By Whitney Robinson
Elon Musk is a very powerful and extremely influential person. Tom Junod (2012) tells a story of how Musk began his adult career founding and eventually selling the Internet business of PayPal for $170 million. He would later use a large portion of that money to fund SpaceX, a commercially owned and operated space exploration company. On top of venturing into space, Elon Musk has worked his way to the top of the Tesla Motor Company where he now resides as chairman and CEO. Musk has lead an ambitious life, one that has been driven by power and influence.
The primary source of Elon Musk’s power (Pennsylvania State, 2014) is his money. He has personal wealth, and has accumulated a collection of investors that now include NASA. What Musk does with his money is not unlike others who are wealthy and successful; he hires brilliant and talented individuals that can design and develop his products. But what separates Elon Musk from most of those venture capitalists is his vision. Elon wants to colonize Mars.
Elon Musk uses his power to influence individuals and organizations, even governments, to change their perception on space travel (Junod, 2012). Instead of focusing on what we can do, Elon wants Americans to look at what we should do. Musk works to change the behaviors and attitudes of innovators, engineers, and investors. “It is not enough for him to inspire Americans; he needs somehow to stand for them — to stand for more than himself — if he wants to restore this country’s explorer’s heart, its willingness to endure risk. “ (Junod, 2012).
“Expert power” (Pennsylvania State, 2014) is the primary taxonomy of social power that Elon Musk uses. With advanced knowledge in engineering as well as business and social interactions makes Musk very adept to lead his organizations. Beyond that, Musk uses “inspirational Appeals” (Pennsylvania State, 2014) as an influence tactic to motivate his engineers to innovate and find something new, and motivates his investors to keep giving him money even in the face of failure.
Balancing both “Personalized” and “Socialized” power (Pennsylvania State, 2014), Elon Musk works for the betterment of mankind and progress of the American sense of adventurism with some very selfish actions. A quote from Jurod’s piece describes Musk’s drive: “… But he rules through strength of will. What he has comes at a price, sometimes to Elon, sometimes to people close to him. But someone always pays.”
Elon Musk’s leadership is far from infallible though. His inability to relinquish control has been compared to Steve Jobs from Apple. In his article, Jurod (2012) talks about instances of Musk’s unbending will with the Tesla Model S having a requirement to have a volume dial that goes up to 11, and all the trash cans at the SpaceX facility being designed by Elon himself. Musk uses “Legitimizing Tactics” (Pennsylvania State, 2014) to coarse many decisions in his company.
The true legacy of Elon Musk has yet to be written. His achievements in the last decade have been riddled with complications and failures. With Tesla Motors finally making money, and SpaceX receiving additional contracts, as long as Musk can continue to deliver on his promises he should continue to be successful. Musk actually fulfilling his (and many other’s) dream to reach Mars sounds like science fiction, but his leadership and personal drive might be the only way to make it possible.
References:
Junod, T. (2012). Triumphs of his will. Esquire. Retrieved from
http://www.esquire.com/features/americans-2012/elon-musk-interview-1212
Pennsylvania State. (2014). Psych 485: Leadership in work settings, Lesson 7. Retrieved from
https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/fa14/psych485/001/content/07_lesson/