Question 1
Elon Musk is the CEO of Tesla and has been leading the company for the past decade. Musk has been credited with leading Tesla out of the niche electric vehicle (EV) market and into the mainstream global market, with plans to expand in China. Touted as the only wholly-American-made car, Tesla is admired by a great many fans who view the EV as the next revolution in auto engineering. Musk is hailed by admirers as being a visionary (Yauney, 2018) and a charismatic personality who connects with fans and consumers and “gets” what they are thinking and wanting. I have selected Elon Musk because as a leader I admire his ability to capture people’s attention, build a brand, and create enthusiasm for the company. However, I also see several problems with Musk’s leadership style, such as poor impulse control (Wolverton, 2018) and over-promising and under-delivering (DeBord, 2018), and I would like to analyze those more closely to better understand some of these inherent risks.
Question 2
Musk has been described as “(1) a proactive learner, (2) a hard worker, (3) a bold visionary, and (4) an unwavering optimist” (Yauney, 2018). He has been hailed for corporate social responsibility and focus on sustainability to help ensure that future generations can enjoy the planet: “Musk actively works on addressing the heavy toll we have thus far taken on our environment and on finding a solution for our ever-growing human population” (Marques, 2017). Musk is praised for responding to the needs of today’s society by engaging minds with an innovative leadership style, which allows leaders to find creative solutions to problems that have to be addressed (Sen & Eren, 2012). Through value-added innovation, which focuses on adding onto ideas and solutions that already exist (Hong, Hou, Zhu & Marinova, 2018), Elon Musk has been able to provide value-added innovation leadership. His method was to enhance the auto industry by introducing the luxury EV, something that had yet been provided in the market.
As an innovative leader, Musk has helped to create a new market for the EV in the U.S. Before Tesla, the EV market was nothing special, but Musk has helped to make this market the next big thing for auto engineers. One of the...
References
DeBord, M. (2018). Elon Musk promised a Tesla alien dreadnought factory—but what we got was a tent. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-is-failing-to-build-the-factory-of-the-future-2018-6
Gallo, C. (2013). How Southwest and Virgin America Win by Putting People Before Profit. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/carminegallo/2013/09/10/how-southwest-and-virgin-america-win-by-putting-people-before-profit/
Marques, J. (2017). A Mindful Moral Compass for Twenty-First Century Leadership: The Noble Eightfold Path. The Journal of Values-Based Leadership, 10(1), 7.
?en, A., & Eren, E. (2012). Innovative leadership for the twenty-first century. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 41, 1-14.
Wolverton, T. (2018). Elon Musk says he was thinking like a Vegas casino owner. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-funding-secured-tweet-vegas-odds-2018-8
Yauney, R. H. (2018). Leadership Development: A Study of Elon Musk. Marriott Student Review, 2(2), 4.
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