Elon Musk: Transformational Leadership in Action

This week, I will be working on an analysis of Elon Musk’s leadership style with an excellent team of individuals. While we’ve decided to approach the project from a different leadership theory, I can’t help but think of Musk after having learned the concepts of transformational leadership and think that looking at his leadership behaviors from this point will be a good exercise in preparing me for this project.

Musk’s leadership behaviors coincide with each of Bennis and Nanus’ four strategies typically used by transformational leaders (1985, in Northouse, 2013).

1. Vision: There is no doubt that Musk has a vision. He has a vision of a world that is no longer reliant on fossil fuels, is maximizing their use of green energy, and is exploring space and building colonies on Mars (Jacoby, 2011). This vision is attractive, simple, understandable, beneficial, and–quite literally–energy creating (Northouse, 2013, p. 197). Even though to most people his vision is neither realistic nor believable, Musk has made it his mission to make it both.

2. Social Architect: In many ways, Musk has inspired his employees. In each of his ventures–including the development of the Tesla Model S electric car and the launch of the SpaceX Falcon launch vehicle–Musk has managed to “mobile people to accept a new group identity [and] a new philosophy” (Northouse, 2013, p.197). For Musk, that philosophy is maintaining unprecedented standards of excellence and clearing unforeseen paths of progress in nearly abandoned industries. Dolly Singh recounts Musk’s address to his employees of SpaceX after the failure of the first launch attempt–a pivotal moment in which she recognized that “a failure in leadership would have destroyed us” (2013). However, in what Singh calls “the most impressive display of leadership that [she] had ever witnessed,” Musk encouraged and motivated his team with “fortitude and ferocity,” saying, “For my part, I will never give up and I mean never” (2013).

3. Trust: In this and similar situations, Musk continually earns the trust of his followers by “being predictable [and] reliable, even in situations that are uncertain” (Northouse, 2013, p.197). Time and again, when Tesla struggled through various crises of financial difficulty, Musk continued to fund the company out of his own pocket, ultimately investing over $100 million into the electric car company (Jacoby, 2011). It should be noted that research shows that transformational leadership is most effective in times of crises (PSU WC, 2015); as such, it is unsurprising that Musk’s transformational leadership strategies were most apparent in these uncertain situations.

4. Creative deployment of self: Northouse notes that transformational leaders have a high “positive self-regard” and focus on “their strengths rather than dwelling on their weaknesses” (2013, p. 197). Furthermore, they have a tendency to “immerse themselves in their tasks and the overarching goals of their organizations” (2013, p. 197). Musk is known for not being shy about his capabilities–he speaks openly about his ability to learn complex topics, including rocket science, through reading books (Jacoby, 2011). Additionally, to compensate for areas of weakness, he sources experts–recruiting professionals who are top in their field and relying on them to do the heavy lifting while still holding them to his standards of excellence in performance (Jacoby, 2011). Finally, in the way of immersion, Musk is known for sleeping very little and for throwing himself into projects with his team. For example, when Tesla was in need of funding, he spent 4 weeks on the ground with his team in an effort to fit his electric motor into a Smart car as a means of impressing the executives and ensuring their financial support (Jacoby, 2011).

In spite of all this, the strongest distinguishing factor between Musk and his vision and the standard transformational leader is the reliance on ethical standards, values, and moral convictions. Northouse speaks of one of the strengths of transformational leadership being its “strong emphasis on followers’ needs, values, and morals,” its attempt “to move people to higher standards of moral responsibility,” and its being “fundamentally morally uplifting” (2013, p. 201). In fact, it is this quality that allows for distinction between transformational leaders and pseudotransformational leaders, such as Adolf Hitler and Jim Jones, who rely on “coercive uses of power” to enact changes (2013, p. 201). As the saying goes, hindsight is 20/20; understanding of Musk’s leadership as having a moral quality or not will likely not be solidified until it is able to be analyzed as hindsight. Considering the magnitude and rate of change he is initiating in various industries, a strong argument could be on made both sides.

References

Jacoby, O. (Producer & Director). (2011) Bloomberg Risk Takers: Elon Musk [Television Broadcast]. United States: Bloomberg Television.

Northouse, P.G. (2013).  Leadership: Theory and Practice.  Los Angeles: Sage Publications.

Pennsylvania State University World Campus. (2015). PSYCH 485 Module 6: Contingency & Path-Goal Theories. Retrieved from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/1486679/modules/items/15963835

Singh, D. (2013) What is it like to work with Elon Musk? Quora. Retrieved from http://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-work-with-Elon-Musk (Links to an external site.)