in Times of Compelling Changes: Strategies, Reflections and Tools, 69-78. Web.
Rimmer, M. (2018). Elon musk’s open innovation: Tesla, intellectual property, and climate change (pp. 515-551). Springer Singapore. Web.
Scott, D., & Freeman, R. E. (2021). Models of leadership in Plato and beyond. Oxford University Press.
Shields, C. M., & Hesbol, K. A. (2020). Transformative leadership approaches to inclusion, equity, and social justice. Journal of School Leadership, 30(1), 3-22. Web.
Loading...
