Introduction
Leadership skills are essential for personal and professional growth in today’s competitive environment. An individual or organization may enhance efficiency and achieve goals with the support of leadership, which is a crucial management component. Scholars have different definitions of leadership and leadership philosophies. The most popular definition of leadership is “influence,” inspiring others to work voluntarily and passionately toward accomplishing collective objectives (Storey, 2009, p. 15). As a result, leadership directs a formal or informal group’s activities to create and attain goals.
Elon Musk has been used as a case study to understand the different leadership qualities better because he is one of the best corporate leaders and innovators of recent years. Elon Musk portrays a visionary, problem-solver, and emotional intelligence type of leadership and is guided by such theories of leadership as path-goal theory and transformational theory.
Visionary Leadership
Visionary leaders reign and are inspiring rather than authoritarian in advancing their goals and agenda for a company. Visionary leaders provide this flexibility with the awareness that it will require enormous discipline and dedication to see the vision through. Just like Barrack Obama, visionary leaders employ authentic leadership skills by adding value to the people they interact with and helping them realize higher professional goals through attention to context (Ladkin, 2017).
They are driven to succeed in their jobs, nonetheless, by tenacity. Visionary leaders know how to work around obstacles and overcome them, keeping the team on track by modeling a never-give-up attitude, irrespective of how challenging the tasks may be. Visionary leaders’ innovativeness and imagination are essential characteristics (Storey, 2009). They inspire their teams to have great dreams by allowing them to do the same. Their inventiveness is what distinguishes them, what brought them success, and what shapes business culture.
Emotional Intelligence Leadership
The capacity of a leader to comprehend, controls, and influence their own emotions and those of people around them is known as emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence fosters a pleasant work environment inside a business, indirectly increasing efficiency and production (Faronbi, 2020). It encourages development, innovation, and originality in the company and team members. It consistently encourages team members and leaders to put forth their best effort. Empathy, self-awareness, and drive are just a few of their components. Additionally, self-awareness is not simply limited to feelings; one should be conscious of their ego and their positive and negative traits (Storey, 2009). Making sure that individual ego and personality characteristics serve the needs of the workforce and business is the goal of emotional intelligence leaders.
Motivated leaders hold themselves to high-performance standards and make steady progress toward their objectives. Emotional intelligence leaders know what makes their team and subordinates tick, and they may use this knowledge to inspire them to discover their reasons for doing their job effectively (Cutler, 2014). On the other side, to be an empathetic leader, one must put themselves in another person’s position (Storey, 2009). Such leaders will benefit from this skill as they grow their team members and combat unjust preconceptions and prejudices. When their team needs a responsive leader to help them through tough times, they should be careful about giving constructive criticism and be a good listener.
Problem-Solver Leadership
Effective problem-solving skills allow leaders to quickly identify, evaluate, and resolve issues. Effective problem solvers have a natural tendency to find answers and guide others to them, regardless of whether the challenge is linear and “tame” or nonlinear and “wicked” (Cutler, 2014, p. 117). The capacity to solve problems is a complex capability that draws on a variety of abilities, including conceptual thinking, management and planning, and inventiveness.
Analysis of Elon Musk Leadership Attributes and Theories
His intense drive for greatness has been one of Elon’s motivating factors. He focused all of his attention as a student on areas critical to the development of his organization. After being asked to serve by PayPal, Elon decided to invest all he had in SpaceX, SolarCity, and Tesla Motors through his revenue and became successful (Renko, 2017). As such, he had made millions in personal advances to support his commercial pursuits.
His financial alternatives also influenced his capacity to make long-term lease payments. He constantly defended his exceptional yet unusual entrepreneurial qualities by asserting that every time he decided to solicit investment in his company from investors, it made him feel compelled to invest. Given the many failures of his entities, such decisions cannot be made purely and straightforwardly or collected into a fundamental viewpoint of commonplace scenarios (Lord et al., 2017). For example, the news of dispatch frequently resulted in some kind of letdown following the SpaceX test.
Similarly, Tesla Motors struggled to profit for more than ten years. Elon Musk was unwavering in his confidence that the investments would be significant in the long run. Investors gained faith in him as well as the public, which supported him due to his visionary leadership. Elon saw that a fantastic pioneer needed a dream that included comprehending one’s present situation and seeing one’s future through visionary leadership.
Musk also demonstrated his constant ability to concentrate on the future and perceive its possibilities by pushing through with space travel, self-driving vehicles, and renewable energy investments, from his original investment in internet banking to his current position. While some sectors continue to ignore the effects of global warming, the majority have begun to recognize them. Such leaders and leadership characteristics in an entrepreneurial society might be difficult (Groysberg et al., 2018). Most leaders highlight pressing issues while smiling in front of investors. Working with Musk, he hopes to improve society while showing humanity a bright tomorrow.
The foundation of the path-goal theory is that a leader’s actions affect how satisfied, motivated, and productive their team members are. This hypothesis is founded on expectancy theory, which contends that people behave in specific ways when they anticipate positive outcomes (Wu, 2013). According to Wu (2013), a leader will complement their team members and compensate for their weaknesses (Wu, 2013). Warren Buffet states that leadership includes “mentoring, influencing, listening, and leaving a lasting impression on others” (as cited in Gerdes, 2020). This notion states that influential leaders provide their team members with a clear route to follow in order to accomplish objectives while eliminating roadblocks and hazards. The theory suggests how managers can help and encourage their staff to reach their goals.
The emotional intelligence leadership style is one of the elements of the path-goal theory. By establishing high standards for performance, the leader encourages excellence in their followers. The leadership believes that their team members are capable of handling leadership issues and encourages them to strive for their maximum level of performance (Wu, 2013). The leader urges employees to showcase their excellent work and improve. When Elon Musk responded via email to the injury incidents at the Tesla factory, he demonstrated the qualities of emotional intelligence and problem-solving abilities.
Elon Musk stated his emotional interpretation of an individual’s hurt, contending that damage must be documented to create adequate precautions and ultimately assist the sufferer in finding a solution to their predicament. Elon requested that he meet with each victim, in this case, to understand their perspective on the harm and possibly collaborate with them to find a solution from their perspective in order to jointly alleviate the problem (Abatecola et al., 2019, p. 1950). Musk also worried that he would enter the manufacturing line and do the same duties as the workers.
Musk displayed one of the critical conceptual leadership styles supplied by the Path-Goal Theory as a problem solver by providing assistance and actively engaging participative and supportive leaders through his excellent email to his staff. In this case, Musk employed Warren Buffet’s leadership philosophy, claiming that he “leads by example” (Gerdes, 2020, 00:00:07).
Musk first employs a supportive leadership style via his connections with subordinates and his assertion that he worsens their circumstances by injuring them. He expresses worry for the safety of the workers at his firm. Additionally, Musk demonstrates in his report a supportive leadership style consistent with the path-goal theory, demonstrating his will to ensure that people work in the safest environment possible (Saint-Martin, 2019). These activities are good examples of his choice. They are related to problem-solving leadership, which says that leaders should care about their subordinates’ needs and well-being to improve worker safety and working conditions in general.
Musk also claims he would meet with injury victims and listen to their concerns to improve working conditions or safety. Later, he would do duties similar to those of the workers to appreciate their perspective better. This situation shows a clear transition to a participatory leadership style, which is illustrated by his involvement in the work carried out by his staff to address the organization’s problems. Leaders use a participatory leadership style to get their ideas and views by including subordinates in decision-making (Wu, 2013). Musk probably intuitively understands that his company’s most valuable asset is its workforce, and nothing else is more important than ensuring their safety and well-being. He was aware of the need for his business to achieve the objective of creating a successful product and business.
Leaders should offer emotional support to their team to foster good working relationships. The Path-Goal Theory states that leaders should deliver emotional support throughout the leadership process to deliver valued goals or reward sets and the optimal action point to achieve value or objectives (Shaw, 2020).
Over time, Musk has shown his capacity for problem-solving by taking calculated risks that the majority would generally avoid achieving his conceptual aim for success. He firmly relies on his gut feelings, intuition, and suggestions made by his aides. The most apparent communication quality in the instance mentioned above of the high frequency of injuries is that he consistently solicited input from team members to prevent making poor judgments under challenging circumstances (Wu, 2013). In such a situation, he demonstrates both the characteristic of problem-solving leadership and the trait of visionary leadership by pursuing his ambitions despite the criticism of others who have opposing views on their viability.
Musk is widely regarded as the most influential and inventive leader of the modern era due to his audacious introduction of technological advancements for the future as a problem-solver leader employing the transformational leadership theory. According to Dr. Jeannice Samani, transformational leadership fully supports and inspires as well as facilitates the positive growth of others (Wyatt & Samani, 2021). In this case, Musk, guided by emotional intelligence, employed transformational leadership theory in his long-term commitment to introducing sustainable living in the car industry. Past models, like the Model 3, Model S, and Model X, which led to the debut of electric automobiles, serve as examples of the trend (Gliddon & Rothwell, 2018). People often say that his success is due to his vision, ability to solve problems, and emotional intelligence, which are all based on the path-goal and transformational theories of leadership.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Musk is a standout among the leaders in vision, problem-solving, and emotional intelligence who are at the heart of innovation in various sectors. His leadership and impact extend beyond the automotive and energy industries. He has a strong sense of vision and a flexible leadership style, in addition to being determined. Positive verbal interaction motivates his perseverance and brilliance in the workplace. These principles have given him the ability to put together Tesla Inc., one of the best businesses that humanity has ever known. His leadership style is informed by path-goal and transformational theories, and as a result, he recognizes the need for communication as the critical factor in any company’s future success.
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